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If you've got a strong track record and connections then you can raise money with just an idea, but in reality most founders don't have that so the only way the
by ig1 11y ago
If you've got a strong track record and connections then you can raise money with just an idea, but in reality most founders don't have that so the only way they can prove their ability is via their actions and these days that tends to mean at least building something to prove what you're capable of.
BTW. Andy Bechtolsheim invested in Google three years after they'd started working on it (as part of their Phd), they'd already launched a public version (google.stanford.edu) with real users by the time he invested. Justin Kan had been working on Kiko for a year before YC invested. Alexis & Steve had been working on MyMobileMenu for a year before they pitched it to YC and PG convinced them to pivot.
It's easy to romanticizes away the slog of work that goes in before a startup raises money, but many successful founders had years of work before they raised seed funding.
- oneloop 11y agoThank you for this.
- danieltillett 11y agoI don’t think anyone is disagreeing that a lot of work needs to go into a concept before it can be funded, but Andy still took a lot more risk than the average VC or angel in backing Larry and Sergey when he did.
- ig1 11y agoI believe Google was already in the millions of searches territory by that point. What made Andy a risk taker in that case wasn't the traction (which would still be significant in todays terms with a vastly larger internet population) but rather that search was seen as a dead space. It would have been the equivalent of investing in podcasting in 2013, a space considered played out and dominated by existing players with no significant upside.
- danieltillett 11y agoThere was also the minor point that Larry and Sergey were just a couple of PhD students with no business and no clear path to revenue. Still a gutsy move which many of the current crop of angels and VC would pass on.
- jacquesm 11y ago> Still a gutsy move which many of the current crop of angels and VC would pass on. And some of them did and were brave enough to write it up: https://www.bvp.com/portfolio/anti-portfolio https://www.bvp.com/portfolio/anti-portfolio
- vadym909 11y agoLOL- kudos on the guts to admit it. Their portfolio only has a few recognizable names but their anti-portfolio is Silicon Valley- HP, Google, Facebook, Tesla