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Ask HN: Any Dutch, Belgian or German investors on HN?
For a while I've been developing sites with some friends, some for fun, some for money, but never a dull project, always a challenge.
Creativity is without doubt my strongest side, and since becoming interested in setting up my own startup 2 years ago, I've written down almost 200 ideas that I feel I can honestly turn into a million at least. Of which about 5 are Google-class Juggernauts (I'm not kidding). However, I am very hesitant with raising any capital and have a desire to do it all myself at no risk. I fear no matter how I raise capital, there is a risk. To make matters worse, I feel there are too few investors in Europe, and to be completely honest, I do not feel USA is the best country to live right now, I would consider Canada, but right now, I study in the netherlands.
So after spending about 1½ year studying everything I considered I needed to know in my free time for starting a upward stairs of businesses (from low investment needed, mediocre gains to large investment needed, absurd gains), except on raising capital, I started.
This went fine so far, but a few weeks ago something changed in my perspective. I was having lunch with a old friend who I see every few months, and he always had a interest in my stories of managing a project, keeping people involved motivated, and the resulting projects (2 since starting 6 months ago). This time I decided to tell him a idea that I had recently and felt was quite good, but couldn't do till I made a little more money. When I told it he than became so excited (I've never seen him like this before), he immediately said he wanted to work on it with me and my main and closest coder friend, and offered to pay 11500€ from his own pocket for a 33% share.
While this is good, it also made me think. If I can make a student who recently inherited just enough money to buy a Porsche Panamera so excited, and offer me risk-free terms within 15 minutes of sharing this idea, could I do better? I'm not going to betray a friend (he studies law, so he's a addition to the set of skills anyway), but what if we talked to a party who had something better to offer.
So I decided to share my little story, as to what motivated me to ask the question:
Are there any Dutch, Belgian or German investors on HN who are willing to offer a better deal (risk free) for a low-risk, high gain idea? It needs some money to really get going, but than will conquer a very large niche market that to quite some of my surprise, people are simply not seeing properly. I'm willing to agree a lot of terms, but I do not want to be personally at financial risk.
- david927 16y agoFirst, put an email in your profile. Second, I can't tell since you haven't disclosed anything, but that sounds like it's a pretty good deal. Just because something comes easily and quickly doesn't mean that it's not rare. Investment in Europe is very rare and certainly you won't find European investors on HN.
- DenBosch 16y agoOkay, thanks for your reply.