Whom should I meet?
Isn't this one of the main questions we ask ourselves every day? Particularly startups and investors. The idea and capital people?
Who else is investing in this sector? What are similar companies? What happens in this country? Who else is solving this problem? Who targets this customer segment? Who are relevant people at this event?
At Starwatcher we have been thinking about this deeply.
Whom should I meet?
You know who makes a great startup founder. They are so passionate about solving a problem that they will always find a way to do it. It's not just passion; it's obsession. They are in the business of buying time. Sometimes, it means they work during the day and build during the night. Or they spend time at another company to gain experience and save money to 'buy' time and build their own company. They build prototypes, attend hackathons, and invest their 'free' time in “the thing”. They have that itch. They are obsessed. The holy grail is to find a way to earn money by doing what you are obsessed with and to have clients for 'your thing.'
Here is a quote from life philosopher Ice-T on the topic:
“In that edge where on one side it’s dangerous and on the other side it’s so profitable. In that edge, creation lives!”
Some people are not like that. They simply go to work and find happiness in fulfilling their lives with other things. And it's okay. Everyone is driven by different things in life. Founders are just on that edge where creation lives. It doesn't make sense. At the beginning.
Whom should I meet?
Founders are always on the lookout for whom they should talk to. Who will give me money so I can spend more of my time building what I want? Ideally, those are clients.
Sometimes, you simply can't have clients without something to show. And that 'something to show' sometimes has to be quite substantial. You have to 'invest your time' in that something before you can ask for client money. Some things take less time; some things take years. You still need money to buy time.
Whom should I meet?
There are capital people who are interested in these obsessed startup people—venture capitalists. Born out of financing trading expeditions and global exploration missions back in the day, they are the risk-takers of the financial world. They give money to those who sometimes have just an idea—a story about the world to be. Tangible assets? A printout of a pitch deck, a laptop, and a co-working membership.
Pretty much, it is a legal form of gambling with really bad odds. But if one succeeds, the reward is huge. Down side is limited, the upside is unlimited. So they are willing to bet. But...
Whom should I meet?
Howard Marks has an essay on how to be good investor - Dare to be great. You have to be contrarian and right. Thats it! Invest in something that others don't believe in and it turns out to be the right thing.
If your behaviour and that of your managers is conventional, you’re likely to get conventional results - either good or bad. Only if the behaviour is unconventional is your performance likely to be unconventional … and only if the judgments are superior is your performance likely to be above average.
Easier said than done.
We can be right about something, but if everybody agrees on that, then what's the point? You can't have good returns on well-known information.
You can be contrarian and wrong. Well, that is not good either. Now you feel stupid AND you have lost money.
You have to be right and contrarian. The more contrarian things you have been right about, the bigger the potential return.
Whom should I meet?
Startups complain that investors don't want to meet with them and it is hard to get 'reasonable' meetings with investors who “get it”. 'Too early for us,' 'Too late for us,' 'Not in our focus,' 'Not enough traction,' they will say. Startups have heard these in different shapes and forms.
VCs complain about bad deal flow. It is supposed to be. Most of the startups will go bust. In this venture capital game, it’s not a bug. It’s a feature. Unicorns are rare for a reason. It is not hard to invest in a 'solid team with good traction, a defensible business model, and an industry-disrupting business model.' It is hard to invest in 'It doesn't make sense, but if it turns out to be true, it will be big.' That is the 'venture' part in ‘venture capital.’
And so it is. There is capital out there, that mythical “dry powder,” which seeks “the next big thing,” that mythical “unicorn.” But the very nature of unicorn is to be non obvious.
Whom should I meet?
At Starwatcher, we have spent quite some time exploring this problem. What could be a good shortlist? For an investor? For a startup? The cold start problem here is big. Startups and investors just don't spend time filling in profiles. They don't have time. So we have to do a bit of homework. Quite a bit. We have to build a database and analyse companies. The database should be decent. 5k companies are not enough. 20k is not enough. 100k might be enough. A million?
Here’s the catch. The problem is not in the size of a database. The problem is narrowing it down to a meaningful shortlist. For both sides. The meaningful list of companies to talk with. And this shortlist changes all the time. Because the world is not static. You are not static. Your focus changes, your worldview changes, and the market changes.
It is not about big data. It is about small data in the right context.
Starwatcher is a growing database. But it is also a place where everyone—startup or investor—can claim their profile and keep it up to date. We might have your profile already on the platform.
At Starwatcher, we believe that in the vast startup universe, every idea has an investor who is interested in it. They just haven't met yet. We are a bit obsessed with this idea.
Whom should I meet?
Let's see! Give us a startup url, and we will tell you whom you should meet. No more, no less. Just a homepage address.
We are in public beta. Also known as “alive and broken”. Give it a go, report bugs, send feedback. Share!
Whom should I meet? Should we meet? Drop me a line at ernests@starwatcher.io.
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P.s.
Above the crowds, above the clouds where the sounds are original
Infinite skills create miracles