Pardon my 6am-still-haven't-slept-rant but this feels like a cycle:
- Invest in bullshit.
- Find diamond rings in one or two piles of bullshit after a heavy rain.
- Expect all bullshit to have diamond rings in it.
- Get angry when you find out 92% of bullshit has no return.
- Demand bullshit of a better quality from cattle farms.
I get why internet based businesses are so attractive, they can scale up very well. But easy come, easy go.
Also, the internet's great and all and VCs are what make Silicon Valley happen and thrive, but there's an entire world outside of it. Real needs, real solutions, real products, real customers. As an indie inventor of real products I'm pissed off. Many of these "Lets help American Small Businesses" seed funds, incubators, grants, and tech-hubs ONLY invest in web based startups. I'm disqualified from many of them. No offense, but I want customers, not users.
After seeing how Silicon Valley companies are run. I don't want to work my ass off for half a decade using someone else's money, be their bitch, watch my equity get pocketed by someone else, sell out or IPO, lose all my top talent after they bank their shares, and finally quit or burn out. I want to be happy, I want to work at my own pace, I don't want to be someone's financial slave, and I want to actually own my company. I'd rather create a company like Valve, not Facebook.
So I'm left out of the funds and stuck with KickStarter. And Kickstarters mostly like Apple/hipster/artsy projects, not products that could be sold in normal stores.
===== What TechCrunch, VC Blogs, Reddit, & HN taught me about Venture Capital =====
1) A VC's idea of "Big Ideas" like Facebook, Twitter, & Zynga is a normal person's idea of a "Ponzi Scheme". (really think about this one.)
2) Ignore real companies that sell real products because they're "boring" and not "hot shit" while investing in companies like Color.
3) Start incubators, tech hubs, and funds that focus on internet related startups and ONLY give funding to internet related startups. Then complain when the only companies that come out are more: mobile ad platforms, social media analytics, team based project managers, reward program sites, online store builders, or subscription services. Especially team based project managers, everyone and their grandmother has one.
Plus, how many internet-related life-changing companies do they want? We can't built one every month just so investors can cash in. The bigger the idea the less likely an entrepreneur is to start it due to it's massive upfront costs in R&D. Investors want us to work our asses off for 2-3 years by ourselves, build something that works, so they can fuel our gravy train with their money, scale like a lunatic for 10 years, and have them get their bonuses and us get our diluted equity.
No thank you. I want to be like Gabe Newell, NOT Mark Zuckerberg.
I have no problem with anyone following the silicon valley startup dream, supporting that ecosystem, or working their ass off on another social media analytics company or reward program. Follow your passion. But that's not my place. And a lot of entrepreneurs are finding out it's not what they want either.
Instead of selling RentATrashCan.com you should just let that one expire. I found many of the domains I owned were not even worth the annual registration fee.
- Invest in bullshit.
- Find diamond rings in one or two piles of bullshit after a heavy rain.
- Expect all bullshit to have diamond rings in it.
- Get angry when you find out 92% of bullshit has no return.
- Demand bullshit of a better quality from cattle farms.
I get why internet based businesses are so attractive, they can scale up very well. But easy come, easy go.
Also, the internet's great and all and VCs are what make Silicon Valley happen and thrive, but there's an entire world outside of it. Real needs, real solutions, real products, real customers. As an indie inventor of real products I'm pissed off. Many of these "Lets help American Small Businesses" seed funds, incubators, grants, and tech-hubs ONLY invest in web based startups. I'm disqualified from many of them. No offense, but I want customers, not users.
Look at the diverse companies coming out of St. Louis Arch Grants which has no limit to what kind of startups can apply (http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/arch-grants-announces-15...) and the startups coming out of "web based startups only" Capital Innovators (http://capitalinnovators.com/companies/). Please look all the way through both lists, I'm not exaggerating. It's sad.
After seeing how Silicon Valley companies are run. I don't want to work my ass off for half a decade using someone else's money, be their bitch, watch my equity get pocketed by someone else, sell out or IPO, lose all my top talent after they bank their shares, and finally quit or burn out. I want to be happy, I want to work at my own pace, I don't want to be someone's financial slave, and I want to actually own my company. I'd rather create a company like Valve, not Facebook.
So I'm left out of the funds and stuck with KickStarter. And Kickstarters mostly like Apple/hipster/artsy projects, not products that could be sold in normal stores.
===== What TechCrunch, VC Blogs, Reddit, & HN taught me about Venture Capital =====
1) A VC's idea of "Big Ideas" like Facebook, Twitter, & Zynga is a normal person's idea of a "Ponzi Scheme". (really think about this one.)
2) Ignore real companies that sell real products because they're "boring" and not "hot shit" while investing in companies like Color.
3) Start incubators, tech hubs, and funds that focus on internet related startups and ONLY give funding to internet related startups. Then complain when the only companies that come out are more: mobile ad platforms, social media analytics, team based project managers, reward program sites, online store builders, or subscription services. Especially team based project managers, everyone and their grandmother has one.
Plus, how many internet-related life-changing companies do they want? We can't built one every month just so investors can cash in. The bigger the idea the less likely an entrepreneur is to start it due to it's massive upfront costs in R&D. Investors want us to work our asses off for 2-3 years by ourselves, build something that works, so they can fuel our gravy train with their money, scale like a lunatic for 10 years, and have them get their bonuses and us get our diluted equity.
No thank you. I want to be like Gabe Newell, NOT Mark Zuckerberg.
I have no problem with anyone following the silicon valley startup dream, supporting that ecosystem, or working their ass off on another social media analytics company or reward program. Follow your passion. But that's not my place. And a lot of entrepreneurs are finding out it's not what they want either.
(By the way I'm selling off 20 domain names starting tonight: http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2012/06/domain-clearance-auctio... I need more R&D money for my 6 foot x 5 foot fabric poster product) HN members get first dibs before I throw them up on eBay