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This "why an investor is going to put money in you if your family and friends don't do it" question has been around for long in the startup 'hype' lingo, but I'm very curious if this has actually ever worked for founders that don't come from wealthy backgrounds, or from families with sizable savings (something that is a mirage for middle class families).

If you need 50-75K, perhaps it's better to just go for 100K€ (because things will not go as planned, as some investors will tell you) and, if you can build a solid case based on your business' performance, then reach out to angel investors, as 100K€ is an investment exactly in their ball park (unless your granny is sitting on 1M€ and can spare you 100K€).

PS: these things need proper planning, fundraising is a long process based on trust and personal impressions...so, contrary to what you read around the web, it's unlikely you'll have a lot of success (in Europe, at least) if you just show up of the blue to pitch your case and leave a business card behind, unless your revenue/orders are already solid and you have a realistic plan to multiply their volume/value.

Agreed.

The only reason that you see these deals being made is because the Chinese government is interested in Africa's natural resources [1], Chinese companies are competitive in construction (not really rocket science, plus slave labour certainly provides a financial advantage [2] [3]) and government officials stand to personally make money, as nothing gets done in Africa if you don't "properly compensate" the right government officials [4] [5] (european companies know this too, but bribery is sligthly more constrained by their governments).

The end product is usually low quality, with roads cracking open as soon as rain pours, but the goal was not to provide infrastructure in the first place, so no one is remotely concerned about any benefits nor about the impact on local communities, public safety, wildlife or the environment. Guess what happens to anyone that tries to protest on behalf of these issues. [6]

These deals are rarely rosy for the general population, who will still lack water, sanitation, food, jobs and education. Even the few that managed to survive outside of city centers will see their basic livelyhood (cattle, farming) disrupted by these "developments".

PS: I've worked in Angola, Kenya and Nigeria.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/china-in-africa-the-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/201...

[3] https://jamhuri-news.com/how-china-contractors-drove-kenyan-...

[4] https://qz.com/513090/in-south-africa-corruption-is-a-public...

[5] http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000175560/eacc-arres...

[6] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-angola-protest-idUSKCN0X70...

But do you think those people you mention would "love to share" if they were forced to it in order to secure a safe place to sleep and a plate of food?

>> Look at long running projects like Couchsurfing for example

The big difference is that, unlike those "sharing" economy companies, Couchsurfing was not a business, and once it turned its focus to making money an exodus of "users" ensued.

Couchsurfing was not targeted at Airbnb's "get a cheap place to sleep at city X" demographic, and people that couldn't demonstrate they were looking for anything other than a low cost hotel would see their requests turned down. Couchsurfing users were willing to share their house, not for a small amount of money, but for the value of making international acquaintances (and friends for life, sometimes), which is something they also received through the service when going abroad.

>> Having read Gartners Magic Quadrants on Cloud, I really question Gartners competency on understanding

I think you can replace "Cloud" with whatever technology Gartner or most analysts write about.

These firms are little more than uninformed hype producers that fuel the enterprise software spend cycle through marketing (webinars, "research", tap-my-back-events and 3k€ "reports") that tell CIOs/CTOs what they should already know, by definition of their function: what technologies to consider for their business problems, why and how.

On the other hand, they provide a nice scapegoat when someone needs to offload responsibility, a bit like the "no one ever got fired for buying recommended by Gartner".

PS: wish I could find Zed Shaw's video on "calling bullshit" (or related), as it includes a nice anecdote on dealing with industry analysts.

TL;DR: That's me, but I can't understand how a presales specialist with broad experience and a demonstrated skillset can't get anything other than offers for "developer" or "project manager" or more presales.

This is something that I have given a lot of thought in recent years.

I'm in my early 30s and have a CS degree, ~11 years of experience in business intelligence and analytics, and I worked my way through consulting roles that ranged from developer, technical lead, project manager and presales. My CV also includes a startup and a senior advisory role.

I excel at presales because I have a broad technical skillset and it's easy for me to understand diferent industry problems and advise/communicate with people on any step of the corporate ladder.

However, the feeling I get is that presales only lead to more presales roles, where most of your time is spent meeting clients and producing countless presentations to get to an eventual prototype...and there's more presales to do, so your involvement on most projects (even those you sell) is marginal at best, and that makes it harder to move to other roles.

This is a problem when I apply to roles other than "consulting", because even though I have designed and planned (and sometimes delivered) technology solutions for basically any business problem that has been thrown at me, I didn't actually have a hand in delivering most of them, even though I excelled when I did.

My experience with recruiters is that most of them disregard (or don't understand) the knowledge and skills necessary to designing and planning business solutions, in detriment of actually implementing the technology, and this makes it hard for them to consider you knowledgeable on a specific domain.

The depressing thing is that, where I work (small EU country), the industry is dominated by numerous middlemen ("consulting" firms), so hiring is mostly for outsourced "developer" and "project manager" positions where you are basically "in the grind" of projects that are most often poorly planned or managed, and thus turn into a nightmare for the teams.

What baffles me is that my skills and experience seem to be of great value for Clients I've worked for in different industries, yet those same Clients prefer to recruit people with a more limited scope (both in terms of tech and business knowledge). It's either "developer" or "project manager".

I'm describing my experience applying for roles...fortunately, I get considered for positions that actually require my skills, but never through traditional recruitment processes (that just seem to get worse).

>> We hired too senior too early.

This is more a sign of a junior "CEO"...

Medication can be necessary in extreme cases, to stabilize a patient whose thought processes are too disorganized to undergo therapy. This is the professional opinion that I've received from multiple therapists. More professional opinions at [2] and [3].

It's hard to believe that all the thousands of people that are prescribed antidepressants are going through severe (i.e. crippling) depression. I'm glad that you experienced only mild/no side-effects, but that it appears this is not the case with the majority of patients [1].

Someone struggling with depression/anxiety/whatever should seek treatment for the causes of their suffering, of course.

However, the common mantra is that a pill will solve your ill, the fact that antidepressants are prescribed like candy (second only to antibiotics) should hint on this. The problem is that, at best, the pill will help you with symptoms and will not solve the underlying causes (often related to trauma handling or with how one deals with the hardships of life).

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/are-antidep... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-antidepressant... [3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-antidepressa...

Censorship is a lesser issue when compared to access to communications of commercial actors?!

>> When the immediate effect has worn off, antidepressents just return you to baseline

Not really. When an antidepressant's effect wanes, most people experience severe withdrawal symptoms and side effects (e.g. hallucinations), and many patients find it impossible to cope with the withdrawal and live without the mind numbing effect.

What most antidepressants will do is actually get you to a baseline state where you're feeling numb and having a mild existence of not experiencing happiness/calm or sadness/anxiety, but in a strange/empty place between the normal ups and downs of life.

> The kids are incharge of the nursery over at Uber and they are in desperate need of a good, adult CTO...

That's a proper description of most startups I've had contact with recently, namely (well) funded startups.

It's a consequence of having inexperienced (and, sometimes, untalented) people running functions at a company.

It also applies to other areas like sales ("my inside sales script is killer, even though I haven't done professional sales anywhere before and just found out what inside sales is") or hiring ("I'll just hire my equally inexperienced buddies from college, they were great there").

But when it comes to kids building technology with "college playground" quality, it's too evident not to notice. The product ran fine when their buddies were testing, but it's unstable, unmaintainable and in need of a complete redesign when real world traffic comes along. All things that could have been prevented with a little bit of competence and experience.

It's a kind of mantra for people that take VC blogs as gospel and engineering blogs as the 10 commandments. Don't go to college, don't get any real world experience: start a company and, if it actually survives more than a couple of years, someone will inherit your technical debt.

This investor speak will quickly change when you get funded and have to attend board meetings to tell investors that your product is still not working, or you need twice the team that would be required for your goals, or you need months to produce basic business data...