> The Valley is not a world run by 20-somethings bringing about the future, it is a world run by the same people who run the real world - the financiers.<p>It's surprising to me that anyone would think otherwise. Weighted for risk, the winning play in Silicon Valley is not to take a Thiel fellowship and go found a startup. It's to do what Thiel did--take a pair of prestigious Stanford degrees into the finance sector. It's the VC's that are the ones reliably cashing their paychecks.<p>(This is not a moral judgment about whether this status quo is right or wrong. I'm long past the point where I see the status quo as anything more than something that "is.")
As somebody who has gone through a startup that was pre-VC and post-VC, I assure you we didn't take investment to get written about or be cool. We took investment because to grow your company beyond the first few people you need to pay people money. Sometimes certain ideas or opportunities you might want to invest in cost money. And that is what the VCs provide you, money. Sure, we could bootstrap and generate the money ourselves, but a) it requires short-term trade offs and b) its much slower. And slower is a problem because time is a really limited resource. Opportunity cost for all your employees, time for competitors to spring up and try to beat you, etc.<p>VCs are a tool. They allow people like me to have upside while at the same time make a salary. They allow me to instill confidence in potential candidates that our business is safe and if they take the job here, the company will still exist in 5 years. Look, Techcrunch is not an accurate picture of the valley, I'm not going to dispute that with you. But VCs are not evil people or a scam. They are a tool that for the right startup, at the right timing, can be hugely beneficial. It is pretty stupid that the best way to get written about is to raise funding, but then again getting written about is so inconsequential to success you can just ignore it. However having resources to grow and accelerate can be very consequential to success, and you need to make sure not to confuse the two.
> It was 2010. I was 17 years old (...) and I had found the next Billion Dollar Idea.<p>> It was 2011. I was 18 years old (...) and I had found the next World Changing Idea.<p>> It is 2013. I am 20 years old (...) and I have found the Right Thing for Me.<p>IOW "this time it's different". Color me skeptical. Looking forward to the 2023 edition or whenever he gets over the Dunning–Kruger effect.
So the "businesses" you looked at when you were 17 and 18, did you actually do any development on them? Or by "not going anywhere", do you mean you never crossed the first hurdles (financing, media exposure, etc)? I'm fascinated by the idea that you can build million dollar ideas while dealing with the demands of school and (presumably) a social life.<p>I wonder if having a third business by age 20 leads to ADD-driven Entrepreneurship. Not to knock your age, but you can't ignore the truth that your longest "project" has probably lasted a semester. The full experience of high school, which surely feels like an eternity (I know it did to me at that age, as it represented 20% of my life span!), is less time than it took for some of the most successful businesses to attain profitability.<p>So what's your timespan for success? I guess I question the ability to even have the perspective to drive not only product development, but the business development it takes to bring a company to profitability at your level of life experience.
Man, now I feel really bad for exploiting all those 20 year old Stanford and Berkeley kids by handing them millions of dollars to see if they can get their ideas to work.<p>From now on, y'all are on your own -- good luck!
Don't read TechCrunch. It's a cesspit of hype and sensationalism. Any plan which involves "get on the front page of TechCrunch" is a horrible plan, IMO.<p>I still occasionally look at TechCrunch, mostly because it's a good test site for browsers (because it's really memory-hungry). And every time I get sucked into reading an article, I inevitably end up feeling dirty. It's similar to how I feel after reading the covers of the gossip magazines when I'm waiting in line at the supermarket.
Yes, taking VC money is a double-edged sword; that's basically the long and the short of it. However, it's a great thing that investors will line up to throw millions at a nascent tech start-up, especially if you want to spend your life building big companies.<p>VCs obviously have a lot of power and influence in the Valley because many businesses need a big chunk of start-up capital and they have it, and they own fractions of many companies and sit on boards. The fact that they are influential isn't a reason <i>not</i> to associate with them.<p>Bootstrapping your business and paying your engineers' salaries out of your revenue rather than investment is admirable. I'd like to try it sometime.<p>The main thing to recognize is that when you take money from investors, <i>you</i> are claiming the business is a good business. Successful fund-raising is not derisking, it is you explaining the risk and why you will succeed.
It goes without saying on HN that not playing the VC-driven-startup game is the tougher road of the two options. That being said I have the utmost admiration and respect for those who are working hard to give us a more role models to follow in this mold.<p>----<p>Btw completely off topic, but the red square on white background design immediately evoked images of Campbell soup in me, at which point I realized the magnitude and importance of their branding and visual identity.
A VC fundable startup is one in which you KNOW you can turn $1 into $20. Once you figure out how to do this, you will want as much money as possible to make that happen as many times as you can. That's when VC's are needed. You take VC money for growth, not for ideation or market validation. Before you find your business model you should stick to bootstrapping, angel investing and just keep iterating until you figure it all out.
Some of the comments here a bit disconcerting. This is just a critique of the mentality that many aspiring entrepreneurs unknowingly engage in. It's not really an indictment of venture cap.<p>Also, discussing what nobody wants to hear and pointing out our deeply rooted assumptions is definitely a good thing. Sad that some people seem to get so defensive about such things.
I'm not going to join the douche-pile of people attacking the OP because of his age. I admire his courage.<p>OP is literally sophomoric. He's beginning to realize that "tech" (meaning VC-istan) isn't a meritocracy, and this is a really hard realization. This is that stage where you hate something but don't know <i>why</i> you hate it, and every time you speak out against something, people tear you down because you haven't figured out exactly what is wrong with it (much less how to fix it). You might complain about "politics" without having new insight into what makes various environments political.<p>I hate VC-istan and I have good reasons for it. I don't hate VCs-- not individually, and not conceptually. I don't hate every VC-funded company, of course; there are good ones, I'd probably raise VC (as horrible as it is) if I were in that space. I just hate the ecosystem and its <i>anti</i>-technical, 17th-century reputation economy that is ripe for extortion. (The reason multiple liquidation preferences, participating preferred, and entrepreneur payment of VC legal fees exist is professional extortion via social proof; the VC knows he can pick up a phone and rape your shit for breakfast.) I hate that it encourages people to build horrible companies that destroy young peoples' careers. It's ridiculous how a bad implementation of something very old (patronage) can be dressed up as innovative and new.<p>OP isn't there yet on his knowledge of the <i>why</i>, so his knowledge seems superficial. He'll get there, and he probably understands more than he can articulate right now.