101–110 of 161 posts
I think what's being overlooked by the article is the actual development of some good technology -- there seems to be so much focus on the exit rather than what a startup is actually doing. So many of these Web 2.0 startups seem to want to grab a piece of the pie by diverting traffic rather than growing the pie by offering something fundamentally useful.
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whatever value mba vc types did bring to the table I still don't understand how they are valued at all. They don't invent anything, don't know how to help people who do, and are often bad at caretaking what has been built. This is not meant as a swipe at them, but I honestly do not understand why they are highly valued.
They're highly valued?
I am seriously having issues visualizing someone saying "this is not a good idea" to google founders. Perhaps I am too young or perhaps S&L were terrible salesmen, but I simply fail to see how come a relevant search seemed like a bad idea to VCs they talked to: and this is not 1995 we're talking here, back when Google was starting it was clear to many that everything was going to be online, and finding stuff will be…
Sergey and Larry were famous in the valley for supposedly being clueless about how business worked. http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2006/12/04/let-me-cut-you-w... I also know a guy that Sergey tried to recruit in the early years. Imagine if you saw this logo: http://blogoscoped.com/files/google-com-history/1998.jpg ..on a business card printed out from a laser printer on ordinary office paper . The guy pushing this…
I am seriously having issues visualizing someone saying "this is not a good idea" to google founders. Perhaps I am too young or perhaps S&L were terrible salesmen, but I simply fail to see how come a relevant search seemed like a bad idea to VCs they talked to: and this is not 1995 we're talking here, back when Google was starting it was clear to many that everything was going to be online, and finding stuff will be…
Google will be obsolete once the semantic web arrives ;) I remember being pretty skeptical of Google. Better search seemed like a nice idea, but it wasn't clear how they were going to compete with the established players who all had more money, more users, more engineers, more features, etc. Also, Google wasn't the only company trying to build a better search engine. It seemed like there was a new one every month.
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Traditional angel groups have so far been a complete disappointment. They're more conservative than VCs. But I would not be surprised if a new form of angel group starts to emerge. There are a couple syndicates of ex-Googlers that look very promising. They have lots of money, and they were all smart enough to get hired as early employees at Google.
Do you have links or other info on these guys that you're able/inclined to share?
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You say two years ago you had this max-timeframe criteria The first batch was in the summer of 2005.
I forgot it was 2008. Cripes, I'm getting old.
How does CRV's QuickStart program fit into all this? They appear to be attempting to bridge the gap and be in a position to put in $250k. http://www.crv.com/AboutCRV/QuickStart.html It sounds like a savvy move. But I haven't heard of a single instance of someone using it, successfully or not!
I applied a while back they said "get some traction"
What percentage of YC companies launched till date (launched means the initial YC funding is exhausted) that haven't found angels or VCs? That would prove instructive.
Contrary to what you may heard, while it may be good to start in the middle of a downturn, it is no fun to try to last through a downturn if you are "pre-revenue" and have no investors.