What I learned from raising venture capital • Hacker News Board

Re: What I learned from raising venture capital

#31

Post by Maven911 » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 10:05 PM UTC

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #13

djb_hackernews wrote: post #2

How much did he raise again? He says he didn't get meetings until after the August vacation period. And announced the funding October 13th. Does it really only take 6 weeks to put together a multi-million (?) dollar round?

I didn't say, but it was 3M. As for August, I did get meetings before, it just caused trouble because some meetings I couldn't get before, or there would be large period between meetings, which hurts momentum. And that all adds up to it being harder to align the time-line across multiple firms.

This might be a bit inappropriate, but do you mind sharing how much ownership you gave up for that 3 mil and was there any strings attached ? And how did you finance your search engine before this financing round

Re: What I learned from raising venture capital

#32

Post by fredwilson » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 10:17 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #28

ccollins wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the biggest factors that increase the time suck? Amount of money you are raising, inexperience? Conversely, what consistently decreases the amount of time spent closing a round?

The two biggest factors in the time it takes to close a VC round are how obviously good the idea is, and how much competition there is for the deal. The two are not entirely independent of course. By "obviously good" I mean obviously good to VCs, who as a rule tend to overlook the very best ideas because they seem crazy. So for example it may have slowed things down for Gabriel that he was working on a new search eng…

It is crazy to compete with google

But crazy is good when combined with a good entrepreneur and some traction

Re: What I learned from raising venture capital

#33

Post by secretasiandan » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 12:57 AM UTC

eps wrote: post #23

epi0Bauqu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

--Angels mainly through angel investing myself, which I realize most people cannot do. --Entrepreneurs who have been funded before from going to events and getting intros through other people over the years. --I really didn't know many VCs. I met a few through entrepreneurship events in Philly. One through an angel friend a while back. And one I worked for 10 years ago.

Would you say that doing an angel investment (with no prior experience and no ties into the angel community) is a hard or risky thing to do? I've been considering trying it, but basically don't know where to start...

Assuming you know what you're doing or have a sense for what you believe the payout profile to be like, here's some metrics of the payout for N deals.

If you're at all risk averse, you probably want a percentile more like the 10th percentile payout, but this shows 50th percentile.

http://talkfast.org/2010/04/28/angel-investing-simulation-pa...

Re: What I learned from raising venture capital

#34

Post by 0x12 » Tue, Oct 25, 2011, 4:22 AM UTC

lurker17 wrote: post #16

heyrhett wrote: post #14

I am always extremely impressed by Gabriel Weinberg's honesty and transparency. He's literally not "selling anything" here. This is just a gift to his fellow entrepreneurs.

Well, he is advertising his company. Like HN, it's a marketing activity, but one that also has a value-creation component, not merely an attention-grab.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo