Fund My Startup

The guys over at one of my favorite blogs, Venture Hacks, just officially released their first digital book: Pitching Hacks.

In their own words:

“We’re excited to share our first book with you: Pitching Hacks. It’s all about pitching startups to investors. 83 pages of beautiful PDF. $19.

We’ve raised $100 million for startups like Epinions, invested another $20 million in companies like Twitter, and advised many others. Pitching Hacks shows you how to apply the simple lessons we’ve learned along the way.”

Here’s a few samples of the book you may want to check out:

• Why do I need an introduction?
• Can I get investors to sign an NDA?

If the stellar free advice they’ve been pumping out on their blog is any indication then this is probably well worth the $19 license fee.

“The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road; long before I dance under those lights.” -Muhammad Ali

There are many reasons why I love software startups: innovative thinking, blank canvases for building new products, smart people, etc.   The single greatest reason, however, is that each day that you don’t die as a company becomes another opportunity to edge slightly closer to a product/market fit.  With proper focus you’ll always end up building a little bit more, generating a few more customers, gathering additional customer/market feedback, and refining your product.

Why must you keep building?  Because as Marc Andreessen writes, a product/market fit is the only thing that matters and as Paul Buchheit points out, it usually takes a long time to get there.  If you’re working on a new deal I recommend you read both posts.  Here’s an…

“If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.  He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and Earth will pause to say, Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”  ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

As young kids my brothers and I were passionate about baseball.  At our own request, my Dad would drive us to the local high school to run hills.  We’d ask him how many he thought we should do.  He’d advise, “Run until you can’t do anymore…then do 1 more.”  That advice is how I approach a startup.

I’m consistently asked how we (at LockerDome) can stand working so much.  I hate this question.  As a passionate entrepreneur, the question doesn’t make any sense.  If you’re working on a deal yourself, or have done one before, I’m sure…

I’ll admit it, I’m not a coffee guy.  The taste has just never grown on me.   So when I mention ‘let’s grab coffee’ it’s simply a descriptor for the act of getting together and chatting rather than a statement of beverage/consumption preference.

There’s a great clip in the movie Good Will Hunting (my favorite movie) where Skylar mentions to Will that maybe they can go out for coffee sometime.  Will says, “Sure.  Or maybe we could just get together and eat a bunch of caramels….when you think about it, it’s as arbitrary as drinking coffee.”   Couldn’t have said it better myself, which is why I’m randomly a hot chocolate guy.

Skip ahead to about the 4:50 mark in the embedded clip below to watch the scene.

In the startup world though coffee is that special drink that makes everyone at the table feel comfortable.  It’s the social beer for entrepreneurs.  So when I tell you…

“Stress is the fertilizer of creativity.”

When we first began concepting LockerDome we constructed an ad-based model which was fully dependent on large chunks of financing, as well as significant scale.  And after some moonlighting, off we went.  We:

• raised a planned micro round of dough last summer;
• built a tremendous core software system in-house;
• began testing the product with niche markets;
• received sponsorship interest from some big brands;
• and sealed some quality partnerships

Yes, things were moving along quite nicely, then somewhat slower, and then…boom, the market changed too much to ignore it.  In fact, it was a phone conversation not too long ago with a fellow entrepreneur that got me thinking really hard about our next steps.  He said, “Raising money right now is obviously tough and the problem you are trying to solve will take some time.  Find a way to create some staying power.”  He was right.  It is time to get back…