What the Bloody Hell | Hacker News Reader

What the Bloody Hell

I am getting sick of companies who are raising millions even in this environment, without a proven business model or even a working product.

I have built products & having a very hard time raising money.

Here is an example

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/arketa-fitness-wellness/id1451028025?see-all=reviews

Company has barely any reviews past 2020, growth is going down yet raised 7million in Feb 2023. Biz model relevant for the covid era. WTF?!!?

Here is another one

https://partiful.com

Raised 20 million in November based on 1 article in NYT. Barely any traffic on site, less than 10k visits and no business model. WTF?!?!?

The founders have no deep domain expertise, no from FAANG. Not even tech background.

What am I missing here?

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Dear spartanliving4u

I think it would be polite that when you seek engagement, you should respond to anyone’s effort to engage with you. I think it reflects badly on you that you have not done so. Maybe you are busy, but we all are.

Note in my comment above I was responding to your comment “I [am] having a very hard time raising money.”.

I honestly wish you the best - otherwise I wouldn’t spend my time and thoughts attempting to engage with you at all!

Yours sincerely

robocat

Getting VC capital is hard - only a single digit percentage of people get it.

The median return for a founder that takes VC funding is $0. VC often fucks founders: https://siliconhillslawyer.com/2017/08/01/not-building-unico... (this site is amazing for the negatives about VC) also http://www.paulgraham.com/venturecapital.html and a myriad of different articles on how VC failed founders. Be careful not to listen to the self-selected fairy-tales of occasional unicorn success that drive all the average returns in the market.

An alternative is self-funding. Google stuff by Jason Cohen or David Heinemeier Hansson, for example: https://youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw or https://www.startups.com/library/founder-stories/david-heine...

If you want funding despite the drawbacks, Google for articles about angel funding criteria, because they tend to be more honest. Or find some angels, and ask for honest feedback on your struggle. Or talk to people that have got funding.

Complaining won’t help you - it will cause seriously negative judgements about your capabilities and suitability.

Good luck.

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