If I can buy a domain from ICANN for 10 bucks and then sell it to a company for a million... Why can't this guy reserve the right to sell this to that company for a million?
Yeah. To be honest the only unit tests I ever wrote... I wrote after I built something that I understood through and through and is likely to change very little.
I really only did it cause people tend to say... "don't use open source unless it has tests". I even did all the code coverage stuff... got it to 90%+
It was fun and amusing... certainly not a validation of TDD though.
I like your usual advice! I imagine there are a lot of very ingenious things hidden within the code of people who have never written an article. Or even just contradictions to articles that they may have written.
I find a lot of articles tend to just build upon common assumptions with a unique twist. Makes sense though, people want to read things that validate their assumptions. People want to write things that people want to read.
I'm thinking it doesn't have to be so complicated as web chat and SMS. Forester is kinda in the business of convincing companies to spend money on new fancy stuff.
Just respond to an email right away with a welcoming and well considered response. As soon as I know someone has reliable email support, I'm down.
Calling is fine too, but with email you give someone a chance to do a bit of research for you and not be on the spot.
From what I understand, a million is what you need to get you an "industry presence" that creates a gravitational effect. Where in you prompt people to join you vs competing with you.
5k-20k investments almost seem silly... Why not just bootstrap it yourself?
If you're in a rough spot, starting a company isn't likely to help out much. You're far better off building a career and getting stable first.
If you have to start a company instead of getting a job for some reason, a tech startup isn't the best choice for immediate cash flow. Particularly one that requires investment to get off the ground.
There are knowledge, skills, and savviness gaps to bridge, unless you're a serial entrepreneur, you won't have done this when you start. You need the stability to weather through the failures caused by those gaps.
If you're a developer, you need time to understand the business world and the business mindset. Alternatively, you can find someone who does, but in that case you need to be able to properly vet business cofounders. You also need to have the social skills to not blow up the relationship.
Asking an investor to fund you while you learn these lessons is unreasonable. He has no clue how long it's going to take. If you approach one with an idea, he is going to be looking at you as much as the idea, and they see dozens of hopefuls just like you every day.
That's a lot of reasoning but little insight. Very few people have 20k cash to spend, world-wide. Some of them might have true innovation in their pockets.
The problem is, an investor needs these people more than the other way around. There this general pretense that when you're funded you've been blessed by 'angels', but they need the big hit more than you do. And yet, they won't budge. They refuse to see that it's a two-way relationship and so everyone loses.
In other words, we don't have the innovation we all want partly because we are so bad at figuring out how to connect funding to innovation. Currently, we use inane heuristics, ego and bankrupt intuition -- and it's not working.
I'm not sure 'true innovation' is what investors are looking for though. I mean that's what they say because it 'sounds right'. In reality they want to create a buzz and draw attention to something. I do agree that they need people, but the good ones make sure they have the right network.
I think what they do is entirely based upon intuition and ego. If it was just about making sure that things 'add up' a computer could do it and banks would make big bucks. They need to be sure that the idea really can be big in society, and that the founder is the type of person who will drive it there.
I totally agree with what you are saying right now. Didn't mean to seem like I was assuming that everyone has money, I know that is not the case. More-so that if you just need 5k-20k to get things off the ground... I don't think a VC is who you turn to. Especially in an extremely public setting like that with your heart on your sleeve.
I just think this site/concept is a gimmick designed to rise up hacker news/twitter and attract attention to this particular VC. Sort of like... "look at me other VCs and real opportunities". The videos are basically displaying... "Look how much of an ace investor I am, come to me on the side with legit stuff please and I can help you out."
Mainly because investing is about hype as much as anything else. From a VC point of view: If an idea is not worth 1 million right now ... how could it ever be worth a billion? How could it ever attract the market?
I dunno. All we are talking about here is 10 videos and 5k spent over 3 months. I can't see how this is much more than a marketing gimmick to help their name stand out from the pack.
I'm sure if something legit started brewing they would shut off the camera and head to the fine dining spot.
Though maybe what you are saying is that the VC who wins is the one who invests in a product that makes being a VC obsolete?
