Hacker News Reader

Comment by jorgemf | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to sound negative and I might be wrong in my assumptions but 50-75k sounds like something you can get from FFF (family, friends and fools) or supply it with your time. So the question for me is why an investor is going to put money in you if your family and friends don't do it.

A good idea to approach investor is through other startups, people that already know them. You can meet startups entrepreneurs in meetups, I am sure that Berlin is full of meet ups. And if you are not lucky this way you can always try to find them in internet and send them a cold email. A small email with 2-3 lines talking about your product, the money you want and for what it is.

I wish you good luck!

View on HN

This "why an investor is going to put money in you if your family and friends don't do it" question has been around for long in the startup 'hype' lingo, but I'm very curious if this has actually ever worked for founders that don't come from wealthy backgrounds, or from families with sizable savings (something that is a mirage for middle class families).

If you need 50-75K, perhaps it's better to just go for 100K€ (because things will not go as planned, as some investors will tell you) and, if you can build a solid case based on your business' performance, then reach out to angel investors, as 100K€ is an investment exactly in their ball park (unless your granny is sitting on 1M€ and can spare you 100K€).

PS: these things need proper planning, fundraising is a long process based on trust and personal impressions...so, contrary to what you read around the web, it's unlikely you'll have a lot of success (in Europe, at least) if you just show up of the blue to pitch your case and leave a business card behind, unless your revenue/orders are already solid and you have a realistic plan to multiply their volume/value.

The question is, what you need 50k for.

For a office? Do it at home. For people? 50k is nothing. You get half an engineere for a year.

50-100k can mean that you have friends working with you, or it can be that you moved back to your parents to work fulltime on it.

It is such a small number in the business world, its strange that someone thinks that 100k can make a real difference.

> 50k is nothing. You get half an engineere for a year.

If you think a minute about that sentence, I think you'll realize that that depends on where those engineers live.

100K€ can allow 2-3 people to quit their jobs to work (for a year on low pay) on the features requested by their paying customers, or hiring an offshoring firm to build what they can't, or just having money to apply for government grants or cover real-world business expenses (provisional patents, technical infrastructure, lawyers, accountants, promotion).

I don't know why this is downvoted when it's got a valid answer in it: strangers tend not to be good for getting investments that size. Either crowdfund or get friends & family to invest.

50% of people, in the US at least, have less than $1000 in savings. They don't have $10,000 to put into your startup.

Welp, then you oviously have talk to the other 50%!

a) we're talking about Berlin

b) Yes, this is extremely unequal; yes, it's much easier to do a startup from a privileged background. It's still the most common route to launching a business.

(Especially in Europe, people use home equity or secured loans for starting businesses quite a lot)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com