I founded WePay with Bill Clerico in August 2008, with the simple goal of making it easy for groups to collect and manage money online. We were accepted in YCombinator in May 2009, and raised just under $2 million from August Capital, Max Levchin, and a few other well-know angel investors last December.
I can’t say much about running a company post-financing because we have only been doing it for a few months, and to be honest, I haven’t really had the opportunity to reflect on it.
However, I have taken some time to think about some of the things I have learned over the past year and a half (from conception to financing), and I’ve decided to share a few of them here.
A quick caveat: I’m fully aware that every one of the following points I’m about to make has been made before, multiple times, by people smarter than myself. There’s this great quote in Frost/Nixon that goes like this: “In boxing, there’s always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger’s face. It’s that moment that he feels the impact from the champ’s first jab. It’s kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along.”
It’s one thing to know how strong the champ can hit, and something quite different to feel it.
That’s kind of what it’s like to start a company: “Yeah, yeah … I know it’s going to be hard – everybody has told me it’s going to be hard – but I’m ready for it, and I can handle it.”
Trust me, you’re not, and no matter how much you think you know about what it’s going to be like, when that first jab comes, you’ll begin to truly understand for the first time.
Paul Graham says that good startup founders can be described in two words: relentlessly resourceful. I agree, but I would add two words of my own: arrogant and naïve. Arrogant enough to get in the ring, and naïve enough that you still think you will win after you feel the first punch.
The following are the five things that I “knew” (or should have known) before starting a company, but didn’t fully understand until now.
1. If you are not full time, then you are at a huge disadvantage
Going full-time was one of the best early decisions that we made. More than anything else, working full time on your startup makes it MUCH harder to quit. Once you burn the ships (quit your job, drop out of school, etc.), you’ve officially committed. I can name at least five times I would have quit if I wasn’t working full time, or if I had other options. In fact, if the timing had worked out differently (better or worse, depending on how you look at it), I would have gone back to law school after a year-long deferral.
Working full time on an idea also gives you a degree of credibility. Or rather, not working full time takes away almost all credibility. If your idea is so great, why haven’t you committed to it? Why should I invest and risk my money, if you’re not even fully committed.
For us, part-time was not an option. That being said, if you don’t need credibility or require anybody else’s commitment (time, money, etc.), then part-time may be a viable option.
2. Picking the right cofounder is the most important early-stage decision you will make.
It’s almost cliché to claim that picking a cofounder is like getting married. Picking the right cofounder is more like finding your soul mate.
You need to find somebody that you cannot succeed without, and they need to feel the same about you. You need to contribute something so unique and valuable that your cofounder would have a very difficult time building the business without you. I have watched a ton of early-stage startups (run by some very smart people) fail because the cofounders didn’t complement each other well. Three very smart people and a business plan, does not a business make.
I recently saw a post on Hacker News, where somebody created a three-column spreadsheet. Column 1 = “I am”; Column 2 = “I am looking for”; Column 3 = “I am working on.” Literally 99% of the rows read something like this: “I am a business guy/entrepreneur/mba/professional; I am looking for a technical cofounder; I am working on a website/new kind of social network/etc.” Everybody wants a technical cofounder because you can’t build an Internet company without one (I guess you could outsource development, but as it turns out, that rarely ends well).
And even more worrisome, is that people often think to themselves: “if I could only find somebody that knows how to program, then everything will be okay.” Building a web-app is far more complex than us non-techy folk could ever imagine, and believing anything else is a sure-fire way to waste a ton of time and money. Believe me, if you are “building a website that will do X”, then 99% of the early-stage work happening in your company will be building the website that does X.
If the only thing you are bringing to the table is an idea, then you have nothing to offer. Think about what only you can offer a potential technical cofounder before you start looking for one (i.e. contacts with potential customers or partners, deep knowledge of a particular industry or space, access to capital, etc.).
Bill happens to be a close friend, but that’s not why he’s a good cofounder (it may be necessary, but it’s certainly not sufficient). Nobody in the world has Bill’s exact skill set, and looking back on it, that skill set is exactly what we needed. In regard to the close friend part, that’s a given – you’re going to be dragged through hell on the way to building a successful company, so you probably want to pick somebody that makes hell a little less painful.
Paul Graham says that startups die because founders quit. Your cofounder should be somebody that refuses to quit, and somebody that inspires enough confidence in you, that you will refuse to quit as long as they are still around. I can’t count the number of times that was all we had going for us.
3. Traction is the only thing that matters
Well, maybe not the only thing, but it matters a whole hell of a lot. Getting people to use your product and consistently growing the size of your user base is perhaps the single most important thing an early-stage company can do. In fact, some would argue that it is the definition of early-stage success.
VCs never really invest in ideas. They say they invest in great teams or great founders, and I believe that this is often the case. A great team with a [decent?] idea is sometimes enough. But I’m pretty sure that “great team” or “great founder” has a very, very limited definition; namely, somebody with a previous exit (IPO or acquisition), or deep and wildly impressive domain expertise. Unfortunately, by definition, no first time entrepreneur has either of these. They have ZERO credibility. So how do first-time entrepreneurs gain momentum and raise money? They build something that people like and use. If you can do that, then you just have to convince VCs that you can keep doing what you’re doing (building something useful and getting people to use it).
This might seem obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me for a very long time: the only thing that you should try to do early on is to build something that people use.
4. Unless you’re part of the Silicon Valley in-crowd AND you have traction, you’re not going to raise venture capital
When Bill and I first founded WePay in Boston, we spent a lot of time thinking about the VC industry, hanging out with other first-time and unfunded entrepreneurs who talked about VC firms and partners as if they were celebrities and close friends.
There were dozens of networking events with workshops on how to raise venture financing, create a decent pitch deck, pitch effectively, etc. There were even more events that gave entrepreneurs the “opportunity” to get in front of VCs and angel investors. We saw the same group of young, networking entrepreneurs every time.
We thought: “hey, this must be what starting a company is all about.”
We had this incredibly naïve notion that if you came up with a great idea, you could raise a few million bucks with a few slides and some undergraduate-style market research. There was huge credibility gap that we had little chance of overcoming. We spent a lot of time tweaking and refining our pitch deck, meeting with VCs, networking, and thinking we were making progress. We thought VCs loved us, despite the fact that we rarely got a second meeting.
Luckily, during that period, we also got a lot smarter in the payment space – learning about payments in general and forging partnerships. If it wasn’t for that, our first 6 months in Boston may have been a complete waste of time.
When we finally moved to Silicon Valley, two things happened: we built a product, and we got a foot in the door with the in-crowd. I think one of YCombinator’s greatest accomplishments is its ability give young and un-connected entrepreneurs almost instant access to the Silicon Valley elite.
With a product, some promising feedback from early users, and some healthy Silicon Valley buzz, fundraising was a profoundly different experience than we originally thought it would be.
5. Customer Acquisition is tough
I’m not sure what it’s like for companies that don’t charge users, but for those that do, acquiring customers is a pretty significant challenge.
I’m convinced that customer acquisition is the most overlooked and understated challenge faced by first-time entrepreneurs. At least it was for us.
How can our product not grow virally? It’s fulfilling a real need. I know I would use it. All my friends say they would use it. The idea is earth shattering, and it solves a problem that everybody has! Customer acquisition? HA! The product will sell itself!
I have seen a lot of successful approaches to customer acquisition, but every one of them was a difficult uphill battle, carefully planned, and masterfully executed. Some social networks recruited celebrity early-adopters that brought their followers along with them. Some clever startups sell their product before they build it (in other words, they lock up some early marquee customers – usually through personal connections, or previous employers). Other companies have huge marketing budgets, or aggressive and experienced sales-forces (but that’s obviously a lot tougher for bootstrapped or early stage customers).
We have taken a multi-channel approach, but each one of those channels has required a ton of thought and relentless execution. Customer acquisition (at least in the early days) should not be taken for granted.
Check out the company Rich and Bill started. WePay is free to sign-up!
Tags: advice, non-engineer, startup
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Awesome post – thanks for the insight. You guys rock!
Great post. As you say these things are pointed out in various places but, for me finding them and reading again is a good thing. I wish more founders would take the time to look back and describe their experience.
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Thanks for taking the time to write this all up. I totally agree with how difficult it is to acquire customers. We’ve been slugging it out and it’s been really slow going.
Great article. Just tweeted.
Your next post should be about secrets of traction/customer acquisition you’ve picked up for the various channels. I agree that this area is the key to everything. Your title says it all “Traction is the only thing that matters.” This is exactly why I’ve been trying to demystify this process: http://tractionbook.com/
On customer acquisition: Finding customers is difficult in a market that doesn’t have existing communities of potential users. If you have a market that has existing communities, you can get those users with a bit of work. Using my business’ target market as an example: we are creating a tool for cyclists to use. The internet is full of cycling forums, so, carefully crafted conversations on those forums, especially one where you ask your future users to help you design the product, can produce a great turnout of fanatic users. I mean heck, they directly helped shape the direction of their new favourite website. I have no numbers but I would guess this is more effective than a big budget marketing campaign, and probably generates a higher quality userbase.
This method falls short when you are talking about general solutions like wepay. However, taking bingocardcreator.com for example, Patrick doesn’t have forums of fanatic bingo players to go to, but he does have tech sites like HN where he can share relevant information on his small web business with like-minded people. Those folks share the word and help generate actual users.
Very good!
Totally agree. Traction has always been my biggest struggle.
Ah, another startup that starts in Boston then move out west. I wonder if there is a list of these companies and how much Massachusetts lost in tax revenue.
Did you guys move out solely due to YCombinator? What if you guys had gotten angel funding in Boston? Would you have stayed?
Rich,
Interesting thoughts in this post. I’d recommend you read the new book by the 37 Signals guys “Rework” – I just picked it up last night, and it has some terrifying and honest insights into how to build a software/services company. I read it, and I found many of his insights to be “against” the grain of what you’re taught as part of the SV-VC/entrepreneur scene. One of the most important differences may be defining your goals – do you really need VC money? What is reasonable traction – why does it matter and who are you trying to prove it to?
Anyway – good luck, I keep using WePay, and it keeps getting better!
-Vivek Shah
Awesome post. I disagree on “4. Unless you’re part of the Silicon Valley in-crowd AND you have traction, you’re not going to raise venture capital” Traction is enough.
With all the incubators and VCs around the world and our own StartupList, you can be anywhere and raise money. It just so happens that the best investors who make good decisions quickly are here.
But you don’t need to be part of any in-crowd to get in front of them. I know the best investors in the world and they respond to good cold calls.
Great post. Thanks for writing!
Howdy neighbor! Nice post, drop by upstairs (4th) sometime and have a beer!
I like that idea.
Stay tuned….
This is great advice.
Even though WePay does provide a “general solution”, I think there are pockets of potential users that we can reach out to. I can think of a few forums, off the top of my head, that attract people from verticals we are currently targeting.
I’m going to experiment a little over the next few weeks.
Yes, we moved to CA solely due to YCombinator. IF we had gotten angel funding in Boston we would have stayed.
However, in Boston’s defense, I don’t think we were really ready to raise money when we were there, and I certainly don’t blame investors for not throwing money our way at the time. We were a very different company in Boston than we were after YCombinator.
Boston did suffer a great loss when YCombinator left Cambridge, though. Again, not Boston’s fault necessarily, but one less force keeping startups in Boston.
Thanks for the feedback Vivek! I’ll definitely check out the book.
Due to the nature of our product, we knew pretty early on that we would have to raise “significant” capital (by our standards, anyways).
I also think we needed to show less traction than a new social network or photo sharing site. We basically wanted to say, look, we built a product that works, people will use, and we are going after a huge market.
Now that we closed our round, we need to prove that we can acquire customers cost effectively. It will certainly be a challenge, but we have a few tricks up our sleeves
I just reread my post, and I realize how point #4 sounded. It was somewhat unintentional.
Raising money in silicon valley is hard (not impossible) to do without being part of the silicon valley in-crowd.
Raising money in Boston is hard to do in general, but I don’t think it’s impossible (although I wouldn’t know).
haha…Nice to meet you! Thanks for reading my blog
I’ll stop by tomorrow…
It’s so lucky for me to find your blog! So shocking and great! Just one suggestion: It will be better and easier to follow if your blog can offer rrs subscription service.
[...] 5 things I “knew” (or should have known) before starting a company, but didn’t fully understan… [...]
Good post – I don’t think anyone can know what starting a business is like until they’ve actually started.
It can certainly be a baptism of fire!
All the best with WePay.
Fabio
Really great post, the issues you raise are of paramount importance, especially for start ups! Found a really interesting site that offers great advice to entrepreneurs and executives, might be worth checking out… http://bit.ly/5oCkOe
I lose count of the countless clients I meet who totally under estimated how difficult customer acquisition can be. The have this ‘build it and they will come’ attitude that only works if you have massive footfall near your location. Something I should again and again on my blog.
Another thing I feel you miss from this list is a Mentor.
I’m constantly stressing to my clients on my blog to find a great mentor, as it can seriously cut your learning curve and help you make sensible decisions. We all think we know it all when we start a business, we have a plan and ambition. But, just as you write – some of this knowledge can only come from experience, your own personal experience or in kind from an experienced mentor.
Good stuff.
Thanks for sharing your experience, I think every opinion and shared experience adds more insight for the beginners – which is great!
Very interesting. You go straight to the point.
I am afraid that the 4th could be true, though as Nivi points above it maybe just a matter of having the right contacts, or digging enough.
I’m starting to pass through all these points again. I’m at the end of the development cycle of the project I’ve been working on alone for the last 6 months, and well, it’s very encouraging to read that some of the decisions I made at the beginning are key points for you, as that of being full time.
I’ve started to face the 2nd point, and I would say that there won’t be any success unless I find the best partner, the traction wouldn’t happen otherwise, and rather would turn into a burden.
I liked your post.
Cheers and good luck.
Fantastic post. Knee deep in a 7 month old startup and every single one of your posts is 100% percent accurate. The customer acquisition issue is sitting on my brain like a huge anvil at the moment. It is _really_ _really_ hard when you are just starting.
Excellent article! I’ve seen many entrepreneurs who can’t find those thoughts on their plans before starting and yet make some mistakes. I loved point 3: putting your product/service into action, testing, Beta stage to know what others may think about and listen to their feedback.
There is an interesting conversation here http://bit.ly/coci1F about “What mistakes entrepreneurs commonly make?”
Hope to see your answers there!
Awesome post, great advice – glad I came across it. I believe every experience is different for any startup and it’s never easy, but I think it’s important to be surrounded by those with like-minded visions to keep you on the right path. Anyways, thank you for sharing your experience…
Great post, it is always good to take some time to step back and look at the bigger picture. Customer acquisition is a huge challenge, when you don’t have a huge marketing budget. We have faced the thats interesting, but not quite useful enough to pay for problem for quite awhile, which makes getting paying customers a struggle.
#3 is the big one.
Good post, although I disagree mightily with Point 4. You probably need to be in the Valley “in crowd” if you’re just beating the paths you read about on TechCrunch, but it is absolutely untrue in general.
It’s also a pretty shitty thing to tell entrepreneurs, as the message they are getting is “The problem isn’t my company, it’s the fact that the system is political and I’m on the outside.” And then they give up or focus on Stupid Bullshit rather than building an awesome product and getting customers/users. In fact, raising money isn’t that hard if your company has real traction, even if you know very few people in the venture world. Leverage your traction to hire a decent startup lawyer like Fenwick&West and get them to introduce you to people. The VCs will listen.
Awesome Post! One of the best I’ve read in a long time. Every one of your points is spot on. The scariest thing is that even if you somehow manage to miraculously conquer each of your five points, there’s still no guarantee of success. But I guess if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, huh? As to your point #4, I agree with both sides – those who say you are right and those comments above saying you’re wrong. Although you theoretically CAN succeed without getting in with the SV crowd, having the SV connections can definitely smooth out a lot of the bumps on your way to a successful launch. Look at what having a great connection to TC can do you for as a prime example – some companies grind away for months/years making progress on a great innovation and get no TC plug, while other companies with seemingly no real product other than some periphery complement to a bigger website (think Twitter, Foursquare, et al) get a post as soon as they launch. Makes you wonder who’s pulling that string?
I actually agree with everything you just said. Like I said in a previous response, I reread what I wrote, and I think it implies a few things that were unintentional.
If I have some time today, I will revise the original post. Some of the implications of what I wrote might be dangerous if other early-stage entrepreneurs interpret it a certain way – definitely not my intention.
With a good traction (and possibly a good enough product), anything is possible.
Although I believe that TC is influential in many respects, I think bootstrapped and early-stage companies generally overstate the benefit of being featured on techcrunch. You will get an ephemeral spike in traffic to your homepage and a bunch of flattering (yet ultimately worthless) interest from junior level associates at VC and private equity firms.
At the end of the day, the TC article won’t mean much unless you have a good product. It *may* help plant the seed for gaining traction, but even that is tenuous.
I like beans
Great post! very useful advice!!
[...] 5 things I “knew” (or should have known) before starting a company, but didn’t fully unde… I founded WePay with Bill Clerico in August 2008, with the simple goal of making it easy for groups to collect and [...] [...]
[...] 5 things I “knew” (or should have known) before starting a company, but didn’t fully understan… (tags: entrepreneurship) [...]
[...] 5 things I “knew” (or should have known) before starting a company, but didn’t fully understan… [...]
This is the best post I have read about starting up a business in a very very long time. I’d stress anyone in the early stage and first timer, thoroughly consider paragraf 3 and 4. The problem as far as I see it is that the majority of new ventures that I stumble across invest far too much energy and flux on trying to land that golden shower of VC backing with a decent idea, and get stuck in that instead of doing the hard work of laying out traction..
Fantastic stuff! Sincere thanks for posting your experience.
All the best!
Lane
http://www.relyable.com
Here I focus on ‘information technology’ businesses that are candidates for venture funding and set aside biomedical technology, energy, materials, etc.
On the general subject of the ‘difficulty of starting a business’, we have to notice that all across the US, from coast to coast, there are millions of successful businesses started and run without any of the usual advice on how to do that. These businesses are on Main Street and are of wide variety. The successful owners have, all across the US, the majority of second homes, vacation homes, and yachts on all the major bodies of water in or touching the US. For information technology, there are some advantages, but it is difficult to argue that somehow starting an information technology business is basically more difficult. Or, can write the software for a new Web site using a $1500 computer, say, built from parts, while the $1500 is much less than needed to start a pizza shop, donut shop, auto repair shop, auto body shop, lawn mowing service, dentist’s office, independent insurance agency, most big truck-little truck businesses, etc.
So, let’s get real, guys: Millions of entrepreneurs in the US, coast to coast, small towns to large cities, start and run successful businesses without MBAs, venture capital, marquee CEOs, etc. Net, the idea that starting a business is horrendously difficult has to be mostly BS.
You wrote:
Believe me, if you are “building a website that will do X”, then 99% of the early-stage work happening in your company will be building the website that does X.
Good! I DO know how “to program”, very much so, thank you! And I have over 90% of X done! So, I’ve got the 99% part handled! So, all the other struggles must amount to no more than 1% of the total effort! VERY good news! Means I’m nearly home free! GREAT news! Maybe I should go shopping for a Ferrari, a 100′ yacht, and 1000 acres of land to put up a 24 car garage behind a 40,000 square foot house?
You wrote:
1. If you are not full time, then you are at a huge disadvantage
GOOD! I AM “full time” so must have a “huge” advantage!
You wrote:
If the only thing you are bringing to the table is an idea, then you have nothing to offer.
Well, if by an “idea” you mean some intuitive, un-articulated, pre-back of a napkin guess with six friends in a beer-pizza place at 3 AM after five pizzas and 10 pitchers of beer, then you are correct. And, after a dozen drafts as 10 foils, you are still correct.
BUT: Following a bad idea is just a trip off the road into a swamp or, worse, off a cliff. So, a good idea really is much better than a bad one.
At present nearly universally the venture capital community wants to claim that “just an idea” has no value. Mostly they are correct, and can say the same for most startups. What’s of overwhelmingly great importance are the exceptions and how to obtain those! Or, extra credit for knowing the source:
“The early history of America is a tale of great first times. There were men who were first to cross new prairies and new mountains, the first to find gold, silver and copper; to plow new wheat fields and build new settlements.”
We have to suspect that this statement remains true for next big things now. Or, a rear view mirror is not a lot of help; eyes looking forward and attached to a good brain are better than a rear view mirror.
Here is where the venture community is missing out, at least in principle, and likely in some major cases in practice: Thankfully for US national security, the US DoD and NSF problem sponsors actually are able to evaluate and fund projects based on “just an idea”, as a carefully prepared, highly technical, mathematical, scientific, engineering document. There the idea, as in that document, is about all that does have value. Every important new piece of advanced military hardware, e.g., the internet, inertial navigation, satellite navigation, synthetic aperture radar, passive sonar with adaptive beam forming, magnetic anomaly detection, spread spectrum radar, stealth aircraft, heat seeking missiles with cryogenic infrared optics, and much more, started with “just an idea” on paper; breadboard and prototype versions came later, often some years later, so that the funded work went for years based on “just an idea”. Thankfully for US national security.
By analogy, the venture people would have said: “You build the first one and test it. Then for the Enola Gay, we will fund the gasoline.”
Instead, on the afternoon of Sunday, July 16th, 1939, L. Szilard was at Peconic, Long Island at the summer vacation cottage of A. Einstein to explain nuclear fission. Szilard knew his “idea” was good THEN. The first test was, almost to the hour, six years later at July 16 1945, 5:29:45 AM.
S. Ulam had an “idea” that, with E. Teller, resulted in the most energetic explosion ever for the US.
Sakharov had three “ideas”, and apparently his third was much like the Teller-Ulam configuration.
An “idea” that is powerful for an important unsolved problem, made specific in a paper with theorems and proofs, likely suitable for a patent, and that can deliver uniquely valuable results for that problem should be valuable. But the US venture community does not believe so.
Instead, you are correct:
First, venture capital wants to see the software run. Likely then they evaluate how well millions of users might like it. If millions of users like it, then venture capital in effect assumes that the details of the core secret sauce, if any, don’t matter. If the software looks good, then maybe write a Series A check for a few million dollars and, thus, permit renting office space, furnishing the offices, hiring people, building the server farm, writing more software, getting publicity, advertisers, etc.
For evaluating the core secret sauce, the venture community (A) doesn’t know how, (B) doesn’t want to take the time, and (C) wouldn’t trust the evaluation enough to write a check anyway. Or, again, the US DoD and NSF can evaluate “ideas”, but the venture community cannot. Reasons the venture community gets away with this comparative incompetence are (A) the venture firms still in business (and the others don’t count!) are making plenty of money now if only from their 2%; (B) their limited partners likely would not trust the general partners (college history majors?) to evaluate and fund ’secret sauce’; (C) non-technical business people want to entertain themselves with the belief that what they do in general line management, less than 1% of the work according to your evaluation, is the really difficult part and everything else, especially everything technical, is trivial; (D) they get nearly no proposals from entrepreneurs with secret sauce based on work solid enough for, say, DoD or NSF funding.
But, big successes are exceptional, and looking in the rear view mirror or looking at what most entrepreneurs propose is a poor way to see the big successes of the future. Again, thankfully for US national security, the US DoD has long understood this point.
Might just conclude that venture capital is intellectually lazy!
Actually, only a tiny fraction of venture partners look good at writing software with current software tools, e.g., .NET. On average their qualifications in engineering are not very good, in science, worse, and in math, next to nothing! Net, on average, they are NOT technical people. Uh, DoD and NSF problem sponsors ARE technical people and are able to make good use of reviewers who are some of the world’s best technical people. Thankfully for US national security.
Second, venture capital wants to look at measures such as number of unique site visitors per month and the growth in this number. If these numbers look good, then maybe write a check for a Series B of five to 15 million dollars to permit building a significantly large organization and server farm.
Mostly that’s how they think.
Now a $1000 computer can do so much for developing a Web site, etc. that the need for a Series A as 10 years ago for developing software is not so important. So, a technical founder who writes enough software to get a going business or a good Series A can have confidence that non-technical founders will provide little or no competition! Once again, the flip side of a bad situation is a good situation!
Technology is so over-rated (smile). Seriously, I would add that too many start-ups get focused on getting the tech perfect, and don’t get out there and sell what they have.
I’m an aspiring entrepreneur. I’ve been working on my idea since last August. Mostly on the business side, market research, strategy etc.. At the same time I’ve been looking for a developer on both web and mobile. It’s been difficult finding someone but I’m not giving up. I’m running everything in parallel and take whatever comes my way (shotgun approach). I’ve read so much information from a plethora of resources saying that you should build traction first or you should find a co-founder first. It is hard starting something but if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. There is a reason why it’s hard because it filters out the weak. Determination and perseverence are the primaries within the DNA of an entrepreneur. My conclusion: don’t give up, network, network and network.
Great post by the way.
(cross post from http://talk.venturehacks.com/item?id=18)
I think that form a distance it must look like that. Non-Silicon Valley founders somehow think that everyone here is part of the in-crowd. Anyone can be part of the “in-crowd” very quickly:
1. find 10 people you want to meet here
2. follow & engage them on twitter, VH talk (right here) or Buzz
3. tell them that you are visiting (well in advance)
4. ask them to meet with you (for a good reason obviously)
5. ask them if they know anyone you should meet
7. leave open space in your schedule (after meet you, many people will intro you to others)
6. get on a plan and get here
==> within a week you will fell like you are part of the in-crowd too, I promise. If not, you did not do your homework and find the right people to meet. So start with your “dreamlist” of people to meet.
And remember, everyone is always looking for great people:
- Soon-to-be founders look for co-founders
- Founders look for key hires (and co-founders)
- Journalists look for good stories
- Angel investors look for the next big thing
- VCs look for fast growth companies and companies to merge/acquire/partner
- Anyone is looking for good geek conversation
If you want to meet with me, send me a message @thomask or email http://www.thomaskorte.com/about-me/
[...] raised $2 million in funding after participating in Y Combinator’s incubator last summer. In a recent blog post, he equates starting a company for the first time to jumping in a boxing ring with “the [...]
[...] since raised $2 million in funding after participating in Y Combinator's incubator last summer. In a recent blog post, he equates starting a company for the first time to jumping in a boxing ring with "the champ" and [...]
[...] since raised $2 million in funding after participating in Y Combinator's incubator last summer. In a recent blog post, he equates starting a company for the first time to jumping in a boxing ring with "the champ" and [...]