Ask HN: To diversify investment or to not diversify investment that is the? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: To diversify investment or to not diversify investment that is the?

1 pointCaptainAwesome1 comment

Hackers, internet friends, fellow dreamers,

Good Day!

I have found a guilty pleasure in this forum and its simplistic no nonsense format to entity and technology related information. Its rare that you can find a group of individuals dedicated towards the general development of new ideas and those pursuing them so before I jump into my most recent quandary I wanted to give thanks to all of you who read this. That being said, I guess the best place to start is the beginning.

TL;DR

-Started a company in the autonomous systems communication space

-We have functioning, usable technology that we have protected and developed.

-Have raised angel round that has gotten us far yet we believe it will take more than money to advance the company.

-Our current investor has been fantastic but lacks technical/industry experience. We will need to make a decision soon on what to do next regarding capital and advice.

-We are young and passionate to learn but lack experience on execution of establishing key verticals.

In September of 2014 I entered into a local pitch contest with an idea around fully autonomous systems requiring zero human interaction. I found a group of really smart engineers, convinced them that this was a good idea to follow and through a bit of hardwork, dedication, and Redbull we were able to win first place. I walked away from the competition with a good idea and most importantly a technical co-founder. We tried to keep the small brigade together that we had formed during the contest but after a few weeks it was just Taylor, myself, and our idea.

A few months go by and I went on to find myself an internship at a local drone company doing business development. Taylor goes back to his laboratory on campus and starts teaching himself the fundamentals of autonomous systems communications. Our idea had been put on the shelf for the time being while we grew ourselves and our understanding of this technology space.

Continued Below vvv

As winter rolled around we both found ourselves on campus during the winter break with no plans and free time to work. So we decide to give it one more shot, we lock ourselves in the library for 2 weeks defining our system, our ideas, and deciding upon the first tangible problem that we believed we could solve. We started from first principles, deduced some basic assumptions and mapped out our road to EL DORADO! While at the time our technology was imperfect we knew that we had stumbled upon a serious opportunity. I say opportunity because I believe that standard format of defining a "problem" is narrow sighted.

In January classes had started again. We are moving our way along and we hear about another pitch contest. We go in with our refined concept and win again. This time instead of leaving with a co-founder we walked away with the interest of a local investor. We meet a few times, explored his interest in our technology but left unsatisfied with his resolve and approach to growing us as individuals. Through out this entire process I had reconnected with a friend from high school whom was doing some work as a personal assistant to a venture capitalist. He had told his boss about what we we're working on and his boss had expressed interest in giving me some advice as to not get taken advantage of in the process. After a few conversations, meetings with myself and Taylor he expressed his own potential interest to invest. We botch our first presentation, learnt from it, and came back with our business plan which successfully got us a substantial angel investment in our idea.

Fast forward a few months after multiple meetings, the hiring of a few team members, the leasing of a small office space downtown, we entered summer heads held high in our glass box of innovation. Over this past summer we have developed some really cool technology that has the potential to have a substantial impact in our specific industry. We have been patenting like mad men, building best practices and in general teaching ourselves how to jump start an up start.

Now its November and we have reached an impasse. We don't know how to take this company into the market. We have plenty of ideas but due to the nature and complexity of autonomous systems and especially small UAVs we don't have the experience interacting with FAA, NASA, and the other partners we believe are necessary key verticals. Unfortunately our investor is not experienced with technical start ups and I have come to the conclusion that we need to bring in outside experience in order to grow this company and our technology to its fullest potential. The problem is we don't know where to start or draw the line. Do we seek investment from a VC firm? Shoot for a partnership with a larger company? Take more money from our current investor and try and find an industry specialist to establish these relationships we so desperately need? Or potentially some fourth option that we haven't considered.

Our pain points are numerous but we believe our opportunity and potential impact for outweigh any temporary pain. I post this because I am eager to hear thoughts from others in the technology space. I am constantly learning and have found that one of my true passions in life is to learn from others.

As always...

Thanks for reading, -CA

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