How to Raise Money as a First Time Founder
wadefoster.net
wadefoster.net
The only substitute for traction is past traction (on previous startups) or a very big credential (as being on YC or being early employee on a big hit - Facebook, Google, etc). And this narrows the audience to only a few individuals for whom these tactics might apply.
Not by chance Paul Graham recent essays are aimed at this YC batch aproaching Demo Day. And, as interesting as is to us, regular folks, reading this; it sounds like reading advices from a pro driver on how to drive a Ferrari. They may be somehow useful, specific tips that you must know if you want to drive a Ferrari. But you first must own a Ferrari. Before you do it, they are just fiction.
And if you do have traction, I guess all these tips will have just a marginal influence on the outcome. Posts from VCs and succesfull fundraisers always seems like hindsight rationalization about why it worked. Forgetting that traction was the single most important reason by far.
I mean, traction is 99,9% if you are a regular founder, not a star. So wondering about the 0,1% is more of a Maseratti problem.
EDIT: Thinking a little bit more, I guess the market dictate how much money you raise and for how much equity. But if you are fundable or not, I still think is about traction.
As far as YC goes, most HAVE traction by Demo Day, significantly so. It's not like these companies have an early beta with 20 users and are raising on a name. Most of the time they achieve early traction from a combination of YCs guidance and the fact that if you get into YC, you're typically a pretty good entrepreneur and have a higher likelihood to succeed.
And even after you get traction, the type of traction begins to matter. For example, you can go sign up 100 paid customers for your product in a week by contacting your Dad's rolodex. You may have see that as traction; most VCs are going to have major questions about how you'll get your next 1,000 customers and why you haven't proven any of those channels yet.
The worst outcome isn't failing to raise money; it's raising money and wishing you hadn't (wrong team, wrong idea/market, etc).
Great point, though from personal experience I think 1st time founders will never get this until things go wrong after you raise. Raising money is attractive, not just for the money, but for the validation it brings. One of the hardest parts of doing a startup is talking with non-founders about what you do .. it's so easy to say "I work at Google" or "I'm in med school". The closest equivalent, for founders, is being able to say "our investors .. ".
I remember PG mentioned this .. that one reason Y-Combinator was so successful is it gives high-acheivers "a program" to talk about, almost a vetted excuse for why founders who could be otherwise working at Google or Goldman, or studying at Stanford are instead living in a cramped apartment and subsisting on ramen.
But I think it's ok to get seduced by money and prestige for the 1st time. You learn, you move on and up and get better at this stuff. Mainly you learn that the most important skill of being a founder is separating yourself from how non-founders think. Then you no longer focus on external validation and start thinking about building a real company.
Is it really hard to say "I founded and run a business which does <X>"? I mean, its more words than "I work for <foo>", but its not really that much more complex of an idea, or unfamiliar to most speakers and listeners.
Not everybody who I explain what I do to knows what a developer is.
It's more than that, though. You can be terribly impressive and committed and still decide that raising money isn't right for you, at a given moment in time. Raising money is just a tool, not the end... that, to me, is the point more people should focus on.
I think it's also important to realize that "failing to raise money" isn't the same thing as "failing at a startup" unless you're at a point where you absolutely cannot proceed without more money.
1. "When we went out to raise money, we raised with only a couple thousand dollars in monthly recurring revenue."
2. "But we had a solid product, strong weekly revenue growth (10% week over week), and two distribution/marketing channels that were already paying dividends."
And not all startups are app-driven. Most are, since hardware is hard and a lot of startups like to ride the app-wave but this post only takes those into account.
Sure, social startups and other "apps" playing the users + page views + engagement numbers game can easily make an app, grow an audience and have their "traction" but this blog post applies only to those types of companies.
MANY factors are taken into consideration when raising money - not just traction. Where you went school matters, who you are, your team, your product, your business model, your ability to start and run a business, your past experiences with running a business, and etc.
It's not just traction.
VC's aren't stupid.
But you can get traction in lots of ways. Got 200 customers on your waiting list? 10000 people follow your blog? 20 enterprise customers with verbal commitments to buy? Those are all traction.
But you make a _great_ point - traction doesn't apply to just users, which is something this particular post heavily emphasizes. Having 10,000 blog followers, pre-orders, enterprise customers, commitments, even endorsements from influencers who can promote and/or sell the product once commercialized, are all traction. Totally. Even IP is traction if done right.
Additionally, two years ago we didn't have any crowdfunding and there were plenty of companies that raised money without any "traction" as it's commonly understood in the Techcrunch arena today.
Ultimately I think PG is correct. Focus on building out the business. If you spend all of your time planning instead of shipping, you're going to fail.