4 ms·

How is your argument different from one that would rebut every grant application and VC pitch ever?

by Evbn 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago
Grant applications, fine, they are focused on research where the only goal is a paper, VC pitches though, those are predicated on a financial return on investment. Consider the notion of addressable market and intrinsic value. Lets say you have a machine that turns dog poo into 24 kt gold. And you come to me asking for funding. If you can demonstrate it works, then you can make small amounts of gold already and collecting that until you get enough to get an arbitrary amount of money would leave you with all the ownership, all the cash, and insanely wealthy (until the floor fell out of the gold market) Similarly if you develop a cure for cancer (or Herpes or HIV or all of the above) all you need do is show that it can work in humans and the next Steve Jobs who is dying of cancer (or HIV or whatever) and has nothing left will seek you out. If it does work they will pay you handsomely to be 'cured', and now that they aren't going to be dead the will probably fund productization. If nothing else, they provide a good example for the next wealthy sick person. The trick is that its "too good to be true" which means that if it is true, a whole lot of expensive other stuff is now obsolete. That means that the proposed offering will completely replace the previous market. I don't know what the market for anti-virals are but just looking at the HIV drug cocktail market is in in the billions if not trillions of dollars. And while getting to the point where you can say it does or does not work on humans can take time, as the inventor you either know or don't know, how to get there. If you do, then you figure out a way to earn the money to fund the development internally (since that gives you complete ownership) and if you don't, especially if you don't and you're not really sure if you ever will, you try to find someone else to pay the bills while you beat your head against the problem. So the VC sees risks in execution (can you get it to market, can you negotiate the right contracts) but they generally shy away from risks where you need a new kind of science even to get to the possible stage. I always have high hopes but low expectations for these sorts of proposals.

How is your argument different from one that would rebut every grant application and VC pitch ever?

by Evbn 14y ago

How is your argument different from one that would rebut every grant application and VC pitch ever?

Grant applications, fine, they are focused on research where the only goal is a paper, VC pitches though, those are predicated on a financial return on investment. Consider the notion of addressable market and intrinsic value. Lets say you have a machine that turns dog poo into 24 kt gold. And you come to me asking for funding. If you can demonstrate it works, then you can make small amounts of gold already and collecting that until you get enough to get an arbitrary amount of money would leave you with all the ownership, all the cash, and insanely wealthy (until the floor fell out of the gold market) Similarly if you develop a cure for cancer (or Herpes or HIV or all of the above) all you need do is show that it can work in humans and the next Steve Jobs who is dying of cancer (or HIV or whatever) and has nothing left will seek you out. If it does work they will pay you handsomely to be 'cured', and now that they aren't going to be dead the will probably fund productization. If nothing else, they provide a good example for the next wealthy sick person. The trick is that its "too good to be true" which means that if it is true, a whole lot of expensive other stuff is now obsolete. That means that the proposed offering will completely replace the previous market. I don't know what the market for anti-virals are but just looking at the HIV drug cocktail market is in in the billions if not trillions of dollars. And while getting to the point where you can say it does or does not work on humans can take time, as the inventor you either know or don't know, how to get there. If you do, then you figure out a way to earn the money to fund the development internally (since that gives you complete ownership) and if you don't, especially if you don't and you're not really sure if you ever will, you try to find someone else to pay the bills while you beat your head against the problem. So the VC sees risks in execution (can you get it to market, can you negotiate the right contracts) but they generally shy away from risks where you need a new kind of science even to get to the possible stage. I always have high hopes but low expectations for these sorts of proposals.