Why Entrepreneurs & VCs Should Focus on Basecamp, Not the Summit

bothsidesofthetable.com

11 pointsSRSimko4 comments

Im a little confused. Does basecamp mean a business that is valuable but doesnt generate any revenue? Eg: Twitter.

Or does it mean a company which does well in a niche of a particular industry but is not the dominating player yet. Eg: 37Signals for CRM?

Basecamp in my mind (I wrote the article) is establishing a product that gains adoption and reaches a set of realistic milestones that can be achieved within 2 years rather than focusing on the summit (how big this can ultimately become). I'm going to update the article to make this clear. Thank you for prompting.

Great set of articles by the way. I appreciate you telling us how it really is in the VC world. Those small nuggets of information, thats really important but pretty hard to come by, coming from an authoritative source like yourself really helps framing our approach to starting a startup. Eg: whats the norm for a liquidation preference, the reality of dealing with a board, etc.

Also, I came to your talk at Columbia Univ in NYC. It was very informative (and pretty funny too).

Thanks.

thanks. if you have specific questions about how VC works make sure to ping me. I'll cover on This Week in VC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com