No need for seed for the "connections." In fact a seed investment can kinda screw things up because you're deal won't be as clean.
Only take on seed if you think it would improve your "funding profile" to VC's. So you need to evaluate 1. what your funding profile looks like now. 2. what it would look like after a seed investment. And remember more is not always better (meaning, sometime its better to show a little less results than more. ie "wow, these guys raised a $500k seed and still only grew at 2x...")
PM me if you want to talk about your current vc fundability (i'm ex-vc, current ceo of startup)
Yes. That's also part of the issue. I feel that if I get a good seed round from a reputable investor, I'll have a better funding profile. (I'm PMing you to figure that out... wait how do I PM?)
We're bootstrapped, so I guess our funding profile is... 3 partners, equal equity.
Funding profile I was meaning more like: your revenue level and growth rate, what industry you are in and dynamics of, the business model, strength of team, etc.
if you want to discuss send me your email address to: peripatetic@suremail.info and I will drop you a line.
don't confuse ambition, audacity, etc, with lack of humility. you can be ambitious and humble.
humility helps you attract team.
humility helps you delegate when you have that team.
humility helps you pick your battles and focus your resources.
humility attracts investors.
humility helps you get customers.
humility helps you ask the real questions, uncomfortable questions about your current product and how its meeting customers needs.
humility helps you cope with the infinite number of small setbacks in starting up.
I think you need to keep a little perspective. You aren't the first guy to waste a bunch of time on a side project that didn't go anywhere.
1. this was a side project!?! you can't expect great results from a side project. if something happens, then great, if not, well .... you still have a job.
2. Don't you first need to _have something_ before it is conned from you. I certainly didn't hear of any great technical achievements that would have lead to success.
3. Maybe you didn't like the direction the project took. But it sounds like your partner was right about one thing, dealing w/ your dojo guy did get the attention of the Secret guru. It seems like the involvement of the Secret guru is the only thing the project had going for it at one point. And as I mentioned prior, you didn't mention any great technical successes that would have lead to a breakout.
Like i said, welcome to the club of failed side projects.
I'm biased to defend founders, but in that story, I'm not particularly on the author's side.
Yes, the guru was probably abusing the situation. But the author refuses to quit his job and rejects an offer for a $250,000 seed investment. The guru does provide a key connection.
Even a legit guru would have become frustrated with the author by then, and tried to get rid of him.
I'm also not shocked by someone who spends $900 on flowers for their home. If you have the money, why not? The author is just showing how young he is. Driving a BMW is also not proof of cardinal sin :-)
Sounds like the con-couple charged tens of thousands of leisure expenses to the business, which leads me to believe there was some revenue to speak of and at least some of that was generated by work the author completed.
I admit this is not the worst it could have been, but the author got out fairly soon. His friend seems to really be getting screwed.
so....what's excellent about it.... or do you mean you find it useful to use?
i'm personally very cautious about introducing "magic" and "voodoo" into my repositories. i many times have to tweak libraries (add features, fix bugs), so it's worth them making sense without me having to refactor them first (i did this with qunit, tho...it's hard to generalize, eh?).
more importantly, it's important to me that new developers ramp up fast. there's something about collaboration that many lone programmers don't grok. similarly, the code must make sense to me next month. extensibility and maintainability are almost inversely related to voodoo and magic.
good abstraction, handling complexity through elegance, now these are worth having.
it can be quite hard separating good programming from bad. it is even harder when the work itself is complex in nature, although that is when good programming really shines.
Well, luckily we all now have "Felony Machines" installed in all our homes (internet connected computers), that are capable of generating all number of felonies in an evening (child pron and the like). Cliky, clicky everybody.
I think it pretty much goes without saying that, unless your drive has been freshly wiped, just about anyone could earn themselves a stint in Federal prison if their computer is confiscated and subjected to forensic analysis.
Between porn, tax evasion (although typically that would be a state crime), and copyright violations, all it takes is a desire by someone in power to ruin your life and you're toast.
I don't see any defense against this -- aside from unplugging -- except to try and cultivate friends in high places, so in case you step on someone's toes you have someone who can step in and get you out. It's unsafe to rely on the justice system to protect you just because you never meant to do anything wrong.
I work for a startup in sv. successful. we are all linux, python, ruby. we are building our infrastructure from the bottom up, (no previous decisions we are locked into). The idea of doing _anything_ with microsoft is just completely alien... its like another world that is just not relevant to us. could you imagine if we were discussing a new service and one of our engineers said "lets buy a win server 2008 license and an IIS license and check that out" ha. lol. "and if we have any questions we'll just pull up some stuff on the microsoft knowledge center or msdevnet to figure out how to use it." LOL!!
(feeling is similar towards java, but java people are seen as more redeemable. but if you worked on java at HP, you are pretty much lost to us.)
I disagree w/ a lot of what is stated here about: "don't cover up the problem" or "get your life in order then try medication."
I got a lot of the same bad advice and I wasted years flagellating myself to try to get my life in order first. Well, turns out that I have a "real" problem. The 2nd or 3rd day on medication it was like, "wow, all those guys that could balance their checkbook, get the essay in on time, etc, and would condescend to me, and tell me i just needed to "buckle down" well, wholly sh8t, if their minds work like this the whole time... well, damnit they were cheating!" medication can improve the tools you need to get your life in order.
so, you need to answer for yourself if you have a "real" problem. if you do, medication could help immensely. For me it probably saved my life.
But, like other comments, its no panacea. if you really have ADD, well you need to work at it too in addition to medication.
Only take on seed if you think it would improve your "funding profile" to VC's. So you need to evaluate 1. what your funding profile looks like now. 2. what it would look like after a seed investment. And remember more is not always better (meaning, sometime its better to show a little less results than more. ie "wow, these guys raised a $500k seed and still only grew at 2x...")
PM me if you want to talk about your current vc fundability (i'm ex-vc, current ceo of startup)