Lol. By all means, make fun of this strategy now, I do it myself, but you have to understand what it was like in silicon valley back in those days, 2010-2011. F

Lol. By all means, make fun of this strategy now, I do it myself, but you have to understand what it was like in silicon valley back in those days, 2010-2011. Facebook was the game in town, and these were the days when for the true believers, myself included, it was going to deliver us from evil (yeah, I know). The “smart money” either were Facebook insiders or wished they were, ie everyone knew that to insist on meaningful revenue before writing a seed stage check meant missing out on the next Facebook. I was a first time founder who started out as a build engineer, then engineer, tech lead, and PM. I’d been bootstrapping for two years and needed to raise. I didn’t know shit about business or venture capital other than that it’s apparently how dreams get made. So I figured out how to position the company to get funded, and got it done. Did I have a proven revenue model? No, but I had a few plausible directions, and that was enough to get to the next phase, so I didn’t sweat it. Would I pitch a pre-revenue startup on Sand Hill in 2019? Unlikely. Maybe that’s obvious to everyone now. But it’s a lot easier to be on the outside making fun of failed projects than to actually forego the cushy salary and go for it as a founder.