151–160 of 209 posts
>> We are a team of 8. We are 2 full-stack, 1 iOS, 1 Android and 4 product people What were the 4 product people doing day to day?
The non-engineers are the: CEO Head of Ontology Head of Product Design & User Research User Research
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Out of curiosity, do you have direct experience with entrepreneurship? This is extremely easy to say from a distance, and so naturally everyone does, only to bite their tongue once they've gone through it.
I've built a few companies. I think it's super valuable to have some on the team who doesn't give shit at all about the tech and only cares about a) is this the right problem and b) who cares (read: pays). This person helps you focus, forces (if given authority) the tram to focus on "things that move the needle". Devs and designers simply lack that customer-development focus. I think every team would benefit from a q…
> Devs and designers simply lack that customer-development focus
That’s an unfair generalization. They will have that focus if imbued on them by the company, and the right motivated hires are made.
I empathize completely with this team because my company was in a very similar situation in 2018. We had two very technical computer vision products, had found traction and a growing enterprise user base but revenues didn't grow fast enough and all of the major companies were entering the market. We were lucky enough to find an acquisition off ramp last year but all of the feels are the same. The big takeaway I learn…
Totally agree with this sentiment. I think this is why most "hard technology" problems are left to huge R&D departments or the government. Both of which aren't particularly nimble or profitable. There are a few notable exceptions (Oculus comes to mind), but most unicorns don't generally deal with solving tough problems. It's mostly about product-market fit and the balance sheets.
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Not even. I'm seeing seed and series As/Bs on unproven teams of recent graduates with no experience in the field where the "start up" operates. No business plan, no prototype, huge regulatory walls to climb. It is worst than tulip mania.
Dude. Conflating seed (median $2.1m 18q4) rounds with B (probably 10x that) rounds is... not serious.
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Yes you can. It's called a small business loan. See https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans and https://www.bankofamerica.com/smallbusiness/business-financi... . You'd finance your dry cleaners with debt rather than equity because (unless you are starting a chain) you are not shooting for the massive, near-zero marginal cost scaling that the venture capital model focuses on. Instead, the bank looks for a modest, p…
Yah, but re:wework, throw in a dry cleaning app that schedules a dirty laundry pickup and suddenly the valuation goes from marginal to billions. Especially if you get some machine learning in there to detect spots (or something).
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Dude. Conflating seed (median $2.1m 18q4) rounds with B (probably 10x that) rounds is... not serious.
Look closer at the news, it’s not uncommon to see 10M+ rounds for companies that haven’t put out a single ounce of product.
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Zero marginal cost in theory. In reality, you often find enormous cloud costs combined with huge marketing spend.
As long as your product is perfectly scalable and generates a profit for money spent that way, it makes perfect sense to take a loan, spend a fortune, make a fortune, then pay off the loan and take in profits. Then turn around and do it again. It isn't the absolute size of the numbers that matters. It is the ability to rapidly scale the business once you have the right business model and product.
I empathize completely with this team because my company was in a very similar situation in 2018. We had two very technical computer vision products, had found traction and a growing enterprise user base but revenues didn't grow fast enough and all of the major companies were entering the market. We were lucky enough to find an acquisition off ramp last year but all of the feels are the same. The big takeaway I learn…