Money and Finance
- Sam Altman On Econtalk
Link to: Sam Altman on Start-ups, Venture Capital, and the Y Combinator Sam Altman, president of startup accelerating firm Y Combinator, talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Y Combinator's innovative strategy for discovering, funding, and...
- Meet The Uber Rich
Link to article: Meet the Uber Rich Uber’s new round of financing values it at $17 billion. So these lucky ones who were in at the start have made 2,000x their initial outlay. The valuation of Uber is poised to hit an eye-popping $17 billion...
- Why Investors Should Pay Attention To The Jobs Act Of 2012
From the Distressed Debt Investing blog: On April 5th, 2012, President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act into law. In my opinion, this may be one of the most important pieces of legislation enacted in the past 20 years. And investors...
- Was Harry Potter Inevitable? - Michael Mauboussin
Our society often associates success with quality. In a fiercely competitive market, the thinking goes, only the best products rise to the surface. Once a product is a hit, whether a blockbuster movie or a bestselling book, we readily point to the attributes...
- Weekly Roundup - February 15, 2014
We're now into week 3 of February which is crazy. This past week was extremely busy for me between finishing up a job, going home for a few days, and coming back to work to start a new job up. It's good to be back at work though and have things...
Money and Finance
How to Convince Investors – by Paul Graham
(This is one of a pair of essays on fundraising. The next one, on fundraising tactics, is coming soon.)
When people hurt themselves lifting heavy things, it's usually because they try to lift with their back. The right way to lift heavy things is to let your legs do the work. Inexperienced founders make the same mistake when trying to convince investors. They try to convince with their pitch. Most would be better off if they let their startup do the work—if they started by understanding why their startup is worth investing in, then simply explained this well to investors.
Investors are looking for startups that will be very successful. But that test is not as simple as it sounds. In startups, as in a lot of other domains, the distribution of outcomes follows a power law, but in startups the curve is startlingly steep. The big successes are so big they dwarf the rest. And since there are only a handful each year (the conventional wisdom is 15), investors treat "big success" as if it were binary. Most are interested in you if you seem like you have a chance, however small, of being one of the 15 big successes, and otherwise not.
(There are a handful of angels who'd be interested in a company with a high probability of being moderately successful. But angel investors like big successes too.)
How do you seem like you'll be one of the big successes? You need three things: formidable founders, a promising market, and (usually) some evidence of success so far.
- Sam Altman On Econtalk
Link to: Sam Altman on Start-ups, Venture Capital, and the Y Combinator Sam Altman, president of startup accelerating firm Y Combinator, talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Y Combinator's innovative strategy for discovering, funding, and...
- Meet The Uber Rich
Link to article: Meet the Uber Rich Uber’s new round of financing values it at $17 billion. So these lucky ones who were in at the start have made 2,000x their initial outlay. The valuation of Uber is poised to hit an eye-popping $17 billion...
- Why Investors Should Pay Attention To The Jobs Act Of 2012
From the Distressed Debt Investing blog: On April 5th, 2012, President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act into law. In my opinion, this may be one of the most important pieces of legislation enacted in the past 20 years. And investors...
- Was Harry Potter Inevitable? - Michael Mauboussin
Our society often associates success with quality. In a fiercely competitive market, the thinking goes, only the best products rise to the surface. Once a product is a hit, whether a blockbuster movie or a bestselling book, we readily point to the attributes...
- Weekly Roundup - February 15, 2014
We're now into week 3 of February which is crazy. This past week was extremely busy for me between finishing up a job, going home for a few days, and coming back to work to start a new job up. It's good to be back at work though and have things...