Dear Startups: stop begging investors and pitch your clients
blog.123ship.it
blog.123ship.it
Additionally, you're assuming that every startup is also a saas startup. Most aren't, meaning they might have a thousands in lets say production molds and an order of 10000 units from retailers. They'll need the investment money to help them fulfill orders and grow.
Lastly for many other startups there are costs that exceed past general development. Security is a good example of one of these large costs especially if you're dealing with money or private data in any way. These additional necessary costs could be minor but for many startups they're large and unable to be paid for by the hopeful entrepreneur.
I think these articles are good motivators but they don't fit in the real world. Let me sumarize my view point:
1. You can develop your MVP at home with your buddies, yes, but maybe you need money to make something crucial that requieres some expert contracting to get it done. 2. You can make a web app, yes, but maybe you need money to get some important licences to operate in the real world. 3. You can launch your project with a pitch, but, it will take ages to reach profitability without proper advertising campaign.
I guess some startups became important businesses in less than a month without money inyection, but they're not the rule and, in most cases, they've managed to get important attention from the press.
It feels like the end game of any startup these days is to close a round of investment from a top-tier fund as if that creates a business in itself. That point is very much just the beginning and then the real work starts.
We need to get back to thinking of investment as an aid to building a sustainable business not the first step to a sale to {insert large tech firm here}
The more startup stuff I read the more I think a lot of founders are just in it to get investment and draw a salary from that while they around bloviating about the latest buzzwords rather than either building a business or getting a job.
I am not ever again doing the mistake of developing something in my corner. I want to see the money!
Find market/fit before trying to grow.
You don't know how an idea will turn out until you build the mvp. The Only validation you should need is that you are building something to solve a pain you are having.
It's easy to go overboard seeking validation data for an idea, don't forget to trust your intuition, its often a more accurate source of data.
That only sounds unnatural because of ordering (which is a little like old-style English). Reordered, it reads just fine:
"He pitched a new startup idea to me"
The "pitch [object] to [party]" usage is the older/more established, I think, although recent (American) usage has somewhat shifted to "pitch [party]".
It's not a big deal either way. Maybe ivix is from the UK or somewhere with different usage.
"Pitch" when used as a verb without "to" has many more possible meanings than when used with "to"—the "to" clarifies the subject-object relationship. Without "to," the the clients could either be the object or the subject, for example it could be the clients "being pitched to" (they are the object of the verb) or "being pitched" (where they are the subject). Adding "to" clarifies and locks down the meaning of the sentence, and a sentence without ambiguity is generally the better one.
Incidentally, adding "an idea" at the end ("Pitch your clients an idea") also clarifies the subject—the subject of the pitch is clearly the idea, since it comes after the object and that's just the ordering rule that English likes; you could also reverse them, but then you'd need the "to" again to clarify the relationship, eg: "Pitch an idea to your clients".
Thus, as it stands, "Pitch to your clients" is indeed the more correct and clear English sentence.
However, given English is not the writer's first language, he's doing extremely well and should be commended. English is an extremely difficult language with a myriad of special cases and nuances, and it takes many years of dedicated practice to master them. We can only be supportive and educational, and hopefully this was.