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I hate seeing things like this. As an entrepreneur it's frustrating that I've built a business, in a growing space, $300k ARR, consistent growth, a few employe

by edoceo 10y ago

I hate seeing things like this. As an entrepreneur it's frustrating that I've built a business, in a growing space, $300k ARR, consistent growth, a few employees, no debt and a well defined path to 10x growth that's not built on any (bulshit) models that VC seems to love. And for some reason it's very hard to find funding that's not from Wall Street guys (who love models that earn). Hey VCs! I can burn less of your money a little slower!! Hit me up!

rahimnathwani 10y ago
10x is $3m ARR. What will your gross margin be at that point? Do you expect to be able to scale beyond that size? How large is the addressable market?
boxcardavin 10y ago
VCs invest in people they know and people who know people they know. Need-ta fix that first, but those peeps might not be the type of peeps you wanna know. "The game is the game."
- dnautics 10y ago
  I think this is an underappreciated fact... SV (but not exclusively SV, it's worse in academic science, for example) runs a pretty insidious narrative of how the entrepreneurship game works, that I don't think is at all accurate.
achou 10y ago
Why bother raising from a VC? Bootstrapping can work out very well.
Sacho 10y ago
Isn't the point of VC that they gamble high-risk high-reward situations because the high-reward ones pay off the failed risks? If they want to go for a safe option, is your business a better investment than (insert safe investment options here, i don't know much about investing)? There's probably a fixed cost related to every investment(having to study your company etc) which might mean it doesn't pay off to invest in small companies.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
The question in a VC's mind is: When you exit (Acquisition or IPO) will you return to me my entire fund size? If you can't give a compelling "yes" then it's not a good fit for them.
aswanson 10y ago
I feel you, but what you're saying is the equivalent of asking a major league baseball team to sign you because you can put three more fans in the stands (your immediate family) and wont be a bust that costs them millions, or telling a Hollywood movie exec that your movie will only cost a few hundred thousand and is guaranteed to make him a profit of 200k. It's not appealing to a hits-driven business.

by edoceo 10y ago

rahimnathwani 10y ago

10x is $3m ARR. What will your gross margin be at that point? Do you expect to be able to scale beyond that size? How large is the addressable market?

boxcardavin 10y ago

VCs invest in people they know and people who know people they know. Need-ta fix that first, but those peeps might not be the type of peeps you wanna know. "The game is the game."

dnautics 10y ago
I think this is an underappreciated fact... SV (but not exclusively SV, it's worse in academic science, for example) runs a pretty insidious narrative of how the entrepreneurship game works, that I don't think is at all accurate.

achou 10y ago

Why bother raising from a VC? Bootstrapping can work out very well.

Sacho 10y ago

Isn't the point of VC that they gamble high-risk high-reward situations because the high-reward ones pay off the failed risks? If they want to go for a safe option, is your business a better investment than (insert safe investment options here, i don't know much about investing)? There's probably a fixed cost related to every investment(having to study your company etc) which might mean it doesn't pay off to invest in small companies.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

The question in a VC's mind is: When you exit (Acquisition or IPO) will you return to me my entire fund size? If you can't give a compelling "yes" then it's not a good fit for them.

aswanson 10y ago

I feel you, but what you're saying is the equivalent of asking a major league baseball team to sign you because you can put three more fans in the stands (your immediate family) and wont be a bust that costs them millions, or telling a Hollywood movie exec that your movie will only cost a few hundred thousand and is guaranteed to make him a profit of 200k. It's not appealing to a hits-driven business.