We’ll make sure to ask you for some coding help.... but you’ve been so amazing at all the other things!
When I entered VC, I thought founders would want my help with:
- algorithms
- sw architecture
- advice on leveraging data
Here's what they usually want:
- recruiting help
- best practices/"what've you seen in this situation?"
- someone who believes in them
- emotional support
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1) Use bubble sort. 2) Thank you!
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is 1) a way to make sure no one will ask you for coding help again?
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Haha. How about "if you need to sort something, use TensorFlow and build a model!" :)
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We have other people who believe in us...what we really want is you slinging clojure at 130wpm.
#codingvcfalseadvertising -
(println "no")
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Funny, I've seen it be almost 80% help with fundraising. Recruiting and customer intros are appreciated, but generally from experienced founders that are more comfortable with fundraising. Someone to kvetch with is nice too, but usually not valued unless you're helping elsewhere.
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Fundraising is definitely a big ask, but IMO usually intermittent. E.g. it's top of mind for 2 out of 16 months, or something like that.
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If recruiting is so difficult, why don’t more startups go the agency route? (As an agency owner I’m keenly interested in the answer to this!)
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1) Often bad to fully outsource such a core aspect of success. 2) Iteration speed is much lower when tech team is not in house. 3) Evaluating agencies is not easy if you don't have developers in house to help w/that.
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Former devshop owner, multiple startup founder, checking in. Biggest challenge with this is motivations are never aligned. Devshop / Agency needs cashflow. Early stage startup needs product market fit within runway.
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Thanks for the input, Eamon, that’s helpful. Do you have ideas on how an agency can be more aligned with startup needs? We prefer working with startups over enterprise work despite the latter being more profitable. It’s more fulfilling to work with startups.
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tbh, not sure it’s possible. I took exact same approach as you. Favouring startups etc. Fact is, you need cashflow to survive. It’s not a bad thing. It just is. Unless you can get to a place where cashflow isn’t a concern, it’s very hard to be motivated in same way as a founder
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I think being a remote company (with no office, some level of arbitrage due to lower cost of living), we can hit the sweet spot — we’ll see. It’s worked for 3 years so far.
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About to publish a story that has an interesting data point on this...
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Alright guys, lmk what you think about this onehttps://twitter.com/alexrkonrad/status/1051896133520449539 …
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That's a smart approach, and investing $10m/year in the software is going to build a good moat.
@chriswfarmer is a very sharp guy, and it'll be exciting to see how far SignalFire can go over time. -
also check out what
@RastaRusty is doing with Swell -
Thanks Sar! More here: http://Swell.vc — definitely a unique model based on our experience over the past 10 years helping founders hire top 5% people, fortunately has already led to one solid exit.
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