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A Guide to Seed Fundraising

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Re: A Guide to Seed Fundraising

#51

Post by cookiecaper »

kapilkale wrote: post #8
jedberg wrote: post #7

This was a great writeup with lots of great information. One thing that bugged me though was the "When to Raise Money" section. It says, in part: "However, for most it will require an idea, a product, and some amount of customer adoption, a.k.a. traction." There was a great comment on HN a while back (I wish I remembered who said it) that said, "If you're asking about traction or revenue, you aren't making a seed inv…

> especially now that it's so easy to get that initial traction It's gotten much cheaper to get traction. In some consumer markets, it is basically cost-free; all it takes is a motivated technical entrepreneur with a couple months of savings.

Can you explain, step by step, the cheap, easy way to gain traction as a technical entrepreneur with a few months of savings? This sounds like an infomercial. I'm not sure what the cheap, easy route to gain traction would be unless it's "pay a spammer". If that is the predominant position in SV, it's good to know.

Re: A Guide to Seed Fundraising

#53

Post by shubhamjain »

mattmanser wrote: post #43
staunch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have very meaningful traction until you release an actual product. Most significant products (e.g. Dropbox) will take one person at least 6-12 months to develop, followed by 3+ months before there are charts showing traction. a) You raise money after having invested a year of work on your own dime. b) You raise money based on your connections/pedigree ("reputation").

I think you're wrong on the 6-12 months. Not boasting, but simply stating fact, that on my own, I've written: - A system for managing employee leave and sickness with google apps integration in 2 months - A credit control application for one of my clients in 3 weeks, automatic emails, dunning letters, cash-flow forecasting - A purchase order system that would automatically raise invoices in their accountancy system i…

Not sure why you got downvoted. I think many makers balk at getting customers with an unpolished / unfinished product - "No one will pay for this. We need more features." is the sentiment I have heard often. While I am sure that a product like Stripe might take long to get to stage where people can start using it, in many cases, it is not so hard to create the MVP in 3 - 4 months that solves atleast one pain point for lots of users.

VWO, a bootstrapped A/B testing product, started getting paying customers with a very basic interface and reports[1], and today it is a ~$10M business.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YYNebfuvLc

Re: A Guide to Seed Fundraising

#56

Post by mattmanser »

shubhamjain wrote: post #53
mattmanser wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're wrong on the 6-12 months. Not boasting, but simply stating fact, that on my own, I've written: - A system for managing employee leave and sickness with google apps integration in 2 months - A credit control application for one of my clients in 3 weeks, automatic emails, dunning letters, cash-flow forecasting - A purchase order system that would automatically raise invoices in their accountancy system i…

Not sure why you got downvoted. I think many makers balk at getting customers with an unpolished / unfinished product - "No one will pay for this. We need more features." is the sentiment I have heard often. While I am sure that a product like Stripe might take long to get to stage where people can start using it, in many cases, it is not so hard to create the MVP in 3 - 4 months that solves atleast one pain point fo…

I don't know, HN has changed or someone's stalking my comments. Or perhaps, despite my efforts not to, it sounds like boasting. I was just trying to share my experiences of writing YC-sized apps and the time it took me, and I know better programmers than me.

The thing about this is if you read about ycombinator it's all about getting a product out of the door within 3 months. And they don't expect you to have a product when you start. In a team of two they seem to say one person should be focusing on the business side, so that is one person getting a product out of the door AND get some growth in 3 months with some help from the other. They expect it themselves.

Re: A Guide to Seed Fundraising

#57

Post by [deleted] »

logicallee wrote: post #5

This Guide has a step baked in, which is move to Silicon Valley. I know this because it's the most important step, and geography plays such a defining role that I expected the guide to talk about it. I didn't see any mention of this. Then I searched the document for "geography" (0 hits) and then "silicon valley" which had 3 hits, in the two snippets below: >A rule of thumb is that an engineer (the most common early e…

[deleted]

Re: A Guide to Seed Fundraising

#58

Post by [deleted] »

jedberg wrote: post #45
mattmanser wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're wrong on the 6-12 months. Not boasting, but simply stating fact, that on my own, I've written: - A system for managing employee leave and sickness with google apps integration in 2 months - A credit control application for one of my clients in 3 weeks, automatic emails, dunning letters, cash-flow forecasting - A purchase order system that would automatically raise invoices in their accountancy system i…

> Reddit, for example, launched without the ability for users to create their own subreddits, and many would describe that as one of the key reasons of Reddit's growth. I believe they actually launched without commenting, but I can't find a source on that. reddit launched with only voting and submitting of links (no self posts). Commenting, subreddit creation, self posts and all that was added years after launch. (So…

[deleted]

Re: A Guide to Seed Fundraising

#59

Post by staunch »

mattmanser wrote: post #43
staunch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have very meaningful traction until you release an actual product. Most significant products (e.g. Dropbox) will take one person at least 6-12 months to develop, followed by 3+ months before there are charts showing traction. a) You raise money after having invested a year of work on your own dime. b) You raise money based on your connections/pedigree ("reputation").

I think you're wrong on the 6-12 months. Not boasting, but simply stating fact, that on my own, I've written: - A system for managing employee leave and sickness with google apps integration in 2 months - A credit control application for one of my clients in 3 weeks, automatic emails, dunning letters, cash-flow forecasting - A purchase order system that would automatically raise invoices in their accountancy system i…

The key part you're ignoring is "Most significant products (e.g. Dropbox)"

There's no way you could clone Dropbox's first version in anything less than 6 months, and that assumes you're a great programmer.

It took the Dropbox team something like 18 months to publicly release, which was all paid for by funding. It required significant funding to build and to operate (freemium).

reddit was also created with funding and could not have existed without funding. It made no money.

I know the story of a lone developer creating a little app that takes off sounds good, but the reality is most significant projects take a good amount of time and money.

Re: A Guide to Seed Fundraising

#60

Post by [deleted] »

mattmanser wrote: post #56
shubhamjain wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you got downvoted. I think many makers balk at getting customers with an unpolished / unfinished product - "No one will pay for this. We need more features." is the sentiment I have heard often. While I am sure that a product like Stripe might take long to get to stage where people can start using it, in many cases, it is not so hard to create the MVP in 3 - 4 months that solves atleast one pain point fo…

I don't know, HN has changed or someone's stalking my comments. Or perhaps, despite my efforts not to, it sounds like boasting. I was just trying to share my experiences of writing YC-sized apps and the time it took me, and I know better programmers than me. The thing about this is if you read about ycombinator it's all about getting a product out of the door within 3 months. And they don't expect you to have a produ…

[deleted]
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