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Ask HN: How to avoid engineer stamp as a founder fundraising?
As an engineer talking to investors while i am running my uphill solo business i often have the impression they think i am stuck in engineering lala land and not a “business guy” like they are even though i have launched products and acquired customers. has anyone else experienced this and how do you deal with it?
- darajava 3y agoI'm developing (https://audiodiary.ai https://audiodiary.ai) alone and have reached 3k users so far. While developing this I've had to learn a lot about business, promotion, branding, etc, but the most I've learned is probably actually on the engineering side as it's the most complete product I've built. I've also never worked as hard on a project before and have noticed more than ever that I actually do go into a sort of "la la land" when I work on it too much, so I try to take week long breaks every few weeks. Maybe this trait is not desirable to investors as talking to people is important in the business game no matter what you're building (somewhat unfortunately!). How do you present yourself to investors? What makes you think they think of you that way? Can one become more business savvy without eschewing programming skill/time investment?
- b20000 3y agoi am juggling multiple jobs as i wear all the hats. so when they ask how is the pitch deck coming i am always busy with one of the jobs. i know that some founders have just one job. fundraising. but i never had that luxury. i also think how you look and talk can affect their perception. i think they expect succesful founders to have a certain look or feel and if you don’t fit that image they think you cannot be succesful.
- darajava 3y agoI think there are plenty of great engineers who are great founders, but IMO funding is not the rite of passage that most make it out to be. I would only use it if I had some huge costs I couldn't fund myself. Yes pitch decks can be hard. I worked for ages on mine and it still needs a demo, but I have gotten a trickle of revenue in so as above, I am trying to avoid it for now.
- b20000 3y agomy biggest problem is that i need to juggle marketing branding development reseller relations etc all as a solo founder and as a result only one task ever gets enough attention with the rest suffering. so i have realized that there is no way around hiring and thus fundraising.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]