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This post is fun, and I congratulate you on raising your round, but this data isn't predictive or useful. Yeah, "get inbound investor attention" is the worst a

This post is fun, and I congratulate you on raising your round, but this data isn't predictive or useful. Yeah, "get inbound investor attention" is the worst advice ever; by definition, it's impossible. Trying to make people like you tends to have the opposite effect. It's like telling an awkward 17-year-old that he'll solve all his problems with women if he gets laid by a supermodel. The fatalism is important. I'm glad that someone on the inside has the courage to point it out. The extremely low rate of success for outbound traffic, especially pre-YC, confirms the fatalistic view of the Valley that is, IMO, the right one. If you're born into connections, you're solid. If you have enough before-age-of-carefulness dirt on important people while at Stanford and got in The Club, you'll never have to raise money; you'll be in the position to turn it away. If you're anyone else, though, the best advice regarding SillyCon Valley is just to sit this lifetime out, because the factors that matter most are those you can't do anything about.

mindcrime 13y ago
; you'll be in the position to turn it away. If you're anyone else, though, the best advice regarding SillyCon Valley is just to sit this lifetime out, because the factors that matter most are those you can't do anything about. Or just start building your company without anybody else's money at all, or money raised outside of SV... and then become, as they say, "so good they can't ignore you." At the end of the day, these people are pragmatic... get enough traction and I'm pretty sure the "in the club or not" distinction disappears in the wash. Of course, the best scenario is one where you never wind up needing VC money at all, whether it's from the Valley or elsewhere. But that might not work for everybody. Still, you can start without those guys in most industries, especially if you can code and are building a software product. Obviously if you're doing a pharma play or something with huge initial capital costs, the equation changes, but I doubt the majority of this audience (HN readers) are founding pharmaceutical companies...
- timmm 13y ago
  This. Isn't part of the appeal of starting a web business the low costs required to do so? It sure as hell was for me when I started out. I have an app that I go months without doing anything with (touching the code base, answering customers, ect.) and yet it still earns me a constant flow of income. In other words my profit margins are absurd (>90%). That's pretty cool if you ask me. Of course I won't be earning millions from it but I earn enough money and I maintain full autonomy. I frequent places like hacker-news to learn things and to stay connected with the community but I have absolutely no interest networking with investors or taking money from an seed/accelerator firm.
  - soundlab 13y ago
    Couldn't agree more. Step 1 toward this is to completely eradicate any VC/startup investor blogs or threads from your browser and substitute them with real daily communications with potential customers. I look at the entire VC model and see it as a huge waste of most entrepreneurs' time and energy. Why entrepreneurs seek validation from accelerators, investors, and the media is beyond me. The usual response is that to build an enormous company at a very high growth rate requires a ton of money and doing anything other than that is mailing it in infamous lifestyle business approach. I reject that entire premise- you can make quite a large dent in the world, build a large business, and generate a big income by bootstrapping in one niche market after another- the major tradeoff is time.
nostrademons 13y ago
Y'know what's universally unattractive to both investors and women? Fatalism. People want to see how well you play the cards that you're dealt. If you can make something happen starting from nothing, then they figure that once they give you some cards to play with, you'll do even better from that. If you can't make something happen with limited resources, what makes you think that more resources will magically fix things? This applies to a lot of other things as well - most of the time, when you start at a new job you have to start small, because people who control the resources want to see that you can work effectively on a small project before they give you a big mission-critical project. I've seen people get hired into Google at T4 (nowadays, virtually everybody is hired into T4 or below) and then work their way up to T9 because every time they're given a more ambitious challenge they master it in short order.
- rahimnathwani 13y ago
  Can you translate T4 and T9 into something a non-Googler can understand? Maybe to what would be on that person's business card?
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    T4 = Software Engineer III, T9 = Distinguished Engineer. I'm not sure if other places have Distinguished Engineer titles, but it's basically the engineering ladder equivalent of a high-level eng Director or low-level VP, supposedly "People who have made critical contributions to Google or industry-changing software developments." Basically Jeff Dean level post-Bigtable.
edanm 13y ago
"Trying to make people like you tends to have the opposite effect. It's like telling an awkward 17-year-old that he'll solve all his problems with women if he gets laid by a supermodel." That's a terrible worldview. Trying to get people to like you does not tend to have the opposite effect, at least not when coupled with actual, real steps in learning how to get people to like you. Say what you want about things like Pick Up Artists, etc., but they are effective. There is a world of advice one can give to an awkward 17-year-old that will actually help them.
timmm 13y ago
> If you're anyone else, though, the best advice regarding SillyCon Valley is just to sit this lifetime out Or you can opt out of the silicon valley game of what is essentially arbitrage and instead grow a tech company the proper way which is by bootstrapping and eventually accumulate enough profit to have that aspect of your life sorted out. And you will have done it without all the headaches and bullshit that comes along with investors.

mindcrime 13y ago

; you'll be in the position to turn it away. If you're anyone else, though, the best advice regarding SillyCon Valley is just to sit this lifetime out, because the factors that matter most are those you can't do anything about. Or just start building your company without anybody else's money at all, or money raised outside of SV... and then become, as they say, "so good they can't ignore you." At the end of the day, these people are pragmatic... get enough traction and I'm pretty sure the "in the club or not" distinction disappears in the wash. Of course, the best scenario is one where you never wind up needing VC money at all, whether it's from the Valley or elsewhere. But that might not work for everybody. Still, you can start without those guys in most industries, especially if you can code and are building a software product. Obviously if you're doing a pharma play or something with huge initial capital costs, the equation changes, but I doubt the majority of this audience (HN readers) are founding pharmaceutical companies...

timmm 13y ago
This. Isn't part of the appeal of starting a web business the low costs required to do so? It sure as hell was for me when I started out. I have an app that I go months without doing anything with (touching the code base, answering customers, ect.) and yet it still earns me a constant flow of income. In other words my profit margins are absurd (>90%). That's pretty cool if you ask me. Of course I won't be earning millions from it but I earn enough money and I maintain full autonomy. I frequent places like hacker-news to learn things and to stay connected with the community but I have absolutely no interest networking with investors or taking money from an seed/accelerator firm.
- soundlab 13y ago
  Couldn't agree more. Step 1 toward this is to completely eradicate any VC/startup investor blogs or threads from your browser and substitute them with real daily communications with potential customers. I look at the entire VC model and see it as a huge waste of most entrepreneurs' time and energy. Why entrepreneurs seek validation from accelerators, investors, and the media is beyond me. The usual response is that to build an enormous company at a very high growth rate requires a ton of money and doing anything other than that is mailing it in infamous lifestyle business approach. I reject that entire premise- you can make quite a large dent in the world, build a large business, and generate a big income by bootstrapping in one niche market after another- the major tradeoff is time.

nostrademons 13y ago

Y'know what's universally unattractive to both investors and women? Fatalism. People want to see how well you play the cards that you're dealt. If you can make something happen starting from nothing, then they figure that once they give you some cards to play with, you'll do even better from that. If you can't make something happen with limited resources, what makes you think that more resources will magically fix things? This applies to a lot of other things as well - most of the time, when you start at a new job you have to start small, because people who control the resources want to see that you can work effectively on a small project before they give you a big mission-critical project. I've seen people get hired into Google at T4 (nowadays, virtually everybody is hired into T4 or below) and then work their way up to T9 because every time they're given a more ambitious challenge they master it in short order.

rahimnathwani 13y ago
Can you translate T4 and T9 into something a non-Googler can understand? Maybe to what would be on that person's business card?
- nostrademons 13y ago
  T4 = Software Engineer III, T9 = Distinguished Engineer. I'm not sure if other places have Distinguished Engineer titles, but it's basically the engineering ladder equivalent of a high-level eng Director or low-level VP, supposedly "People who have made critical contributions to Google or industry-changing software developments." Basically Jeff Dean level post-Bigtable.

edanm 13y ago

"Trying to make people like you tends to have the opposite effect. It's like telling an awkward 17-year-old that he'll solve all his problems with women if he gets laid by a supermodel." That's a terrible worldview. Trying to get people to like you does not tend to have the opposite effect, at least not when coupled with actual, real steps in learning how to get people to like you. Say what you want about things like Pick Up Artists, etc., but they are effective. There is a world of advice one can give to an awkward 17-year-old that will actually help them.

timmm 13y ago

> If you're anyone else, though, the best advice regarding SillyCon Valley is just to sit this lifetime out Or you can opt out of the silicon valley game of what is essentially arbitrage and instead grow a tech company the proper way which is by bootstrapping and eventually accumulate enough profit to have that aspect of your life sorted out. And you will have done it without all the headaches and bullshit that comes along with investors.