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How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000

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Re: How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000

#11

Post by tempestn »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #9
buro9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more efficient than 75 investors and $0. Though seriously, there are no overnight successes and no-one is just going to give you $1m regardless of what we read on HN. I don't have my notebook at hand to cite the exact number, but Matthew Prince of Cloudflare pitched to something like 60 or 70 investors. This was with Project Honeypot in the bag, and a stack of existing users via that, and the basis for what beca…

But is it more efficient than 0 investors and $0? It seems like if most people doing startups are having 70 investor meetings they could be better spending that time working on the product right? I think cloudflare is kind of an outlying example here.

If you don't have a business at all, its efficiency is somewhat irrelevant. Not all startups can bootstrap their way up from nothing; some do require initial capital.

Re: How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000

#12

Post by lsc »

1) Wear your Company T-shirt

heh.

I've actually thought about this a lot. I always wear a company shirt, yeah, but I also tend to wear the same clothing all the time, too, on the theory that it makes me more recognizable, and that being recognized is good.

My theory (which may, of course, be wrong) is that in branding? being consistent and recognizable is far more important than looking good. But then, I'm trying to generate word of mouth for small customers, not trying to get investors, so the rules may be different... but it sounds like she has a similar philosophy.

Re: How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000

#14

Post by [deleted] »

lsc wrote: post #12

1) Wear your Company T-shirt heh. I've actually thought about this a lot. I always wear a company shirt, yeah, but I also tend to wear the same clothing all the time, too, on the theory that it makes me more recognizable, and that being recognized is good. My theory (which may, of course, be wrong) is that in branding? being consistent and recognizable is far more important than looking good. But then, I'm trying to…

[deleted]

Re: How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000

#15

Post by RyanZAG »

robryan wrote: post #10

Being a single founder how did the business travel during those 3 months of what must have been near fulltime fundraising?

I'd guess that she built some small prototypes first on a shoestring budget, then used that to raise the funds over 3 months. Now that she has $650K, she can probably hire a few extra people and work on it full time for a couple years.

Fairly standard way to go. Putting the breaks on to acquire funding to continue is common.

Re: How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000

#17

Post by rorrr »

A) What did you give up for $650K?

B) $650K seems such a low amount of money, it's barely enough to hire 2-3 senior level developers for a year, and rent an office space. I have no idea how you guys launch startups with such small amounts of money.

Re: How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000

#18

Post by edu »

rorrr wrote: post #17

A) What did you give up for $650K? B) $650K seems such a low amount of money, it's barely enough to hire 2-3 senior level developers for a year, and rent an office space. I have no idea how you guys launch startups with such small amounts of money.

Are you serious?

Re: How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000

#19

Post by nowentrepreneur »

Meeting 75 investors is a great indication of much entrepreneurs (here Aihui) believe in what they are doing and ready to go to what extent. Rejections can get on to you and worst is when they start making you doubt the very purpose of what you are doing. It becomes difficult to fuel yourself with passion all the time.

Some of the meetings even get you great feedback (along with VC boilerplates). But alls well that ends well.

Congrats to Aihui.

Re: How I Met 75 Investors and Raised $650,000

#20

Post by fuzzythinker »

edu wrote: post #18
rorrr wrote: post #17

A) What did you give up for $650K? B) $650K seems such a low amount of money, it's barely enough to hire 2-3 senior level developers for a year, and rent an office space. I have no idea how you guys launch startups with such small amounts of money.

Are you serious?

That's not far from the truth for locations like SF bay area.
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