38 ms·

How to Raise Money (2013)

168 points by munchor 8y ago

ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
>To founders, the behavior of investors is often opaque — partly because their motivations are obscure, but partly because they deliberately mislead you. YC itself is opaque. All their rejection emails are a simple "sorry, we can't tell you". I don't know if they are afraid of legal liabilities or the reasons are much more mundane : "It's been 2 years and your revenue is only $2k", "AI is overhyped", "Too small a market", "You look dodgy" etc. >Don't raise money unless you want it and it wants you. I wish I knew this before I went on a wild goose chase for angels. The only two startup articles I read are either PG or indiehackers and I am impressed with how clear and lucid this dude is with his words.
- pmiri 8y ago
  > I am impressed with how clear and lucid this dude is with his words. Just about my favorite thing about good business writers is that, just like in a good sale or pitch, they communicate clearly, concisely, and with a serious economy of words. Conversely, never trust a business person who can't write a simple article.
- yeukhon 8y ago
  > Don't raise money unless you want it and it wants you. But this is pretty much the whole point and most startups DO need money because without it nobody can hire anyone.
  - sergiosgc 8y ago
    You can make money the old fashioned way, by selling stuff someone wants, and then use it to hire staff.
    - arsalanb 8y ago
      Yeah, but initially you make very little money. To make more money (at least enough to hire somebody), you need to improve your product or sell it to way more people, for which you need money. Often times you even need money to build your product in the first place.
      - goatherders 8y ago
        The VAST majority of companies- including those in tech- dont raise money. They earn it through sales and use that to hire people.
        yeukhon 8y ago
        Dropbox would not be possible without raising money. Airbnb would not be possible without raising money first. Uber would not have been possible without raising money. Some of them can make revenue from the get-go, some can't. But the truth is most of them would not have survived this long without first round of seed money.
        goatherders 8y ago
        You listed 3 multi billion dollar businesses. Those are the exception in the business-owner community.
        yeukhon 8y ago
        Not really. They were just another startup at the beginning.
        jacques_chester 8y ago
        Pretty much every "start your own business" class sponsored by governments and schools talks in great detail about how to get a bank loan.
    - rytill 8y ago
      You don’t see the catch-22? Or do you believe that no startups require a staff of more than a few cofounders to build their product?
- somehuman 8y ago
  That wasn't my experience with YC. We were rejected after an onsite meeting and got a personal email from a partner with clear reasons about their concerns. If you're referring to the pre-onsite stage though, it's not too surprising since they have a huge number of applicants to filter through. The resources needed to give everyone an individual, delicately worded response would be enormous.
- baxtr 8y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks that the second quote is just content-free and super-generic? (Haven’t read the whole thing, so maybe he goes into explaining it)
  - iamwil 8y ago
    >Don't raise money unless you want it and it wants you. The context is that when you're in Silicon Valley, the upside is you have lots of people that understand what you're trying to do, and a support network that helps you do what you're afraid to admit to yourself that you're capable of. The downside is it's easy to do what all your friends are doing. If you see your friends raising, you might feel compelled to raise as well. Some people jump in without really thinking it through. Reality is, money comes with strings and expectations. Too many people raise without understanding what that is, and suffer the consequences when they put their sweat and tears into their company.
- tptacek 8y ago
  No, this isn't a valid comparison. YC gives an actual answer. If you don't get in to a YC batch, you know you're not in. What's more, pretty much everyone finds out at the same time, on a well-defined schedule. That's not at all what raising from VC firms is like. VCs rarely tell companies "no"; in fact, they say the opposite: "we'd love to fund you, let's keep moving down the path to us funding you, here are some next steps". They will do this indefinitely, and continue long after the decision not to fund you has been made. That's what Paul Graham is talking about.
  - jacques_chester 8y ago
    I see fundraising as having the same dynamics as dating or job hunting. If someone wants to date you or hire you, they will make an effort. They will respond quickly. They make genuine counter-offers ("How about Monday instead?"). If they are lukewarm, they will string you along and eventually fade. They will never make counter-offers, just reject your offers and let you make the next one ("I can't on Tuesday"). If they are not interested, they won't reply in the first place. When someone wants you it's obvious. And when they don't, it's obvious by omission. It's sad that it took me so much time and heartache to work this out.
    - danenania 8y ago
      Yep, this is why people who are really good at this advise a breadth-first search that very quickly narrows in on the people who show real enthusiasm. Though it can be hard to accept when you're in the thick of fundraising, anything less than obvious enthusiasm is a no 99.9% of the time. Think about it from the other side: if you were seriously considering making a company one of the few per year that you give millions of dollars, would you ignore their emails or cancel meetings at the last minute or sound bored on the phone? Investors get just as excited about a company they like as founders do about an interested investor or potential big customer.
    - joering2 8y ago
      You realize some or many people are disgenuine - why you being sad? Isn’t it great that now you know and you can recognize this quickly and take advantage of what you know and quickly move forward?
will_brown 8y ago
Seems an odd read in the post ICO world. Why deal with any of that headache when you can just launch a landing page/white paper and ask for money from the public to fund your idea without giving up equity or control.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  Because ICOs are a popped bubble.
  - no1youknowz 8y ago
    A quick google and this would disagree with you. https://tokenmarket.net/ico-calendar/upcoming https://tokenmarket.net/ico-calendar/upcoming
- CPLX 8y ago
  The fact that it’s illegal seems like a good starting point.
  - will_brown 8y ago
    That is not a fact. There is a difference between regulated and illegal.
    - travisjungroth 8y ago
      If you're doing a legal ICO it has almost no benefit over traditional fundraising, and some huge regularity drawbacks (not knowing who owns the shares).
      - will_brown 8y ago
        >If you're doing a legal ICO it has almost no benefit over traditional fundraising, The way I read that is there are benefits. Seems to me it’s significantly more cost effective than a private offering and order of magnitude more cost effective than a traditional IPO. >and some huge regularity drawbacks (not knowing who owns the shares). Not knowing who owns the shares is in fact illegal.
lbriner 8y ago
Definitely seems like really obvious advice that only really makes sense once you've been there and done it. For a newb, it just sounds like quite a few things to remember, lots of expensive mistakes to make, although the saving grace is that investors are about money so even if you call them a rude word, I'm sure they'll come back if you're making enough money! Does anyone have a fixed link for the Sequoia slide deck?
- tsm 8y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20130911042424/http://www.sequoiacap.com/ideas http://web.archive.org/web/20130911042424/http://www.sequoia...
njn 8y ago
How does he get through this article without even mentioning putting on a good old-fashioned bake sale?
- Uhhrrr 8y ago
  Close enough that it's not really a joke: https://medium.com/@austincoleschafer/a-short-story-about-how-airbnb-funded-their-startup-with-cereal-boxes-ac6e62cf4c4c https://medium.com/@austincoleschafer/a-short-story-about-ho...
burtonator 8y ago
this is interesting but seriously need an update on this for the 2018 ICO world. Especially Oct 2018.. I'm working on a new social document collaboration platform: https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ and I'd like to raise funds for it but it's REALLY unclear if I should go ICO, pre-seed, etc.
jondubois 8y ago
This gives a really good insight into the investor mindset and explains why we're in such a massive bubble now. It's as though investors don't think at all, they're just following each other and copying every move. That's the definition of dumb money.
- browsercoin 8y ago
  i feel like we are witnessing it coming to an end. low interest rate fueled credit bubble we have been in since 9/11 now the music is stopping and there's not enough chairs.
andyidsinga 8y ago
this: > Though it sounds slightly paradoxical, if you want to raise money, the best thing you can do is get yourself to the point where you don't need to.
- RaceWon 8y ago
  >the best thing you can do is get yourself to the point where you don't need to. This is akin to being unable to get a credit card when you Really need the money. Viewing it in these terms, it actually makes a lot of sense.
browsercoin 8y ago
are there any crowd funded equity raise out there? whats the overall process like compared to traditional money raise? because i feel like that is the best alternative to this 2013 article, it lets you bypass the whole problem of having to know an investor, mind you, is not necessarily a rewarding experience. the fact is any one that has managed a small portfolio with or without wins is tough to tell apart from each other. when you have certain amount of money it buys you a comfortable cushion to fall back on despite your failures and still come across as successful, but in fact you are a horrible fucking money manager/investor who happened to get lucky in the 90s through ultimately being exposed to an environment where wealth and poverty divide is particularly wide in a massive city. a crowd source equity fund raise, not much different from an ICO apart the added rigor (one ICO had some Russian dude in a drag posing as HR, switching gender and hair color for different roles filled by the same person, exit scammed with an anti-semetic pepe meme), equalizes the power balance between investor and innovator from what was a master-slave relationship to many masters-slave that is supposed to be more democratic yet fragility is questionable. ex. FUD, fake news causing run on bank vs one investor weathering it out because of #faith im still not sure what the legality of crowd equity raising is in canada but this is what i decided to pursue now.
- wslh 8y ago
  Convincing a lot of people to fund your project in a crowdsourcing campaign could be more difficult than convincing a few investors. This and crowdfunding for equity is much different that crowdfunding in the kickstarter sense because you would need to add a lot of paperwork and legal advice.
graycat 8y ago
Yes, lots of startups need external funding, say, venture funding. But the US is awash, from border to border, in successful businesses, say, Main Street businesses, that never got external funding. They were, say, bootstrapped. Maybe if pick an information technology (IT) project carefully, then can bootstrap it or start it with just own checkbook and no external funding. Really, an IT startup should need less money to start than a lot of Main Street businesses. E.g., can quickly need $100,000+ in spending to get to the first $1 of revenue in an auto body shop, auto repair shop, asphalt driveway paving company, dentist's office, pizza or Chinese carryout restaurant, etc. Heck, in my neighborhood, the guys mowing grass show up with $100,000+ in equipment. In contrast, for, say, a Web site, can plug together a quite powerful server for less than $2000 and can get a lot of relevant software tools and infrastructure software for free or nearly so. Can run ads from ad networks. If people like the site and keep a $2000 server busy, then in a year can have more in pre-tax earnings than could get from a venture seed round.
- segmondy 8y ago
  Apple vs Orange. You are comparing startup to a small biz. These are not the same, a startup might look like a small biz in the beginning. That's it. It doesn't look like one for long. It has massive and fast growth that tends to crush it without enough cash
  - graycat 8y ago
    Famous, significant, exemplary counterexample -- the Canadian romantic matchmaking Web site Plenty of Fish, long just one guy, I suspect no equity funding, two old Dell servers, about $10 million a year in revenue, all just from Google ads, and later sold for $500+ million. Another counterexample -- Drudge Report. Main Point: A carefully conceived and planned sole, solo founder information technology startup, e.g., a Web site, can be cheaper to start than even a common Main Street business, e.g., a pizza carryout, even a grass mowing service. But if the site becomes popular, then quickly it will generate more cash per year than in a seed round. From there the site might continue to be a significant business, e.g., Plenty of Fish, Drudge Report, and likely some more, still without equity funding. Conclusion: The Web is one heck of an opportunity for startups without equity funding. There is a common assumption in your argument, that the startup must have a period of wildly rapid growth to take the opportunity or lose out. Sometimes this is true, but as in my counterexamples and, really, just common sense, it does not have to be true and isn't always true. Part of this argument about rapid growth and need for equity funding is that once a startup shows promise, it will be copied by others, and only a startup that executes well with lots of equity funding can win. This situation need not always be true: Instead, some startups can have crucial, core, powerful, valuable, proprietary, protected technology, secret sauce, locked up in a secure server farm, and difficult to duplicate or equal. That secret sauce can provide a powerful barrier to entry, "Buffett moat". For my startup, I am a sole, solo founder. I've done all the work, have the software apparently running as intended, and am rushing to go live on the Internet. From the timings of my software and some Mary Meeker data on ad revenue, the one server I plugged together, for less than $2000, if users like the site well enough to keep the server busy, should generate top line revenue and, essentially the same, pre-tax earnings of about $250,000 a month. I don't need the equity funding now, and with $250,000 a month in revenue, I will not need and would not accept equity funding. My Web site is intended to be of high interest to essentially everyone in the world with a standard Web browser. If my site gets to $250,000 a month in revenue, then that will be a significant sample of what users like from which we could make a projection to rapid growth to about $10 million a month, all just from my spare bedrooms and present Internet bandwidth. With such revenue per server dollar, the costs of the servers, etc. are next to trivial. Thus, from pleasing a large fraction of everyone on the Internet, we could reasonably extrapolate the potential of my startup to a company worth $T+. We have to keep in mind: Successful information technology startups are unusual things, each one essentially a unique business. So, we have to expect, at least not reject, some unique aspects. Moreover, we have to see that the most successful startups were quite different from anything that went before. So being new and different, even radically different, are not sufficient for success but are nearly necessary -- again, we must not reject things just because they are new, different, unique. Some products and services have such coveted utility that customers, users are really eager. My startup is so intended. Uh, my startup is squeaky clean, fully "safe for work", actually, say, culturally uplifting, an aid to better lives, families, communities, countries, and civilization, nothing to be ashamed of. While my startup is a Web site, really what's important about it is just some original applied math I derived. The math is difficult to duplicate or equal because it is clever and original and exploits some advanced pure math prerequisites. Users will just get the utility and not be aware of the math. But it is the math that is the crucial core secret sauce, difficult to duplicate or equal. In comparison, except for the crucial core, the software is next to trivial. So the site is not really a computer software development effort but an applied math effort. There are not many people who know the math prerequisites and can do good original applied math, and the people that can nearly never want to do such applied math, want nothing to do with software, and are not in the information technology startup community. There is a way to have a good idea about the promise of my work -- based on the utility for all the people on the Internet with just a standard Web browser: While Silicon Valley does not use such means of startup evaluation, several very important parts of our civilization do, do so routinely and quite successfully, with batting average far, far above that of Sand Hill Road. So some parts of our society can look at a serious problem, see clearly that the problem is important and the first good or much better defensible solution will be very valuable, and evaluate proposed solutions with high reliability. Such parts include some internal industrial R&D, Ph.D. committees, editors of the better STEM field peer reviewed journals of original research, NSF, NIH, ONR, DARPA, USAF Cambridge, NASA, major engineering firms, etc. My work would easily pass such filtering. So, I'm confident. In strong contrast, Sand Hill Road wants to see a minimum viable product with traction significant and growing rapidly; all the project evaluation techniques of Ph.D. committees, NSF, ... are ignored and set aside with severe determination. Sand Hill Road is not interested in anything from original STEM field research, maybe is forbidden by their limited partners to consider such research, and is not practiced in evaluating such research. But I hold a good Ph.D. in pure and applied math from one of the world's best research universities. All my career, many times, I've successfully applied math, sometimes original, to practical problems. So, I have a solid basis on which to be optimistic. Sand Hill Road can't understand that. Sand Hill Road wants nothing to do with me before my business is so good I will want nothing to do with them. Yes, my startup is unique, and that's nearly necessary for major success. It would be short sighted to reject what I'm saying merely because it is unique or even different. On crushing it, that's not part of my intentions or planning. The $1T+ is. I've seen a lot in computing, e.g., in an AI, artificial intelligence, project at IBM's Yorktown Heights Watson lab, for US national security, saving FedEx twice, teaching ugrad computer science at Georgetown University and graduate computer science at Ohio State University, and I've seen much more in pure and applied math. Net, at this point, my considered option is (1) academic computer science has run out of promising research directions they have the qualifications to pursue and (2) Sand Hill Road style computing is essentially dead and all but buried. Routine software will continue, much as routine sheet steel stamping has continued, but for now the glory days are over. In particular, for AI, etc., I see 99 44/100% hype and nearly all the rest water or mostly quite old applied math. We just had an AI spring of hope then a summer of hype and are now in a fall of failure and soon again in an AI winter. E.g., to me self-driving cars in current traffic on current roads is obviously an absurdity and a lot of hype, a bubble about to burst. Computing remains a major opportunity, but nearly none of the software development community, academic computer science, or Sand Hill Road know how to make use of the opportunity. For exploiting the amazing cycles, bytes, bandwidth, infrastructure software, etc. some new directions are needed. IMHO the most promising such new direction is engineering based on very carefully done theorems and proofs of pure/applied math. The number of people in the world ready, willing, able, and eager to do this could have a convention in a $20 a night motel room. So the situation is bad, but the flip side is a grand opportunity. E.g., the processor I bought is an AMD FX-8350, 64 bit addressing, 8 cores, 4.0 GHz standard clock speed, now available quantity one, retail for $100-. ECC, error correcting coding, main memory is available for $10-/GB. The situation on hard disks, solid state disks, and Internet bandwidth is maybe even more amazing. So, the need and the opportunity is to make good use of such products. First step: To heck with Kernighan and Ritchie, Stroustrup, and even with Knuth. Instead get a copy of W. Rudin, Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Third Edition, dig in, and work nearly all the exercises. E.g., again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, US national security is going deep long ball, if you prefer, swinging for the fences, into challenging pure and applied math with the new Space Force. For the role of math there, trust me! No, don't trust me: Instead watch the start of the movie about John Nash where the flat statement is that "mathematics won WWII". Exercise: Discuss with arguments pro and con. Don't forget that Commander Rochefort's work and advice to Admiral Nimitz is what sank four Japanese carriers at Midway and turned the tide of battle in WWII in the Pacific. Uh, the Japanese brought 6 carriers to Pearl Harbor. Soon they lost one at Coral Sea -- also due to Rochefort. Then they lost 4 more at Midway. So early in the war, they were already running short of aircraft carriers. And don't forget much of the reason Rommel lost in North Africa was because most of his supplies went to the bottom of the Mediterranean due, right to code breaking. And note the importance of the cavity magnetron from Maxwell's equations in winning the Battle of Britain. And there was much more, e.g., from A. Turing. Then we have to count The Bomb, e.g., the critical mass calculations. If you regard these views as new or different, then just remember you first learned them here.
sparkzilla 8y ago
>Before you can talk to investors, you have to be introduced to them. But how can you get introduced to them when they won't talk to you?
- ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
  Unfortunately if you are in the wrong location ie not in silicon valley or such you have very little chances of getting introduced. My recommendation is to get into incubator or even "lift off" programs and then work your way up. The current startup culture makes it impossible for us to find "Bill Gates" in Africa/Asia because they have no visibility, no voice and no money and not because they are less talented
  - nl 8y ago
    I did an accelerator in Australia this year, and they have invested in at least one company in Nigeria, and multiple companies in Vietnam.
    - Lordarminius 8y ago
      Do you mind naming the investor ?
      - nl 8y ago
        H2.vc I believe the next cohort is early next year.

168 points by munchor 8y ago

>To founders, the behavior of investors is often opaque — partly because their motivations are obscure, but partly because they deliberately mislead you. YC itself is opaque. All their rejection emails are a simple "sorry, we can't tell you". I don't know if they are afraid of legal liabilities or the reasons are much more mundane : "It's been 2 years and your revenue is only $2k", "AI is overhyped", "Too small a market", "You look dodgy" etc. >Don't raise money unless you want it and it wants you. I wish I knew this before I went on a wild goose chase for angels. The only two startup articles I read are either PG or indiehackers and I am impressed with how clear and lucid this dude is with his words.

pmiri 8y ago
> I am impressed with how clear and lucid this dude is with his words. Just about my favorite thing about good business writers is that, just like in a good sale or pitch, they communicate clearly, concisely, and with a serious economy of words. Conversely, never trust a business person who can't write a simple article.
yeukhon 8y ago
> Don't raise money unless you want it and it wants you. But this is pretty much the whole point and most startups DO need money because without it nobody can hire anyone.
- sergiosgc 8y ago
  You can make money the old fashioned way, by selling stuff someone wants, and then use it to hire staff.
  - arsalanb 8y ago
    Yeah, but initially you make very little money. To make more money (at least enough to hire somebody), you need to improve your product or sell it to way more people, for which you need money. Often times you even need money to build your product in the first place.
    - goatherders 8y ago
      The VAST majority of companies- including those in tech- dont raise money. They earn it through sales and use that to hire people.
      - yeukhon 8y ago
        Dropbox would not be possible without raising money. Airbnb would not be possible without raising money first. Uber would not have been possible without raising money. Some of them can make revenue from the get-go, some can't. But the truth is most of them would not have survived this long without first round of seed money.
        goatherders 8y ago
        You listed 3 multi billion dollar businesses. Those are the exception in the business-owner community.
        yeukhon 8y ago
        Not really. They were just another startup at the beginning.
      - jacques_chester 8y ago
        Pretty much every "start your own business" class sponsored by governments and schools talks in great detail about how to get a bank loan.
  - rytill 8y ago
    You don’t see the catch-22? Or do you believe that no startups require a staff of more than a few cofounders to build their product?
somehuman 8y ago
That wasn't my experience with YC. We were rejected after an onsite meeting and got a personal email from a partner with clear reasons about their concerns. If you're referring to the pre-onsite stage though, it's not too surprising since they have a huge number of applicants to filter through. The resources needed to give everyone an individual, delicately worded response would be enormous.
baxtr 8y ago
Am I the only one who thinks that the second quote is just content-free and super-generic? (Haven’t read the whole thing, so maybe he goes into explaining it)
- iamwil 8y ago
  >Don't raise money unless you want it and it wants you. The context is that when you're in Silicon Valley, the upside is you have lots of people that understand what you're trying to do, and a support network that helps you do what you're afraid to admit to yourself that you're capable of. The downside is it's easy to do what all your friends are doing. If you see your friends raising, you might feel compelled to raise as well. Some people jump in without really thinking it through. Reality is, money comes with strings and expectations. Too many people raise without understanding what that is, and suffer the consequences when they put their sweat and tears into their company.
tptacek 8y ago
No, this isn't a valid comparison. YC gives an actual answer. If you don't get in to a YC batch, you know you're not in. What's more, pretty much everyone finds out at the same time, on a well-defined schedule. That's not at all what raising from VC firms is like. VCs rarely tell companies "no"; in fact, they say the opposite: "we'd love to fund you, let's keep moving down the path to us funding you, here are some next steps". They will do this indefinitely, and continue long after the decision not to fund you has been made. That's what Paul Graham is talking about.
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  I see fundraising as having the same dynamics as dating or job hunting. If someone wants to date you or hire you, they will make an effort. They will respond quickly. They make genuine counter-offers ("How about Monday instead?"). If they are lukewarm, they will string you along and eventually fade. They will never make counter-offers, just reject your offers and let you make the next one ("I can't on Tuesday"). If they are not interested, they won't reply in the first place. When someone wants you it's obvious. And when they don't, it's obvious by omission. It's sad that it took me so much time and heartache to work this out.
  - danenania 8y ago
    Yep, this is why people who are really good at this advise a breadth-first search that very quickly narrows in on the people who show real enthusiasm. Though it can be hard to accept when you're in the thick of fundraising, anything less than obvious enthusiasm is a no 99.9% of the time. Think about it from the other side: if you were seriously considering making a company one of the few per year that you give millions of dollars, would you ignore their emails or cancel meetings at the last minute or sound bored on the phone? Investors get just as excited about a company they like as founders do about an interested investor or potential big customer.
  - joering2 8y ago
    You realize some or many people are disgenuine - why you being sad? Isn’t it great that now you know and you can recognize this quickly and take advantage of what you know and quickly move forward?

will_brown 8y ago

Seems an odd read in the post ICO world. Why deal with any of that headache when you can just launch a landing page/white paper and ask for money from the public to fund your idea without giving up equity or control.

solarkraft 8y ago
Because ICOs are a popped bubble.
- no1youknowz 8y ago
  A quick google and this would disagree with you. https://tokenmarket.net/ico-calendar/upcoming https://tokenmarket.net/ico-calendar/upcoming
CPLX 8y ago
The fact that it’s illegal seems like a good starting point.
- will_brown 8y ago
  That is not a fact. There is a difference between regulated and illegal.
  - travisjungroth 8y ago
    If you're doing a legal ICO it has almost no benefit over traditional fundraising, and some huge regularity drawbacks (not knowing who owns the shares).
    - will_brown 8y ago
      >If you're doing a legal ICO it has almost no benefit over traditional fundraising, The way I read that is there are benefits. Seems to me it’s significantly more cost effective than a private offering and order of magnitude more cost effective than a traditional IPO. >and some huge regularity drawbacks (not knowing who owns the shares). Not knowing who owns the shares is in fact illegal.

lbriner 8y ago

Definitely seems like really obvious advice that only really makes sense once you've been there and done it. For a newb, it just sounds like quite a few things to remember, lots of expensive mistakes to make, although the saving grace is that investors are about money so even if you call them a rude word, I'm sure they'll come back if you're making enough money! Does anyone have a fixed link for the Sequoia slide deck?

tsm 8y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20130911042424/http://www.sequoiacap.com/ideas http://web.archive.org/web/20130911042424/http://www.sequoia...

njn 8y ago

How does he get through this article without even mentioning putting on a good old-fashioned bake sale?

Uhhrrr 8y ago
Close enough that it's not really a joke: https://medium.com/@austincoleschafer/a-short-story-about-how-airbnb-funded-their-startup-with-cereal-boxes-ac6e62cf4c4c https://medium.com/@austincoleschafer/a-short-story-about-ho...

burtonator 8y ago

this is interesting but seriously need an update on this for the 2018 ICO world. Especially Oct 2018.. I'm working on a new social document collaboration platform: https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ and I'd like to raise funds for it but it's REALLY unclear if I should go ICO, pre-seed, etc.

jondubois 8y ago

This gives a really good insight into the investor mindset and explains why we're in such a massive bubble now. It's as though investors don't think at all, they're just following each other and copying every move. That's the definition of dumb money.

browsercoin 8y ago
i feel like we are witnessing it coming to an end. low interest rate fueled credit bubble we have been in since 9/11 now the music is stopping and there's not enough chairs.

andyidsinga 8y ago

this: > Though it sounds slightly paradoxical, if you want to raise money, the best thing you can do is get yourself to the point where you don't need to.

RaceWon 8y ago
>the best thing you can do is get yourself to the point where you don't need to. This is akin to being unable to get a credit card when you Really need the money. Viewing it in these terms, it actually makes a lot of sense.

browsercoin 8y ago

are there any crowd funded equity raise out there? whats the overall process like compared to traditional money raise? because i feel like that is the best alternative to this 2013 article, it lets you bypass the whole problem of having to know an investor, mind you, is not necessarily a rewarding experience. the fact is any one that has managed a small portfolio with or without wins is tough to tell apart from each other. when you have certain amount of money it buys you a comfortable cushion to fall back on despite your failures and still come across as successful, but in fact you are a horrible fucking money manager/investor who happened to get lucky in the 90s through ultimately being exposed to an environment where wealth and poverty divide is particularly wide in a massive city. a crowd source equity fund raise, not much different from an ICO apart the added rigor (one ICO had some Russian dude in a drag posing as HR, switching gender and hair color for different roles filled by the same person, exit scammed with an anti-semetic pepe meme), equalizes the power balance between investor and innovator from what was a master-slave relationship to many masters-slave that is supposed to be more democratic yet fragility is questionable. ex. FUD, fake news causing run on bank vs one investor weathering it out because of #faith im still not sure what the legality of crowd equity raising is in canada but this is what i decided to pursue now.

wslh 8y ago
Convincing a lot of people to fund your project in a crowdsourcing campaign could be more difficult than convincing a few investors. This and crowdfunding for equity is much different that crowdfunding in the kickstarter sense because you would need to add a lot of paperwork and legal advice.

graycat 8y ago

Yes, lots of startups need external funding, say, venture funding. But the US is awash, from border to border, in successful businesses, say, Main Street businesses, that never got external funding. They were, say, bootstrapped. Maybe if pick an information technology (IT) project carefully, then can bootstrap it or start it with just own checkbook and no external funding. Really, an IT startup should need less money to start than a lot of Main Street businesses. E.g., can quickly need $100,000+ in spending to get to the first $1 of revenue in an auto body shop, auto repair shop, asphalt driveway paving company, dentist's office, pizza or Chinese carryout restaurant, etc. Heck, in my neighborhood, the guys mowing grass show up with $100,000+ in equipment. In contrast, for, say, a Web site, can plug together a quite powerful server for less than $2000 and can get a lot of relevant software tools and infrastructure software for free or nearly so. Can run ads from ad networks. If people like the site and keep a $2000 server busy, then in a year can have more in pre-tax earnings than could get from a venture seed round.

segmondy 8y ago
Apple vs Orange. You are comparing startup to a small biz. These are not the same, a startup might look like a small biz in the beginning. That's it. It doesn't look like one for long. It has massive and fast growth that tends to crush it without enough cash
- graycat 8y ago
  Famous, significant, exemplary counterexample -- the Canadian romantic matchmaking Web site Plenty of Fish, long just one guy, I suspect no equity funding, two old Dell servers, about $10 million a year in revenue, all just from Google ads, and later sold for $500+ million. Another counterexample -- Drudge Report. Main Point: A carefully conceived and planned sole, solo founder information technology startup, e.g., a Web site, can be cheaper to start than even a common Main Street business, e.g., a pizza carryout, even a grass mowing service. But if the site becomes popular, then quickly it will generate more cash per year than in a seed round. From there the site might continue to be a significant business, e.g., Plenty of Fish, Drudge Report, and likely some more, still without equity funding. Conclusion: The Web is one heck of an opportunity for startups without equity funding. There is a common assumption in your argument, that the startup must have a period of wildly rapid growth to take the opportunity or lose out. Sometimes this is true, but as in my counterexamples and, really, just common sense, it does not have to be true and isn't always true. Part of this argument about rapid growth and need for equity funding is that once a startup shows promise, it will be copied by others, and only a startup that executes well with lots of equity funding can win. This situation need not always be true: Instead, some startups can have crucial, core, powerful, valuable, proprietary, protected technology, secret sauce, locked up in a secure server farm, and difficult to duplicate or equal. That secret sauce can provide a powerful barrier to entry, "Buffett moat". For my startup, I am a sole, solo founder. I've done all the work, have the software apparently running as intended, and am rushing to go live on the Internet. From the timings of my software and some Mary Meeker data on ad revenue, the one server I plugged together, for less than $2000, if users like the site well enough to keep the server busy, should generate top line revenue and, essentially the same, pre-tax earnings of about $250,000 a month. I don't need the equity funding now, and with $250,000 a month in revenue, I will not need and would not accept equity funding. My Web site is intended to be of high interest to essentially everyone in the world with a standard Web browser. If my site gets to $250,000 a month in revenue, then that will be a significant sample of what users like from which we could make a projection to rapid growth to about $10 million a month, all just from my spare bedrooms and present Internet bandwidth. With such revenue per server dollar, the costs of the servers, etc. are next to trivial. Thus, from pleasing a large fraction of everyone on the Internet, we could reasonably extrapolate the potential of my startup to a company worth $T+. We have to keep in mind: Successful information technology startups are unusual things, each one essentially a unique business. So, we have to expect, at least not reject, some unique aspects. Moreover, we have to see that the most successful startups were quite different from anything that went before. So being new and different, even radically different, are not sufficient for success but are nearly necessary -- again, we must not reject things just because they are new, different, unique. Some products and services have such coveted utility that customers, users are really eager. My startup is so intended. Uh, my startup is squeaky clean, fully "safe for work", actually, say, culturally uplifting, an aid to better lives, families, communities, countries, and civilization, nothing to be ashamed of. While my startup is a Web site, really what's important about it is just some original applied math I derived. The math is difficult to duplicate or equal because it is clever and original and exploits some advanced pure math prerequisites. Users will just get the utility and not be aware of the math. But it is the math that is the crucial core secret sauce, difficult to duplicate or equal. In comparison, except for the crucial core, the software is next to trivial. So the site is not really a computer software development effort but an applied math effort. There are not many people who know the math prerequisites and can do good original applied math, and the people that can nearly never want to do such applied math, want nothing to do with software, and are not in the information technology startup community. There is a way to have a good idea about the promise of my work -- based on the utility for all the people on the Internet with just a standard Web browser: While Silicon Valley does not use such means of startup evaluation, several very important parts of our civilization do, do so routinely and quite successfully, with batting average far, far above that of Sand Hill Road. So some parts of our society can look at a serious problem, see clearly that the problem is important and the first good or much better defensible solution will be very valuable, and evaluate proposed solutions with high reliability. Such parts include some internal industrial R&D, Ph.D. committees, editors of the better STEM field peer reviewed journals of original research, NSF, NIH, ONR, DARPA, USAF Cambridge, NASA, major engineering firms, etc. My work would easily pass such filtering. So, I'm confident. In strong contrast, Sand Hill Road wants to see a minimum viable product with traction significant and growing rapidly; all the project evaluation techniques of Ph.D. committees, NSF, ... are ignored and set aside with severe determination. Sand Hill Road is not interested in anything from original STEM field research, maybe is forbidden by their limited partners to consider such research, and is not practiced in evaluating such research. But I hold a good Ph.D. in pure and applied math from one of the world's best research universities. All my career, many times, I've successfully applied math, sometimes original, to practical problems. So, I have a solid basis on which to be optimistic. Sand Hill Road can't understand that. Sand Hill Road wants nothing to do with me before my business is so good I will want nothing to do with them. Yes, my startup is unique, and that's nearly necessary for major success. It would be short sighted to reject what I'm saying merely because it is unique or even different. On crushing it, that's not part of my intentions or planning. The $1T+ is. I've seen a lot in computing, e.g., in an AI, artificial intelligence, project at IBM's Yorktown Heights Watson lab, for US national security, saving FedEx twice, teaching ugrad computer science at Georgetown University and graduate computer science at Ohio State University, and I've seen much more in pure and applied math. Net, at this point, my considered option is (1) academic computer science has run out of promising research directions they have the qualifications to pursue and (2) Sand Hill Road style computing is essentially dead and all but buried. Routine software will continue, much as routine sheet steel stamping has continued, but for now the glory days are over. In particular, for AI, etc., I see 99 44/100% hype and nearly all the rest water or mostly quite old applied math. We just had an AI spring of hope then a summer of hype and are now in a fall of failure and soon again in an AI winter. E.g., to me self-driving cars in current traffic on current roads is obviously an absurdity and a lot of hype, a bubble about to burst. Computing remains a major opportunity, but nearly none of the software development community, academic computer science, or Sand Hill Road know how to make use of the opportunity. For exploiting the amazing cycles, bytes, bandwidth, infrastructure software, etc. some new directions are needed. IMHO the most promising such new direction is engineering based on very carefully done theorems and proofs of pure/applied math. The number of people in the world ready, willing, able, and eager to do this could have a convention in a $20 a night motel room. So the situation is bad, but the flip side is a grand opportunity. E.g., the processor I bought is an AMD FX-8350, 64 bit addressing, 8 cores, 4.0 GHz standard clock speed, now available quantity one, retail for $100-. ECC, error correcting coding, main memory is available for $10-/GB. The situation on hard disks, solid state disks, and Internet bandwidth is maybe even more amazing. So, the need and the opportunity is to make good use of such products. First step: To heck with Kernighan and Ritchie, Stroustrup, and even with Knuth. Instead get a copy of W. Rudin, Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Third Edition, dig in, and work nearly all the exercises. E.g., again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, US national security is going deep long ball, if you prefer, swinging for the fences, into challenging pure and applied math with the new Space Force. For the role of math there, trust me! No, don't trust me: Instead watch the start of the movie about John Nash where the flat statement is that "mathematics won WWII". Exercise: Discuss with arguments pro and con. Don't forget that Commander Rochefort's work and advice to Admiral Nimitz is what sank four Japanese carriers at Midway and turned the tide of battle in WWII in the Pacific. Uh, the Japanese brought 6 carriers to Pearl Harbor. Soon they lost one at Coral Sea -- also due to Rochefort. Then they lost 4 more at Midway. So early in the war, they were already running short of aircraft carriers. And don't forget much of the reason Rommel lost in North Africa was because most of his supplies went to the bottom of the Mediterranean due, right to code breaking. And note the importance of the cavity magnetron from Maxwell's equations in winning the Battle of Britain. And there was much more, e.g., from A. Turing. Then we have to count The Bomb, e.g., the critical mass calculations. If you regard these views as new or different, then just remember you first learned them here.

sparkzilla 8y ago

>Before you can talk to investors, you have to be introduced to them. But how can you get introduced to them when they won't talk to you?

ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
Unfortunately if you are in the wrong location ie not in silicon valley or such you have very little chances of getting introduced. My recommendation is to get into incubator or even "lift off" programs and then work your way up. The current startup culture makes it impossible for us to find "Bill Gates" in Africa/Asia because they have no visibility, no voice and no money and not because they are less talented
- nl 8y ago
  I did an accelerator in Australia this year, and they have invested in at least one company in Nigeria, and multiple companies in Vietnam.
  - Lordarminius 8y ago
    Do you mind naming the investor ?
    - nl 8y ago
      H2.vc I believe the next cohort is early next year.