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Comment by menloparkbum | Hacker News Reader

I doubt it. go big network is 90% bullshit.

However, in Silicon Valley, there are a number of guys who are well connected in the venture community and can help you find funding. We had such a guy help us out for a year and I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have found our great funding deal without his help.

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If you dong mind me asking, how did you meet this guy? Were his referrals done at a cost or for free?

He liked our company and contacted us. He did more than referrals. Essentially, he raised our series A for us. We paid him a handsome fee (funds obtained by another angel investor and our CEO, who was already wealthy) as well as giving him a chunk of stock options. He's a great guy. I'd rather not reveal who I am, but the person in question has a relatively high-profile blog.

Well... lucky you, SValley residents. :-) We're based in Austin, TX and so far has not developed any connections with valley people.

move? or fly and visit? There is no lack of networking events in SV.

As I'm sure you've noticed, Austin investors are too conservative anyway :(. VC money is still dried up post-bubble except for Austin Ventures and supposedly they are starting to move away from higher risk investments too.

You might try to meet some angels through the Central Texas Angel network events around Austin. CTAN probably wont look at you unless you have solid revenue (conservative bunch), but you might be able to convince an angel to seed fund you privately.

An asymmetric attack you may wish to consider is to talk to the larger law firms who represent VC/PE firms. Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. on Congress (downtown Austin) is very well connected and could point you in the right direction. Alternatively, go to a http://www.bootstrapaustin.org/ event and see what other entrepreneurs suggest.

Austin is an amazing city.

Woow. Yet another local resource I had no clue about. Thanks a lot.

There are lots of 'niche' resources in Austin and you have to do a lot of legwork to get to them. Additionally, if you (or any of your founders) are alumni of the University of Texas, the networking events at the MBA school are valuable.

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