Advice? I bet you $10 she will not say ``No''. You'll even get ``buying signals''. If I were you, and I wanted to learn more than I wanted to sell? Ask ``why would you want to invest in my company'' and pressure her for a real answer.
Sales is mostly about moving a process forward, so your only goal is to get to the next step.
If the VC isn't a full partner, your next step is to get to a meeting with a partner.
If the VC is a full partner, you want to ask, ``what's the process you use to decide on investments''. Usually, there's a dance of customer-validation meetings that precedes a ``partner meeting'', the outcome of which is a term sheet. So you want to chart out the state machine that terminates in a partner meeting, and then transit from state 0 towards that meeting.
(1) Reads like "case-in-point" for Norvig's argument that the GoF patterns are artifacts of less expressive languages. Most of these examples battle clearer, more effective idiomatic alternatives in Ruby.
(2) Yet another misinterpretation of what Chris Alexander meant by "A Pattern Language". The GoF book isn't a cookbook, it's a starting point.
(3) This document didn't benefit at all from being "typeset" in PDF; any Wordpress blog with syntax highlighting plugins would have presented it better.
Wouldn't it be cool to see the "real" design patterns for Ruby?
With an inherently smaller addressable population of users ("all businesspeople", as opposed to "all people, and any cartoon characters they like"), LinkedIn probably needs to be more aggressive about capturing some of the value third-party apps create on their site. I feel like the subtext here is that LinkedIn doesn't want to give this feature away for free.
Sorry, my fault for being incoherent. Look for the word "coup" in "Submarine". Viaweb injected a factoid into the, uh, press-o-sphere. Reporters love new factoids.
What I see work, over and over again, is companies manufacturing surveys or studies that come up with numbers and metrics about the market, like, "20,000 enterprises are deploying technology to stop the Storm worm". Some companies will do annual press releases about an official-sounding report they generate, like, "Weboopia's 5th Annual Twitter Study Concludes 4,897,489,281 Messages Delivered Over Twitter In 2007".
Again amusing that people disagree, and think that a questionairre which allows for "WhatSpace? WhoBook?" should advertise algorithm selection on a splash page.
Schwartz. Perfect example. The government-issued PR firm for Boston companies. Competed with 2 companies simultaneously repped by them. Saw, maybe, 5? trade press hits between the two of them.
We didn't do much better, because we were also repped by a PR company, and playing the same pasteurized process press food strategy as the rest of them.
Which is my point. Wasting money on a jaded middleman to circulate press releases every time you make a dot release isn't something you should aspire to do when you can afford it, and PR isn't something you should avoid doing now.
My current company, a tiny startup, is in Forbes, Wired, EWeek, Network Computing, Inforworld, Baseline, not to mention Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit. Didn't spend a dime to do it. Definitely got lucky, but there's also definitely a trick to doing it.
I agree with the "survey" trick Graham talks about. I've seen that work over and over again.
Too many questions, and why on earth do your users care that you use SIMULATED ANNEALING? I've actually used SIMULATED ANNEALING (for graph layout) and I don't even care.
Have you ever worked with a PR firm that was actually worth the money? I've worked directly with 4 in the past and got fuck-all from it, but we're handling our own press now and kicking ass.
If, holding talent constant, a developer costs $100k in the bay and $65k in Ann Arbor, Michigan, then Ann Arbor startups have a pronounced recruitment advantage. That's all I'm saying.
The conventional wisdom is, "go to the Bay Area, it'll be much easier to find smart developers." It is, in fact, very easy to find smart developers in the Bay Area. Unfortunately, they work for Google.
I understand, and am not arguing with you. Whatever you want to call them, that "second round of folks before later" is harder to hire than the founders. They're employees, not principals, and you can't bullshit them.
I think you should ask questions of the conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom says one of the reasons to move a company to the Bay Area is that it's easier to hire developers. You should question whether that's really true. I gave some reasons why I think it might not be, and cited my experience. I don't think it's true. But you make the call.
Also, careful with words like "later stage". You're "later stage" as soon as you hire the first person who isn't getting a founder's stake in the company. For us, that was weeks, not months, after the birth of our company.
You're making a lot of sense; I'm just saying, my experience was that it was harder to hire in the Bay Area than it has been for me to hire in NYC or Chicago, where I hire now.
It's also obvious that developers are more expensive to hire anybody in San Francisco than in Des Moines or Minneapolis.
Also, please note the bias towards founders in these discussions. A tiny team of founders is a good start, but you eventually need actual employees.
This is really cool, thanks. I had no idea about Windylabs and ChicagoBeta. Unfortunately, it looks like ChicagoBeta has flatlined since early summer. Any other pointers like this?
Isn't this the problem Facebook is supposed to solve? =)
Just to reiterate, an idea that goes from 100% to 25% based solely on Paul Graham is not a good idea.
To restate the original point: I feel like some of the people on this forum approach starting a business the same way they approach applying to college, or to grad school. That is not how it works. Your success is not gated on the "grownups" in the admissions office, or the department, or Y Combinator, making a decision about you.
If you catch yourself thinking about it that way, stop. Even if you get your 2 month's consulting dollars out of Y Combinator, nothing else in business works that way. There's no professorship to apply to once you get funded. You actually have to engage the market and win.
"We know because we make people move for Y Combinator, and it doesn't seem to be a problem. The advantage of being able to work together face to face for three months outweighs the inconvenience of moving. Ask anyone who's done it."
Hello, Paul. I'm selection bias. We haven't met formally, but you're obviously acquainted with me.
Sales is mostly about moving a process forward, so your only goal is to get to the next step.
If the VC isn't a full partner, your next step is to get to a meeting with a partner.
If the VC is a full partner, you want to ask, ``what's the process you use to decide on investments''. Usually, there's a dance of customer-validation meetings that precedes a ``partner meeting'', the outcome of which is a term sheet. So you want to chart out the state machine that terminates in a partner meeting, and then transit from state 0 towards that meeting.