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Ask HN: How to Raise Money for an Ambitious Project?
Hey HN. Sova here. I love this community, I think we get a lot of positive societal work done here. I really want to benefit society and mankind through my labors in this life. I have an ambitious project that is completely feasible. In my years as a programmer and designer and coder and human-brain-to-computer-liaison I have accumulated a wealth of valuable skills and even some nice philosophical counterarguments to how the mind is not a computer. I digress, however. I'm building a really strong application with a basis in digital currency and I want to raise money for it successfully the first 'go round so I can hire 3-4 brilliant fellow coders and developers to help me make it a reality and quickly (within 1-2 years).
I want to offer investment to everyone, but it turns out that in the United States only accredited investors [people with many banknotes] can be asked to fund traditional companies with investment (think stocks and IPOs). This makes sense, you don't want to gamble with the cash of hardworking people, but I'm interested in sharing the wealth of a strong project early on with commonfolk. So I'm wondering, how can I do that as well? Thanks for reading.
- staunch 9y agoVCs have their own investors (LPs) that they have to justify every investment to, particularly when they fail. That means VCs are generally cowardly, investing only in startups that already appear to be successful in some way. Usually this means that either the founders are prestigious (pedigree) or the startup is already taking off (traction). I'll assume you don't have pedigree, which means you only have the traction avenue open to you. This might look like building the first version(s) yourself, attracting a large number of users/developers, and then bootstrapping and/or raising money.