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Absolutely, in hindsight there would have been different ways we could have managed the board more effectively from the start, and saved ourselves grief (and li

by nugget 11y ago

Absolutely, in hindsight there would have been different ways we could have managed the board more effectively from the start, and saved ourselves grief (and likely created even more value). At 22 y/o we lacked the experience to do this. (And don't worry, you couldn't possibly be harsher on us than we were on ourselves once the dust settled and we reflected on the whole rodeo ride.) Part of what I think incubators do well is they remove some of the crazy early stage investor dynamics that used to plague very young early stage founders who raised money from close personal networks of doctors and dentists. The experience I wrote about is from a decade ago in the early 00s. Before Y Combinator came along there was very little written about pre A angel investing.

jacquesm 11y ago
I should write about this. I never realized that it might be useful to someone. Thank you for opening my eyes to this. I'm hip deep in contract work right now (3 due diligences back-to-back, totally crazy, working over Christmas on one of the reports) but I promise that as soon as I have my hands free I'll try to expand on these comments in a blog post. Y combinator is a real game changer in many ways, and one of those ways is that founders now find themselves with a support group of others who have been in similar situations and who have a lot of knowledge about subjects like these. But there is a large group of founders currently not in YC and for those especially it might be advantageous. As a small time investor I'm sometimes in the role of the procedural jerk who makes sure that from the founders perspective all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. Usually this is not without friction but I've yet to hear a founder not express (sometimes many years later) that they're happy we went that route. Experience - even a little bit - can be worth gold if there is a power asymmetry and such asymmetries are more the rule than the exception where founders meet capital.

by nugget 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago

I should write about this. I never realized that it might be useful to someone. Thank you for opening my eyes to this. I'm hip deep in contract work right now (3 due diligences back-to-back, totally crazy, working over Christmas on one of the reports) but I promise that as soon as I have my hands free I'll try to expand on these comments in a blog post. Y combinator is a real game changer in many ways, and one of those ways is that founders now find themselves with a support group of others who have been in similar situations and who have a lot of knowledge about subjects like these. But there is a large group of founders currently not in YC and for those especially it might be advantageous. As a small time investor I'm sometimes in the role of the procedural jerk who makes sure that from the founders perspective all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. Usually this is not without friction but I've yet to hear a founder not express (sometimes many years later) that they're happy we went that route. Experience - even a little bit - can be worth gold if there is a power asymmetry and such asymmetries are more the rule than the exception where founders meet capital.