I can tell VC has shifted from crypto to AI because the cold call "add crypto to your game" salesforce emails have changed into cold call "add AI to your game" salesforce emails.
"We are a Silicon Valley start up backed by YCombinator"
This is not the sales plus you think it is, my friend.
@solidangle when I was in between jobs, some startup founders would reach out to me. I have nothing against small companies or startups (one can be more impactful or innovative there!), but "we are VC backed" was an immediate deal breaker for me.
@BartWronski @solidangle VC backed makes sense for certain things. Maybe 5-10% or all the things that VC backing is done on.
@aras @solidangle being VC backed makes a lot of sense for many aspects of running a company - like securing funding and less worrying about burn rate.
But one also needs to be comfortable with the idea that the startup becomes someone's purely speculative asset and that they get some control over the future direction, which might be ok for some, just not for me.
@aras @solidangle @BartWronski speaking as a co-founder of a VC-backed startup, in a lot of ways, it means *more* worrying about burn rate because there is no off-ramp from the treadmill. Taking VC funding is a good idea pretty much exclusively if you need to scale fast now.
@BartWronski @aras @solidangle When we decided it was time to scale and took VC $$$, we went from 5->15 in less than 18 months, and now I think about burn all the time
@elfprince13 @solidangle @aras that's a very interesting perspective, thank you for sharing!
When I almost ended up co-founding a start-up, we were considering running on our own cash, and then found some great and very trustworthy angel investors.
Both of those options were along the lines of "burn rate will be stressful like hell, but at least we won't dilute nor give most of the ownership away"
@BartWronski @aras @solidangle at early stage there’s a lot of crossover between the terms (especially because VCs have pushed to standardize docs to keep legal overhead low) and even check sizes you’ll get from angels and the terms you’ll get from VCs, and similar range of attitudes/involvement-after-check in my experience.
@BartWronski @aras @solidangle if you’re building a consumer mobile app and can get quick traction and scale organically before you exceed the check sizes that angels will support, more power to you, but it’s hard to fund scientific innovation out of pocket or on a handful of 5-6 figure checks.
@solidangle @BartWronski @aras we ran almost exclusively on non-dilutive grant and competition funding for a few years as a 4 person shop while we worked out some of the fundamental science issues, and had very few concerns about burn in that period.