Our Startup Handbook
versionone.vc
versionone.vc
Please, please, do not do things like this.
The rest of the advice in the doc seems okay, but it really only scratches the surface of what's involved in starting a company. One thing that seems notably absent is the difficulty of the ups and downs in a startup, and the challenge of getting through the dark times.
If they have to go out and spend 30 minutes to an hour to google stuff about you then it's probably not going to happen.
Lastly if they don't respond to a LinkedIn message or email within a week just move on and don't keep sending follow up emails. There is a reason the candidates didn't respond because they don't want to and shouldn't have to spend even 5 minutes responding to your unsolicited email
Thanks
Maybe the cost versus the returns on these kind of messages aren't worth it to companies. But I really appreciate them.
Anyone considering taking investments from V1 should read this guide because it shows that:
1. They will point founders to the best external advice the team has come across (including most of the solid references pointed out by ignoramous below). This means they won't come up with a bunch of BS that is not best practice.
2. That the V1 team cares about its founders! If you see the section "Invest in yourself", it's clear that they care about YOU as a founder! I love this human approach - that's NOT the case for every investor out there!
Disclaimer: Version One Ventures is 1 of 33 investors on our captable - and they stand (very positively) out!
Twitter is a gold mine where you'd find relevant content, but you'd have to literally mine it out.
I'd say though you could drain yourself going through all of this, but the fact remains that every company is different and what works for someone might not work for you. Also, there's lot of contradictory advice you need to sift through, a lot of obvious advice you need to internalize, a lot of advice you should simply ignore, and a lot of counter-intuitive advice you need to accept [9].
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[0] https://startupschool.org/library
[1] http://paulgraham.com/articles.html
[2] https://playbook.samaltman.com/
[3] https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part1.html
[5] https://firstround.com/review/
[6] https://stripe.com/en-us/atlas/guides
[7] https://www.indiehackers.com/learn
[8] https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/
[9] https://blog.ycombinator.com/advice-for-first-time-founders/
This is true and by comparison, Facebook isn't. It's a barren wasteland.
2. Cmd-F
3. Enter profit, hit return.
4. Zero results.
5. Close PDF.
:)