Live data from Hacker News

Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

blog.rongarret.info

11–20 of 231 posts

Re: Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

#11
post #7

> There are a myriad ways to make a company fail, but only two ways to make one succeed. One of those is to make a product that fills a heretofore unmet market need, and to do it better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. That is incredibly hard to do. (I'll leave figuring out the second one as an exercise.) Is he implying some sort of unethical behavior as the second way?

Yes.

[UPDATE: before you downvote this answer you should know that I am the OP.]

Re: Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

#12
post #3

My 2 cents - As an investor or potential employee when analyzing a startup, pay close attention to how scrappy and capital efficient they are. Do they have excessively nice office space? Are the founders making too much in salary? Does it seem like the executives are working like animals, or do they have the big company mindset where they take it easy? Startups are nothing like established, revenue-generating compani…

When you see startups blow millions a year on AWS spend because its "easy", when you could do the same on dedicated hardware for 1/10th or even 1/100th the price, it always shocks me.

Yes, queue the comments about "Total cost of ownership", past the point where you cant afford an OPs person(s) (which you will eventually need for AWS anyways) AWS is a money-sucking black hole.

Re: Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

#14
post #7

> There are a myriad ways to make a company fail, but only two ways to make one succeed. One of those is to make a product that fills a heretofore unmet market need, and to do it better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. That is incredibly hard to do. (I'll leave figuring out the second one as an exercise.) Is he implying some sort of unethical behavior as the second way?

My immediate thought was more along the lines of companies that were built for acquisition -- either for the team or a technology (without business model).

Re: Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

#15
post #7

> There are a myriad ways to make a company fail, but only two ways to make one succeed. One of those is to make a product that fills a heretofore unmet market need, and to do it better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. That is incredibly hard to do. (I'll leave figuring out the second one as an exercise.) Is he implying some sort of unethical behavior as the second way?

[deleted]

Re: Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

#16
post #7

> There are a myriad ways to make a company fail, but only two ways to make one succeed. One of those is to make a product that fills a heretofore unmet market need, and to do it better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. That is incredibly hard to do. (I'll leave figuring out the second one as an exercise.) Is he implying some sort of unethical behavior as the second way?

My guess is the second consists of pretending to do the first, so 'dishonesty'.

Re: Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

#18
post #3

My 2 cents - As an investor or potential employee when analyzing a startup, pay close attention to how scrappy and capital efficient they are. Do they have excessively nice office space? Are the founders making too much in salary? Does it seem like the executives are working like animals, or do they have the big company mindset where they take it easy? Startups are nothing like established, revenue-generating compani…

Are any of those things issues at Angel stage?

Re: Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

#19
post #14
post #7

> There are a myriad ways to make a company fail, but only two ways to make one succeed. One of those is to make a product that fills a heretofore unmet market need, and to do it better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. That is incredibly hard to do. (I'll leave figuring out the second one as an exercise.) Is he implying some sort of unethical behavior as the second way?

My immediate thought was more along the lines of companies that were built for acquisition -- either for the team or a technology (without business model).

Good point. I've only spent a limited amount of time in startup space but it seems this intention is usually considered more as a possible path rather than an intention. It's a common accusation but seems outlandish and unnecessary to me.

If anyone thinks this is wrong, please say so. I'm interested.

Re: Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

#20
post #7

> There are a myriad ways to make a company fail, but only two ways to make one succeed. One of those is to make a product that fills a heretofore unmet market need, and to do it better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. That is incredibly hard to do. (I'll leave figuring out the second one as an exercise.) Is he implying some sort of unethical behavior as the second way?

timing?
Post reply on HN