131–140 of 395 posts
I can be excluded, but here is an example:
I have a hibernating project, called Lapp'd. It could be thought of as Medium.com for businesses. Here's the only screen I made: http://www.lappd.com
We split the resulting company 50-50, as equal co-founders. - you must be trolling?) How would you like to become equal to the years of thinking and trying by just throwing some money?
Its a classic startup. One partner has the money/business expertise, and one develops/produces. Apple started like that. If Woz told Jobs, "You can't code? I don't need you", there'd be no Apple today.
I have tried going a similar route as this when starting a company and it didn't work.
We split the resulting company 50-50, as equal co-founders. - you must be trolling?) How would you like to become equal to the years of thinking and trying by just throwing some money?
Its a classic startup. One partner has the money/business expertise, and one develops/produces. Apple started like that. If Woz told Jobs, "You can't code? I don't need you", there'd be no Apple today.
Basically, what companies like YC do is looking at you, and thinking to whom they will sell you - they are evaluating a few exit strategies.
Money usually isn't a problem. Ability to meet the right people and negotiate good terms are.
Initial thoughts: not disruptive enough to justify the extremely low valuation. How are you different from a reputable angel investor, who also brings connections? $5000 lasts about a month in NYC or the Bay Area. I like the ambition (of disrupting the funding process) but, in all honesty, to me this sounds like "I just need an idea guy" (as opposed to "I just need a programmer").
What if it's for guys not in NYC or the Bay Area?
Pre-emptive FAQ: Isn't this a horrible deal? Incubators typically inject more money for far less equity! I earn $10K a month, I could easily save up $8K in a few months, and do this myself for 100% equity. True. If you can get into YCombinator, for example , you should obviously go for it. I can't compete with that. If you're earning $150K+, or you've already been working on your side-project for a year, this may not…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The time commitments which come from an incubator are related to why YC's stakes are in the range they are, and why it consists of partners. How many investments are you making? One or two, maybe 50% equity is fair for your efforts at building traction and growing the company. Ten, probably not. A hundred, no way. On the other hand, a 100 investments is probably what is needed for the chance at a real payday. On Grah…
If this were a one time game you'd be correct. Assuming, he can quickly filter out a significant portion, it's possible to be very involved and have a significant chance of a large exit. This, of course, assumes that he's good at what he does which is an underlying assumption of this whole proposition. Rationale: Let's assume a home-run rate of about 3% which is my rough estimate of what it is for YC startups. That m…
(a) one person being able to do the job of the entire YC team.
(b) that person having equivalent relationships with additional capital.
(c) one might make the case that the relationships to capital must be better because ventures are likely to be located further from conventional sources of capital.
50% equity is a lot to give up for two months of effort unless the other co-founder is only expected to put in the initial two months. And if that's the case, why bother?
50-50 equal partners means no one gets what they want. That is both good and bad.
Pre-emptive FAQ: Isn't this a horrible deal? Incubators typically inject more money for far less equity! I earn $10K a month, I could easily save up $8K in a few months, and do this myself for 100% equity. True. If you can get into YCombinator, for example , you should obviously go for it. I can't compete with that. If you're earning $150K+, or you've already been working on your side-project for a year, this may not…
If interested, drop me a line at hnproject2013@gmail.com If you have questions or HN-style critic on the structure/proposition, write below and help me build proposition version 1.1!
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Agreed about the co-founder vs. investor problem. I would suggest anyone who wants to take this offer up do their diligence on hmexx and find out what he's bringing to the table as a co-founder. If it's just $8k for half a company that you will have to split 50/50 for the rest of it's existence, be wary. If he's a co-founder, he should join in on the workload after the MVP is proven. I would also consider vesting for…
Yeah - I am sure hmexx has hit on something - and I think it needs to evolve before its right (pivot! :-) My guess (above) is that HN is the ideal place for investor / 'prenuer matchmaking. Whether pg will let it be I cannot tell you. But it should beat AngelList just because.