This is interesting but completely discounts the social aspect of investment.
I don't know much about it, but my guess is that a good angel or VC will make serious efforts to get your business to the next level. They'll undoubtedly know people you won't. They also are free to say no, meaning they can give criticism without rose colored glasses.
This is particularly interesting because I find myself in somewhat the same situation. I've been working on a startup idea (http://www.scriggle-it.com/) with a team that's never taken (or sought) VC funding. The only investment we've put in has been time, and expenses paid for out-of-pocket, for things like the domain name, hosting, SSL certificate, payment processing gateway, and the like.
I'm our sysadmin and backend programmer, and then another guy does graphics and site design, and we have an ideas/customer relations/PR-type guy. We've also got a guy working when he can on a Java-based client-side application that syncs with our site. We launched the site last October and have netted a few thousand dollars in profit, thus far. We're still totally committed to our idea, and it's occurred to us that seeking/taking VC funding might be a smart next step. It would keep me from having to work a second, "real" job, and allow us to hire a friend of mine, who's a top-notch coder but is married and can't quit his current (barista) job unless it's profitable for him to do so. Furthermore, we're trying to expand into in the cell/SMS arena, and VC funding would allow us to pay for a short code, an SMS gateway, etc.
Having no VC experience, however, we're wondering whether venture capitalists would even consider us, what their terms would be, what VC "stage" we would apply for, etc. Any comments, suggestions, or feedback would be greatly appreciated.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 12.0 ms ] threadI don't know much about it, but my guess is that a good angel or VC will make serious efforts to get your business to the next level. They'll undoubtedly know people you won't. They also are free to say no, meaning they can give criticism without rose colored glasses.
I'm our sysadmin and backend programmer, and then another guy does graphics and site design, and we have an ideas/customer relations/PR-type guy. We've also got a guy working when he can on a Java-based client-side application that syncs with our site. We launched the site last October and have netted a few thousand dollars in profit, thus far. We're still totally committed to our idea, and it's occurred to us that seeking/taking VC funding might be a smart next step. It would keep me from having to work a second, "real" job, and allow us to hire a friend of mine, who's a top-notch coder but is married and can't quit his current (barista) job unless it's profitable for him to do so. Furthermore, we're trying to expand into in the cell/SMS arena, and VC funding would allow us to pay for a short code, an SMS gateway, etc.
Having no VC experience, however, we're wondering whether venture capitalists would even consider us, what their terms would be, what VC "stage" we would apply for, etc. Any comments, suggestions, or feedback would be greatly appreciated.