> 1) play coy / not describe the product,
"Play coy" has nothing to do with it. Holding off the details of the announcement until my Web site is ready to go live and please lots of people is important and the reason for not saying more now.
> 2) flog dissatisfaction with VC behavior
One lesson can learn about VC behavior from my posts is that so far, from all I've written that you don't like, no VC likes to hear at all, not a tiny bit.
So, a lesson for every entrepreneur on HN is that nothing I have written in any way covers what is necessary for VC interest.
Why is this important? VC Web sites commonly emphasize new, advanced technology, big markets, swinging for the fences, ..., etc. Well, my posts promise all of that. But no VCs respond. The same things sent to VCs via e-mail have the same results -- dead. The same things sent to VCs via Twitter -- same thing.
So, from what I am writing here, some thing necessary for VC interest is missing.
IMHO: Essentially ALL the information technology VCs are interested in is traction significant and growing rapidly. Essentially everything without that traction goes in the trash. VCs don't want to say this, but entrepreneurs need to know it or do what I did -- jerk the chains of nearly every VC on both US coasts with pitches of every style. The responses were essentially all zero; essentially the only thing missing was traction.
That VCs want traction is, thus, a fairly solid conclusion and really important for entrepreneurs to know about VCs.
Why are VCs this way? IMHO, the LPs got together and wrote out some severe criteria for VC investments. The criteria are much like in private equity or commercial banking: Only make a financial investment in a financial asset. Technology, algorithms, running code, secret sauce, etc. are all just irrelevant. For VC, the LPs are willing to bend a little and call traction significant and growing rapidly a suitable surrogate for the usual financial assets. Entrepreneurs need to know this.
But for a solo founder with the only capex needed a PC as a first server, the LPs rules are too severe.
But some of the VCs and LPs are making money now.
Here is a secret -- don't tell anyone! If I am successful, then I will have a long track record here on HN saying to the VCs "I told you so." or "You ignored me until I had revenue enough to ignore you." Or I'll be able to point to my posts here as not sufficient for any VC interest. Maybe then, finally, the VCs will be clear on what their criteria are, in one word, traction.
> 3) throw out outrageous $1T numbers,
There is nothing "outrageous" there. Instead it is just simple arithmetic.
If you are willing to entertain that there is a problem such that nearly everyone on the Web will find the first good solution a "must have" (e.g., like horse owners found the Model T), then consider the 1-2 billion users in the more developed countries, that is, where can get some good ad revenue. Assume that those people will go for the solution ballpark 3 times a week and each time see 50 ordinary ads (the user interface is interactive and iterative which is crucial for the core applied math but also good for showing users a lot of ads with, it turns out, quite good ad targeting). Assume the relatively good ad targeting. Then compare with the number of unique users, the daily user traffic, page views, ad impressions, revenue, and market cap of Google and Facebook. Done. Nothing at all outrageous.
Or get a lot of eyeball time each week from nearly everyone in the more developed countries and, presto, bingo, can monetize to $1T market cap.
Sure, a Web site for selling winter sweaters for puppy dogs on line might be an okay business, but, as a first step in picking a business idea or project, pick a problem that nearly everyone has, not just people who have a dog, cherish it, and want to walk it in cold weather. I tried to do that; dirt simple tactic.
The problem? One I had and still have, daily. I believe that essentially everyone on the Internet has the same problem. So far there is no good solution.
Why no solution? Can't get a good solution with only what is common on Sand Hill Road or in the Stanford, CMU, or MIT CS departments now. My applied math is nothing like what the AI/ML people are doing. I have nothing neural. I don't claim that my code is intelligent.
No one screaming for a solution? Well, before the Model T, horse owners were not screaming for the Model T, either. Why not? They could not imagine something both better and at all realistic. Essentially every horse owner had the problem, and the Model T was the first good solution. Same for my work: Internet users have the problem but can't
imagine something both better and at all realistic.
Besides a big theme in information technology is moving ahead! E.g., in the last few months we have seen 14 TB SSDs, 16 thread consumer processors, and, from my ISP, download data rates of 100 Mbps up from about 10 Mbps over the interval, with the prices falling quickly. Main memory is going for ballpark $10/GB, one DIMM at a time, retail. Back there, 300 MB of disk storage weighed 750 pounds and cost $40,000. Big changes. Well, I have in mind another big change but will be not nearly the first.
In lots of other ways, we have seen big changes. E.g., Amazon: They were an on-line book and record shop, but consider them now. How'd they do that? Well when Bezos started, no way was the Internet data rate high enough to permit him to send so many pictures of the products. Now the pictures are so good that shopping in brick and mortar sources does not have better product information, usually much less good.
Big changes are possible.
But, I can assure you, essentially no VC in the country sees my $1T and is interested enough for a phone call, an e-mail, or even a Tweet.
E.g., USV just got a new investing partner who posted
> If you’re a founder or potential founder
building something transformational, I’m
so eager to meet you. I’m on a new
adventure and I’m ready to dive into
yours, too. You can reach me at
Rebecca@USV.com.
So, I wrote her. Hear back? Nope! And I'm not holding my breath waiting!
So, why do VCs post such garbage? Curious. Conjecture: They want to maintain the image that they invest in things that are "transformational" without mentioning traction. So, it's an initial tactic for getting "deal flow" and then deal negotiation.
> 4) rile people up with arguments about VB.NET.
What's to be riled up about? As a platform, I picked Windows instead of Linux -- lots of people and serious organizations have done that.
On Windows, a key to nearly any software development of production software is the .NET Framework.
Okay. Well, Visual Basic .NET can make apparently full use of the .NET Framework. Indeed, Microsoft MSDN Web pages documenting the .NET Framework, and I have about 5000 of them, are all or nearly all just the same for VB.NET as anything else, including C#.
So, what's wrong with writing in Visual Basic .NET? I see nothing wrong. What is the much better alternative? I see no significantly better alternative.
> Look, it's nice that you got some use out of Microsoft's frankly very irritating old developer tools.
What? What "old developer tools"? I wrote in Visual Basic .NET which is an essentially fully up to date language on Windows and very different from the old Visual Basic.
So, what are you concerned about?