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More money definitely means more time to pivot and potentially make something work. However, most companies still fail, even after raising large amounts of mone
by vecter 4y ago
More money definitely means more time to pivot and potentially make something work. However, most companies still fail, even after raising large amounts of money.
My contention with OP's point is the absoluteness of the statement they made. They basically claimed that knowing the right people will fix all of your problems. If you read what they wrote, that's almost literally what they said. That is in practice extremely far from the truth. For every successful VC-funded company, there are hundreds that never make it to product-market fit. So clearly VC funding and knowing the right folks isn't sufficient for success.
In making such a strong (and in general provably false) claim, the OP is also taking away credit from Figma for their wild success. They got there through understanding their customers and building the best product on the open market. Period.
It's strange because Figma's success has basically nothing to do with "having enough VC money to pivot around to find product-market fit", which is the central tenet of yours and OP's point. Figma was on the right track the entire time. So this whole point is moot when talking about Figma.
- rexreed 4y agoMy comment was not about VC, it was about networks. If you're in the right networks problems will get fixed. Most VCs, to be blunt, are not in the right networks. The vast majority of VCs are "dumb money". The smart money is much harder to get precisely because of the value of the network. If you can get in with that network, your chance of success is high. Simply getting "venture capital" doesn't mean you're in the right network. In fact, the vast majority of the time, it doesn't. Which is why I agree also with what you said that VC money may give you more time to pivot, but doesn't guarantee success. I agree. That's why it has nothing to do with VC and everything to do with the right network.
- vecter 4y agoYou can s/VC/right network/ and I would still strongly disagree with your assertion that even if you're in the "right networks", that problems will get fixed. Startups are fundamentally about finding product-market fit. No network can do the hard work of finding PMF for you. Your claim seems to be that if you know the right people, you'll be successful. That's just flat-out wrong. So many startups are founded by people "in the right networks" and still fail. The vast vast vast majority of them do. How does knowing "the right people" (whoever this vague shadowy group of people are, I'm not even sure how you would define them) fix your problems for you? Even more strangely, this has literally nothing to do with Figma. Like I stated earlier, they were successful because they worked on the right idea and executed flawlessly. What did their network do for them?
- spaetzleesser 4y ago“Your claim seems to be that if you know the right people, you'll be successful. That's just flat-out wrong.” With some of the high money acquisitions where one VC buys another VC company I definitely feel that there are cases where one investor does a favor for one of their buddies. Basically they bail them out.
- vecter 4y agoCan you give a few salient examples?