Ask HN: How should a 17 year old go about getting seed funding? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How should a 17 year old go about getting seed funding?

#11

Post by alttab » Mon, Jul 02, 2012, 2:30 AM UTC

lyetzz wrote: post #8

alttab wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social networks aren't open for competition like VPS hosts are. People us hosting for certain features, uptime, or price. People use social networks simply for the fact that others are using it too. It entrenches players easily. Look at Craigslist. The UX sucks and they haven't done anything with it in a while. But people use Craigslist, with no one able to displace it at scale, simply because it has gravity and user…

I wouldn't quite consider social networks and VPS hosts to be just as saturated as one another. Building a social network from the ground up requires time, some creativity, the ability to bring something unique to the table, and forming a team that's just as passionate towards an idea as you are. Running a VPS company, on the other hand, requires an install of a hypervisor and a ticket/billing system. I'd prefer to c…

You make a valid point. Vps is spessentially a service industry vs a product. That said, wih a social network you are 99% likely to fail. Proving me wrong is worth a billion dollars, the question is what kind of goals are you setting for yourself.

Re: Ask HN: How should a 17 year old go about getting seed funding?

#12

Post by dylanhassinger » Mon, Jul 02, 2012, 2:32 AM UTC

> Now that I've just about exhausted the $1000, it's time for me to start seeking seed funding.

No. It's time to get your hands dirty, and get as much traction has possible on a shoestring. This could be -

* building a landing page, start blogging and building a list of interested people

* creating interface mockups

* building a demo

* networking to seek out a cofounder

* preparing to apply to an accelerator or microseed program

Idea-only concepts from first timers aren't ready for full seed funding, in general. You can push it to the next level without that.

Re: Ask HN: How should a 17 year old go about getting seed funding?

#13

Post by lyetzz » Mon, Jul 02, 2012, 2:42 AM UTC

dylanhassinger wrote: post #12

> Now that I've just about exhausted the $1000, it's time for me to start seeking seed funding. No. It's time to get your hands dirty, and get as much traction has possible on a shoestring. This could be - * building a landing page, start blogging and building a list of interested people * creating interface mockups * building a demo * networking to seek out a cofounder * preparing to apply to an accelerator or micro…

Thanks for the suggestions. The landing page, mockups, and demo are already a work-in-progress, although I'll begin taking the others into consideration and building a more productive plan for the next few months.

Re: Ask HN: How should a 17 year old go about getting seed funding?

#14

Post by lyetzz » Mon, Jul 02, 2012, 2:44 AM UTC

michaelpinto wrote: post #10

I think you're asking the wrong question: The right question to ask is if you have the resources to build a prototype of your idea? Even if that prototype is a bunch of sketched wireframes you can then take those and see if you can get some seed funding to build something bigger. I'd also dare say that even if you did this and failed, you still might open some doors. Part of future is going to be meeting people, so a…

The sketches and cleaner wireframes have already been created. In fact, the developer has them and is already implementing them. But like you said, I think networking will likely be my next step. Thanks for the advice

Re: Ask HN: How should a 17 year old go about getting seed funding?

#15

Post by michaelpinto » Mon, Jul 02, 2012, 4:27 AM UTC

lyetzz wrote: post #14

michaelpinto wrote: post #10

I think you're asking the wrong question: The right question to ask is if you have the resources to build a prototype of your idea? Even if that prototype is a bunch of sketched wireframes you can then take those and see if you can get some seed funding to build something bigger. I'd also dare say that even if you did this and failed, you still might open some doors. Part of future is going to be meeting people, so a…

The sketches and cleaner wireframes have already been created. In fact, the developer has them and is already implementing them. But like you said, I think networking will likely be my next step. Thanks for the advice

Well then I think you're on the right track!

Re: Ask HN: How should a 17 year old go about getting seed funding?

#16

Post by jaredsohn » Mon, Jul 02, 2012, 4:33 AM UTC

alttab wrote: post #3

Considering the largest social network in the history on man tanked their stock price right after their IPO, I would venture to guess that VCs aren't answering emails from 17 year olds wanting to start a social network. Is it what you want to hear? Probably not. Is it reality? Yeah. Does it suck?cjust wait until you have to pay your own bills and your parents don't throw money at your ideas. My advice? Restart that b…

>tanked their stock price right after their IPO

Why is this relevant? The VCs made plenty of money and even though the price is less than asked for, a social network just got validated as worth over $60 billion on a public market.

There may still be issues with creating a new social network, but I don't think FB's IPO price tanking is one of them. (Unless success requires a $100 billion exit.)

Re: Ask HN: How should a 17 year old go about getting seed funding?

#17

Post by alttab » Mon, Jul 02, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

jaredsohn wrote: post #16

alttab wrote: post #3

Considering the largest social network in the history on man tanked their stock price right after their IPO, I would venture to guess that VCs aren't answering emails from 17 year olds wanting to start a social network. Is it what you want to hear? Probably not. Is it reality? Yeah. Does it suck?cjust wait until you have to pay your own bills and your parents don't throw money at your ideas. My advice? Restart that b…

>tanked their stock price right after their IPO Why is this relevant? The VCs made plenty of money and even though the price is less than asked for, a social network just got validated as worth over $60 billion on a public market. There may still be issues with creating a new social network, but I don't think FB's IPO price tanking is one of them. (Unless success requires a $100 billion exit.)

It shows the lack of appetite from consumers for social networking companies. Sure, the investors for Facebook got rich, but will then next ones? The post IPO stock price would suggest that the next party won't be as big.

Re: Ask HN: How should a 17 year old go about getting seed funding?

#18

Post by sharemywin » Fri, Jul 06, 2012, 12:49 PM UTC

Your virtual server experience showed that you you have higher priorities than a successful business and walked away from a business with good potential. Besides the idea what are you bringing to the table? The ability to hire a freelancer to do work for you? Software is only a small portion of a business. How are you going to reach this niche group of users? How many of them are there? How are you going to make money off of them? why not just leverage facebooks apis and create a niche app for facebook? How much money would you need? To get your first 10k users? Facebook makes something like 60 cents per hour a user spends on facebook. Are your numbers going to be better? what's so great about this niche of users? Do they have more buying power? Personally I would finish working on what the freelancer was working on. I would also come up with some SAAS tools that you need to build anyway and work on selling them to get ramen profitable.