This reminds me of a story I tell about fundraising. It goes toward this question of time. The way I raised my first money was I invited Evan Williams (Twitter

This reminds me of a story I tell about fundraising. It goes toward this question of time. The way I raised my first money was I invited Evan Williams (Twitter) to coffee. He said yes. I told him my concept but didn't show a demo because I didn't really have one. He liked the idea and offered to put in some money. Magic, right? Money just grows on trees and anyone can get funded here in Silicon Valley. But the better questions is: how did I get that coffee with Evan Williams. To me, it started in 1996 when I decided to get a computer science degree. That took four years. Then I took a sort of crummy job but impressed someone there who helped me get a job at O'Reilly where I impressed someone who introduced me to Evan Williams as someone he might want to hire. That took five years. Then Ev did hire me and I did good work. Then Ev went off to Twitter and I cut my teeth doing a terrible job as a founder of something I bootstrapped. That took five years. So really, it was 15 years to develop a network and trust where I could invite someone to coffee and get funded. Yes, some people do this faster than I did. But I often see this real resistance to the idea of taking the time to improve your qualifications as a founder. Networking is obviously one of those.