Huge congrats Garry. Maybe we will find a way to work together in the future!
Dude yes. Congrats on the ongoing success!
Introducing Initialized Capital
71–80 of 155 posts
Re: Introducing Initialized Capital
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi Garry, congrats and good luck! My question: will you follow other investors pattern for whom only warm introductions matter? I read in the press other SV investors stating that exactly zero investments were made as a consequence of a pitch through the contact email. Will this be true to you as well? thanks!
We're trying to figure out ways to get around this for later stage seed investments. We don't have a solution yet, but we're working on it. In a thread below I talk about file cabinet industries — industries that basically have no software, and are horribly inefficient. Investing is absolutely one of those, but only using email and calendaring. The main bottleneck for investors is number of hours in the day, because…
>We're trying to figure out ways to get around this for later stage seed investments.
Does that mean that seed stage companies should not bother contacting you unless they can get a warm intro?
Re: Introducing Initialized Capital
#73Garry I've never met you, but you seem exceptionally popular so please don't read this the wrong way, but...
Right now the business of funding startups seems hypersaturated. Literally every day I discover someone new hanging out their shingle to fund startups...and that isn't even counting the countless others who fund as individuals without creating a vanity nameplate for their investment activities. So my question is...why does Initialized need to exist?
Re: Introducing Initialized Capital
#74The news is out! Congrats guys!
Re: Introducing Initialized Capital
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
network effects. If you are a marketplace or service you need both sides ramping up fast- the more users you get the more valuable it becomes and easier to attract more and so on.
...and this is like a magnet.... how?
Might be something like adding an iron core to your magnet? Not sure, the analogy is sketchy at best.
Re: Introducing Initialized Capital
#76Garry - way to go!! Raising a fund of 100M+ while being so founder friendly is not easy. Of course building a stellar team helps. Nicely done!
I read your farewell letter when you left YC - you hit the nail on head by saying you haven't decided what to do because that would obviate the "founder's perspective". Founders who are going to a known from a known will never know the unknowns faced by a startup.
Everybody I've talked to has raves to say about you. We're solving the problem of paper Checks. People and Businesses are still writing paper Checks. Contrary to popular opinion, Checks moved 5X the money as VISA and MC combined in 2014. We're already seed funded but would love to talk more.
Re: Introducing Initialized Capital
#77any interest/aversion to hardware or hardware/software?
Re: Introducing Initialized Capital
#78Hi HN! Happy to answer questions here, which is funny because this is where it all really started for me back in 2007 when I was first thinking of starting my first company. I started as an HN reader working at a friend's startup, applied to YC and got in, became a YC partner, and then an early stage investor. We're engineers and designers and product folks, and most investors aren't still (which is crazy, right?) so…
Hi Garry, Do you guys hold office hours for startups in your portfolio or anyone can schedule some time with you? And what should one do to be prepared for the office hours? Thanks
We're working on a system to do this, and will announce it when it's ready. Sign up for email notifications at initialized.com to see when it's up.
Re: Introducing Initialized Capital
#79Hi HN! Happy to answer questions here, which is funny because this is where it all really started for me back in 2007 when I was first thinking of starting my first company. I started as an HN reader working at a friend's startup, applied to YC and got in, became a YC partner, and then an early stage investor. We're engineers and designers and product folks, and most investors aren't still (which is crazy, right?) so…
Hi Garry - awesome news! Couple of questions: you mentioned about funding outside of SF, do you invest outside of the States too (i.e. the UK)? Also, great to hear about support for smaller team sizes and investing pre-team as it were, but what's the plan for growth sizes? Pushing for unicorns or some of the portfolio aimed at smaller niches? Edit: also, used to be a Posterous user, and actually had a product in a si…
We've been spending some time in the UK and really think the ecosystem in London is impressive and growing with real companies doing great work. We haven't invested any UK-based startups yet, but have funded many UK founders, if that's worth anything? :-)
We wanna invest in folks early. The fund isn't for investing in B's or C's or later, since there are plenty of people who are good at that.
Re: Introducing Initialized Capital
#80Hi HN! Happy to answer questions here, which is funny because this is where it all really started for me back in 2007 when I was first thinking of starting my first company. I started as an HN reader working at a friend's startup, applied to YC and got in, became a YC partner, and then an early stage investor. We're engineers and designers and product folks, and most investors aren't still (which is crazy, right?) so…
Two quick questions: Of the investments Initialized has made, what percentage of them are non-YC alums? Of those, how did they connect with Initialized? Cold email, warm intro, etc?
About 1 out of 3 startups from our last fund were not YC. Many came from warm intros, but a few I scouted and found myself. I went out and recruited Bannerman to YC personally (they're focused on security, which fulfills a key role on Maslow's hierarchy of needs), for instance, and then later invested afterwards.
Cold inbound emails haven't worked well for me, but that's where software down the road should help.