Marc Andreessen at Startup School [video]

First, the example you use--YC--is not even seed stage. It's an incubator, and is one of the extremely few opportunities where "just submit a compelling application" works.

Also, this is not even about angel investing. All business deals involve human beings and people tend to trust people who came through an intro. It's the law of nature.

It's naive to think that angel investors are just clamoring to fund any random startup just because they have no connection to VCs. From my experience it's very rare to find investors who don't have herd mentality--nothing wrong with that, they're just being human.

Right. But it's tough to find any such statement on the Web site of a seed or series A VC.

If they want me to have users, then they want me to have revenue. For that I need to get my first server built, running, and live on the Internet. And once I have that, I can just get the publicity and mostly otherwise see if people like the site without any equity funding.

If the users do like the site and the usage grows, by the time that first server is fully busy, I will have ballpark $200,000 a month in revenue with less than 1% of that as expenses and 99+% of it as pre-tax earnings. Then since I'm a solo founder and 100% owner, why should I consider equity funding?

Or, by the time they want to write me a check, I won't need it.

> Or your $10bn/year metric is non-sense.

Not at all. Planning is important, and that's how the planning works out. Sure, there is the assumption that people like the site. But the site itself is not much of a question since the software is essentially ready for quite serious production.

If the VCs want to wait until the $10 billion is much easier to see, fine for them. Then they can offer to write me a series A check for $5 million for 1/3rd of my company? Gee, thanks, guys, your $5 million is about 5 hours of my revenue, nearly all of which is pre-tax earnings.

> I see 0 ads per session because I use an ad blocker.

If that gets to be a problem, then I will send the ads from my server and not have my Web pages get the ads from ad servers; besides part of my work is some unique and especially effective ad targeting where it will be easier for me just to send the ads from my server farm; ad blockers will, then, have to tell the difference between Web page images that are ads and ones that are content, both coming from the same domain name. Lot's of luck, there, guys!

> What exactly is the pressing problem you're solving?

I told the VCs. None of them gave a sh_t.

My intention here is not to pitch VCs. Instead, I'm just trying to give other entrepreneurs the benefit of the painful, wasteful lessons I learned: In shortest terms, just pick a project you can do from your own checkbook, build that business, wait for the VCs to call you, and, then, see if you are still willing to accept their check. Likely you won't be.

For my

>the world's best solution, much better than anything else, for a problem that is pressing for nearly all users of the Internet,

Well, that's what I intend. I know quite a lot about the field, area, space, market I'm in, and, of course, my work, and so far that statement appears correct.

That statement is supposed to be a simple, clear, accurate statement about reality as best I or anyone can see it now.

One way to evaluate that statement is just to wait. If the statement is correct, then I should have a company worth several hundred billion dollars, but then VC funding would be absurd. Maybe KKR or GS could arrange an M&A, maybe the largest ever. Or there could be one heck of an IPO.

In the meanwhile, we have to make estimates.

If a VC doubts that statement, then it's time for them to ask questions. But a solid answer won't be short so wasn't in the initial contacts I made.

But an initial contact is not supposed to have lots of detail but just be a start of a conversation, mostly to answer the questions the VCs have. There never was even a start on such a conversation.

Gee, sometimes big things do happen: E.g., the guy who first saw a good, cheap, practical way to make pure aluminum from the ore had to know he was onto something really big, and he was, and should have said so.

Full support would take some explanation about metals, strength of materials, corrosion, airplanes, fabrication, etc. so would not be short.

My statement, "blowhard" or not, touches on a central point for Sand Hill Road: The only way they pay the rent, make money, and make LPs happy is grand slam home runs, that is, the really exceptional successes. So, the VCs are forced to be interested essentially only in the exceptional. So, it should be appropriate to discuss the exceptional, "blowhard" or not.

If the VCs believe that the project would look better limited to only 1 million target users, then there should be a way to arrange that! Is that really the concern of the VCs who ignore my e-mail and foil decks?

For why the VCs ignore my "blowhard" statement, my best guess is that the VCs are totally convinced, down to the center of the cells at the center of their bone marrow, that there is no way, none, zip, zilch, and zero, for any human alive, given that Einstein is not, ever early on to predict a major success. Instead, all anyone can do is look at early traction and otherwise just hope for good luck. So, discussing anything exceptional, actually successful as desired, is just counting on luck and, thus, absurd.

My reaction, sometimes included in what I sent VCs, is that there is a long history of projects done by the US DoD where from the beginning, maybe just on the back of an envelope, the goal was something exceptional, the project passed good peer-review, technical evaluation early on, and the results were as intended, on time, on budget, or nearly so. Examples: The B-29, designed essentially just to fly between Guam and Japan (IIRC, ballpark $6 billion). The Manhattan Project. The B-52 (with updates, still flying). The Boeing 707 -- quickly put the passenger steamships out of business. The nuclear submarines. The missile firing nuclear submarines. The SR-71. GPS. The F-117 stealth fighters that flew over Baghdad in Gulf War I. I started my career in US DoD work around DC and saw such things.

My Ph.D. dissertation? I cooked it up on an airplane flight with a summary on one page. It worked just as planned -- the math, the software, the solution to the real problem.

For my

> So, what ARE the VCs looking for?

Sure, since I tried all the advice and everything else I could think of, that is just the crucial remaining question. My guess at an answer is what explained and what I'm trying to contribute here.

My remark about the pregnant wives, etc. was to exaggerate to make what appears to be an important point: VCs want dependent entrepreneurs. Or, the relationship between the founders and the VCs is a power struggle where the more power one has, the more money they end up with.

> The second part with caricatures is indicative of bitterness.

Not "bitterness" -- I'm not pissed. "This is away beyond pissed." I got a lot of advice; read lots of VC Web sites on what they wanted; it was all a huge waste of time.

> Both attributes are radioactive to investors

Some of what I sent some VCs had something like

>the world's best solution, much better than anything else, for a problem that is pressing for nearly all users of the Internet,

but not all. Whether such was included or not made no difference.

In what I sent, there was no indication of "bitterness".

> when there is no impressive revenue

And THAT'S my core point: What the VCs are looking for is traction, better still, revenue, better still, impressive revenue with an impressive growth rate, better still, earnings, then impressive earnings.

Fine. That's what I'm looking for, too. And when I get there, I won't need their equity funding and won't want their equity funding because I won't want what is in their term sheet and won't want to report to a BoD.

Apparently this was the same for the founder of Plenty of Fish -- IIRC, he remained sole owner and finally sold out for about $550 million. No VCs involved.

I've got 100,000 lines of typing for my software, all running, and apparently enough for going live and getting to nice earnings. That and the rest of the work and planning look, in expected value given the features of the project, valuable to me.

Okay, but now we are getting somewhere, starting to understand: Even for a seed round, they want traction. Okay, that's their way of doing business.

I wish, very much wish, I'd just the heck actually KNOWN that. I would have saved a LOT of time.

Apparently there are plenty of deals for VCs to make their way. And occasionally Lady Luck smiles and they get a big win, one that makes the LPs happy.

But for me, as a solo founder, by the time they want to write me a check, I will no longer want, need, or be willing to accept it.

That's the lesson I came to and here am trying to suggest to other entrepreneurs on HN.

> Unfortunately, the tone of your writing gives off a different vibe.

Of course, here, it does. But this is not intended to be a pitch to a VC, and what I sent them, in several hundred e-mail messages, had nothing objectionable, offensive, etc.

Or, the VCs want traction. Everything else and a dime won't cover a 10 cent cup of coffee.

Exercise: Find such a statement on a seed and/or series A VC Web site.

Now we are getting clear on reality.

> However, after trying to actually pitch an idea in person, I learned that I wasn't nearly as prepared as I thought I was.

After several hundred e-mail messages sent, I never pitched a VC. But I've done lots of successful pitches elsewhere, academics, technical work, in business. As an undergrad math major, I got Kelley, 'General Topology', read it, and gave lectures to a prof -- so, I had practice lecturing. I've done lots of college and grad school teaching. E.g., in a software house, I corrected some engineers of our customer, found what they really needed in power spectral estimation, pitched it, and converted the competitive bid situation to sole source. E.g., I passed my oral dissertation defense for my Ph.D. For a Ph.D. qualifying exam, I took an oral and got a High Pass. Once I gave a talk in AI and got a big room of people all excited and, then, invited to give more pitches. I presented an AI paper at a Stanford AAAI IAAI conference -- seemed to go well enough.

So, my presentation abilities should be good enough for VCs.

> As for the clarification on your idea, this audience (and investors) would expect to see much more than that.

Here I was just being really short, just to say that it's not supposed to be a trivial project, just for here. Actually, I rarely mentioned all that arithmetic and, instead, kept things qualitative. All the e-mail messages and foil decks I sent had more on the nature of the project.

In part I omitted that stuff here because I'm just commenting on the subject of contacting VCs and not trying to pitch any VC readers of HN. I'm not including a sample VC pitch here. I'm not trying to use HN to pitch VCs.

As I mentioned, some of the advice I got was to keep the number of foils to a few and have only a few words per foil and use the pitch deck just as a way to get past the VC's first filter and have them ask for more. Okay, I did that, lots of times. Didn't work at all well.

Other times I wrote much more, as foils, just as e-mail, as both, etc. No difference.

> After reading what you wrote, all I can tell is that it's related to online advertising, but I'm not clear on what specific problem you're addressing, how your product will make money, or how your product will compete and gain marketshare in a crowded market of entrenched (and capital-rich) competitors.

Right. In what I sent the VCs, I always covered much of what you mentioned. Some of what you mentioned seemed too difficult -- e.g., competition -- to cover at all well, without raising more questions than I was answering, so I left it for later. Their wasn't any "later".

Again, my post here wasn't like any of my pitch decks or e-mail descriptions. I told the VCs from more, say, in 6-8 foils, to a lot more -- made no difference.

> I say this with the intention of being helpful, not to tear you down. And I'm just a guy who reads HN, not an insider of anything.

Yes. Thanks. And here I'm just trying to get back to some reality on how VCs react to e-mail, foil decks, and introductions.

In particular I suggest that entrepreneurs basically ignore all the advice on how to contact VCs and especially ignore all the stuff on VC Web sites and, instead, look for what the heck the VCs really want. For what they really want, I gave my best guess.

Or more simply, I don't think that the VCs give even a weak little hollow hoot about anything but, to boil it down to one word, traction, significant and growing rapidly. For the rest -- founder's background, team, technology, code architecture, code, intellectual property, scalability, barriers against competitors -- they don't care. Size of the market? If it's small, then the VCs will have M&A exit in mind. If large, IPO exit dreams in mind. For first funding, they don't care.

Net, I wasted a LOT of time trying the advice on how to contact VCs, the best ideas I could think of, tried darned near everything -- just a total waste of time. Hence, here I'm suggesting that other entrepreneurs don't do that.