I Fell In Love!

I have a confession to make. I fell in love with fundraising for my start-up. Let me be more specific.?I fell in love with the validation investors dole out just like your first dose of heroin. That dopamine hit can be very addicting to first-time founders and gray-ish-haired ones like me.

“How is the round coming along?” This is the missive every founder hears. Or a friend asks you “How are you?” and you instinctively reply “Oh, I’m raising.”?Out of the 400 investors I pitched to and the 28 angels on our CAP table there was only ONE that did not ask about the round. He asked about sales. “So, what did you sell this week?” was his favorite jab at my blind attempts to raise.?

It’s taken me years to realize that the entire start-up ecosystem is designed for you to do one thing at all costs. If you are a “good” founder you raise. You can raise. You will raise. You continue to raise even as the initial dopamine high of raising decreases and you need to keep talking to more investors to get the same high. To validate yourself. Ironically if you don’t do what the investors/experts say then you are a founder who “doesn’t listen.” Certainly, there are businesses that are capital-intensive that are outside the scope of this article. Let’s set those aside.?With my very dusty degree in Social Work from a previous life that seems almost not to have been the same person writing this article, I recall that to “listen” is not the same as to “comply”. It is not the same as to “understand”. Let’s not get sidetracked, back to the original thesis…

"We need to face some hard facts that it is an industry”

Where would the VC industry be if founders were not spending 90% of their time on courting them? We need to face some hard facts that it is an industry. The reason is quite straightforward since the economic activity (selling start-ups) is concerned with the processing of raw materials (people, codebase, IP, drug targets, etc.) and the manufacture of goods (commercial assets of start-ups) in factories (the start-up itself).?

“...founders are GIVEN the idea through very intentional content marketing.”

Any industry requires fuel to keep it running. In this industry that fuel are people willing to start companies at great personal and professional risk and sacrifice. So, I asked myself. How do founders decide to start companies? When, where, and how does that decision come to them? These are very smart people that could have chosen almost any other profession. Where do they “get” the idea? I hypothesize that founders don’t get the idea themselves. Rather they are GIVEN the idea through very intentional content marketing crafted by the industry owners namely VCs and LPs. Founders are top of a funnel that fuels the manufacturing line. Unfortunately, this manufacturing line is super unproductive, and waste is at ~90%. Certainly, if Tesla were to run a manufacturing line where 90% of the cars that came off the line did not start or failed in the first year that industry would have some serious reckoning. Sure, if the other 10% of customers returned a profit to Tesla then perhaps no one would care. So why do founders keep buying from this manufacturing line when there are other options??

“Oh, I'm just focused on sales right now.”?

“How are you?” and you instead reply “Oh, I'm just focused on sales right now.” We as founders need to change the narrative to one that favors us both financially and in terms of happiness in building what WE believe in. So, I ask all fellow founders to post about their sales, not their round!