On Jun 5, 2007, at 6:32 AM, Mark Waser wrote:
This is the kind of "control freak" tendency that makes many
startup ventures untenable; if you cannot give up some control
(and I will grant such tendencies are not natural), you might not
be the best person to be running such a startup venture.
Yup, my suggestion of giving control to five or six "trustworthy
owners" is definitely the epitome of "control freak". :-)
Why all the emotion?
No emotion, just a practical observation. Lacking real capital of
some type in the sense most investors would recognize, you do not
usually have the luxury of control. Or more accurately, you can have
control to the exclusion of others participating. Lack of capital
(of all types) is deadly to a startup venture, and that very much
appears to be the case here.
Blue sky ventures and "maintaining control" are pretty much in
opposition to each other if you do not want to marginalize your
funding opportunities. The lack of intrinsic capital is going to
make things tough, because the only real currency you have *is*
control.
No, the real currency that I want to have is an awesome talent pool
and some good demonstrable progress before we look for additional
funding.
Declaring your talent pool as "awesome" does not make it meaningfully
awesome to the rest of the world ipso facto. Same goes for
"demonstrable progress" short of a Killer Demo(tm). To the rest of
investor universe, this looks a lot like yet another attempt at a
poorly organized and value poor AI venture. I would make the
additional observation that you do not bootstrap a seed with five or
six peers, more like two to three and maybe four. Far too much
dilution of focus and vision otherwise which will bleed energy.
What distinguishes this venture from the hundreds of other ones that
are frankly indistinguishable from yours? It is a bit like true
religion. Everyone says their wonky AI venture is the One True
Venture, but if you do not have religion -- and investors generally
do not -- they all look pretty much the same. The paucity of
credibility that afflicts those hundreds of other AI ventures appears
to afflict yours just as much. What is that killer thing that you
can convincingly demonstrate you have that no one else can? Without
that, your chances are poor on many different levels.
I'm trying to find your unique angle here, but have come up empty so
far.
Yes, that is going to reduce my funding opportunities -- but it's a
requirement that I'm not willing to concede and I will black-ball
any "trustworthy owner" candidates who show *any* signs of being
willing to concede it.
I'm not trying to stop you, I'm merely pointing out that it will very
significantly reduce your opportunities and probably far more than
you are anticipating. Either way, it won't be *my* problem. :-) I'm
just trying to give you some practical perspective on the venture
thing, both generally and as it pertains to AI.
Cheers,
J. Andrew Rogers
-----
This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email
To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=e9e40a7e
