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I think you make a lot of very valid points and credit to you for dealing with them candidly. IMHO I dont think there is a right/wrong answer to taking VC mone

by Harj 19y ago

I think you make a lot of very valid points and credit to you for dealing with them candidly. IMHO I dont think there is a right/wrong answer to taking VC money/raising funding in general. I think the absolute wrong answer is raising VC for the sake of it and not having your eyes open as to the consequences. Otherwise it really comes down to your own circumstances - if you want to go for a massive hit then VC is a great option. If you want to build something slowly then self-fund. If that's not financially possible or you want to scale faster than you expected, raise angel. Either way, make sure it's your decision - that's what really counts.

BitGeek 19y ago
Really, its backwards. Speed to market is a factor of team size-- the more engineers you hire the slower you are to get to market. So, VC funding slows down the rate of feature development. A small tightly focused and really motivated team will out compete a group of employees funded by VC everytime. And, if you look at it from the perspective of the opportunity value-- you will get more massive going it alone than going with VCs. Both because of the massive dilution of venture capital, and because of the significantly decreased chances of success. Scaling should never be a problem-- you should outsource everyting but engineering and scalability should be the problem of your hosting provider. (or manufacturer, etc.) At the time that you really need to scale you will have plenty of money to pay for it. And because you outsourced this (something that is often harder to do in a VC backed business) you have people who are more capable working on it. Course, I'm presuming we're talking about businesses that make something people want to pay for. If you're building a youtube like business, then VC is the onyl way to go-- you're just gambling on some mebulous chance of profitability or getting acquired for having massive pageviews... and when gambling its always better to do so with someone elses money.

by Harj 19y ago

BitGeek 19y ago

Really, its backwards. Speed to market is a factor of team size-- the more engineers you hire the slower you are to get to market. So, VC funding slows down the rate of feature development. A small tightly focused and really motivated team will out compete a group of employees funded by VC everytime. And, if you look at it from the perspective of the opportunity value-- you will get more massive going it alone than going with VCs. Both because of the massive dilution of venture capital, and because of the significantly decreased chances of success. Scaling should never be a problem-- you should outsource everyting but engineering and scalability should be the problem of your hosting provider. (or manufacturer, etc.) At the time that you really need to scale you will have plenty of money to pay for it. And because you outsourced this (something that is often harder to do in a VC backed business) you have people who are more capable working on it. Course, I'm presuming we're talking about businesses that make something people want to pay for. If you're building a youtube like business, then VC is the onyl way to go-- you're just gambling on some mebulous chance of profitability or getting acquired for having massive pageviews... and when gambling its always better to do so with someone elses money.