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This sounds really good. If mobile base stations are the right first customers, go try to get some of them to agree to buy your chip (if you deliver it as plan
by sama 11y ago
This sounds really good. If mobile base stations are the right first customers, go try to get some of them to agree to buy your chip (if you deliver it as planned), and then go try to raise a seed round. After you deliver the evaluation units, try to raise a $10-15MM seed round.
I'd focus less on academia and government. They are usually difficult investors and difficult first customers. Non-dilutive funding is nice, but dilution is not so bad in a binary-outcome situation, and venture investors are usually far faster and more helpful.
I think taking over the "small" HPC market first is a very good plan.
- trsohmers 11y agoI've questioned my sanity at many points due to thinking that the "small" HPC market is our best route as that is what none of the big guys are looking at, and they are horribly underserved. Most investors and others we have talked to have said to focus where the current trends/money is (mobile devices themselves, not base stations). One more question: I'm an engineer at heart, and I want to stay involved in engineering at some level, but don't want to give up control of the direction of the company. Do you think it makes sense/is possible to be CEO and still be involved in doing day to day engineering/design work, and if so any tips on balancing that? If not, at what point does it make sense to bring in a "professional" CEO? Thanks for the feedback! Would love to grab coffee if you're interested... feel free to send me an email.
- sama 11y agoNot only do I think it's possible to stay involved in engineering/design work, I think it's optimal, at least for the first few years. The best technical CEOs do this--they're happy to hand off most of the organization to a COO, but not product or engineering. Mark Zuckerberg did this for a long time at Facebook, and probably still does. Every time I meet with Elon Musk I'm struck by how much of the conversation is about engineering details of SpaceX or Tesla.
- ScottBurson 11y agoBen Horowitz has written some interesting things on this: http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_we_prefer_founding_ceos/ http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_we_prefer_founding_ceos/ http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_founders_fail_the_product_ceo_paradox http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_founders_fail_the_product_ceo_p...