Being an entrepreneur outside of U.S.? | Hacker News Reader

Being an entrepreneur outside of U.S.?

9 pointsemrahylmz4 comments

Hello to all,

As a entrepreneur outside of US i will tell a small story and ask a question. I'm Emrah, co-founder of https://designapp.io/ . I applied something like ycombinator in Turkey (biggest one) and DesignApp selected between 2500 applications. After a week and a few meetings they send a email about partnership! Thats great! however when i read it I face the fact. They want %5 for introduce us to investors (no seed funding) and also they will have a right to take second %5 whenever they want for only 10k$. Nobody asks that what you are eating, do you have a life, how will you join the meetings (they offer a partnership but they even don't buy a bus ticket for to go meetings). Its really hard to be an entrepreneur outside of U.S.. I am not ache for funding but when I receive a partnership offer I was waiting a seed funding too. But I am not judging them. They cant offer a seed funding because they don't have money.

So we are working hard to create a useful app and market place , and its actually going good ( http://ayofi.com/designapp.png ). I know, I can accelerate growing If I have more money than my pocket. So What the hack should I do now?

Bootstrap, charge money from the beginning instead of trying to get funding for a promising idea that might (or might not) bring money in some point in the future.

How to do that is beyond the scope of this answer but there are plenty of blogs that talk about bootstrapping small businesses, like https://unicornfree.com/ and https://www.google.com/search?q=bootstrapping%20business%20b... and resources like videos from MicroConf http://vimeo.com/user12790628

While the terms you describe are bad and you probably shouldn't take them (bootstrap instead), don't wallow in self-pity because you think U.S. entrepreneurs have it so much better.

They don't.

The number of companies funded by VCs are tiny. It's almost like winning a lottery. Don't build on the assumption that you'll win a lottery as well. The motto of Y Combinator is "Make something people want". If you do that and charge for it, you won't need the funding.

Funding helps but given that you're not in a place where good funding is available, do what every other business in your country does and do without it.

You hit the right notes. We mostly read successful stories about U.S. entrepreneurs. I already refused their offer nicely and started to (try) charge money and I did (a little). My goal is not for receiving funding. Like you said we are trying to create "something people want". Actually problem is the offer. It was disappointment and its comes from biggest "startup accelerator" in my country.

I think I know which accelerator you are talking about. Ecosystem in Turkey looks very promising from outside but when you start digging you hear stories such as this.

I know that one of those so called mentors asked %8 of shares from startups which wanted to pitch infront of a regular event held every year in Turkey. This is absurd as there is no guarantee and infact very low chances of investment.

We've been accepted to two of accelerators in Turkey and attended one of them. The one we didn't attend was an internationally known accelerator and they asked us to be in their office 9 - 6 everyday for 3 months and forced us to stay inside and build our product against all things learned from Lean Startup methodology. They even suggested that we could send interns to meetings that I have pre-organized with CXOs of biggest insurance companies. We didn't sign the deal, we didn't attend the program.

I actually have a product that I created and have been testing that has a bit of overlap with yours but I also think they would compliment each other really well. Is your linked in the one that says: Şu okulda öğrenci: Kafkas Üniversitesi? I'd like to try to connect.

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