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My Latest War: Angels charging startups to pitch ================= Recently, I was made aware of a group of angel investors that were charging startups to pitch them.

Yes, you heard that correctly: the rich people (angels) are charging the poor people (startup entrepreneurs desperate for cash to fuel their dreams) to hear their pitch. No, I’m not kidding. This is actually happening — and it’s widespread.

None of them have ever charged me a dime for doing so. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE RICH!

Your Idea Already Exists: There are very few truly new ideas. Most ideas are an improvement or a different take on an existing idea. Regardless of how much is new, the chances are that if you have thought of it, others have as well.

Being New Can Be a Problem: If you have a truly new idea, you are in many ways at a disadvantage. Being first to market means you have to educate consumers, and that can be expensive.

The Value Is Not in the Idea: The competitive landscape is very different than it was 30 years ago, back when ideas had some merit on their own. Now, there are so many businesses out there, and so much information, that an idea by itself is worth zero.

I think Howard Aiken got it right: Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

One thing I’ve learned from developing software is that it’s very difficult to transfer ideas. A lot of software projects never completely transition from the original author because no one else really understands what’s going on.

And when other people do have your idea, they still have to implement it. That’s the hard part. We all have more ideas than we can carry out. The chance that someone else will have your idea and have the determination to execute it is tiny.

I prepared a short talk. I called it ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ I say ‘short.’ It was short in the beginning, but it soon expanded to a lecture that consumed one hour and thirty minutes.

Here’s how the now famous book became a reality: we started with a set of rules printed on a card no larger than a postcard. The next season we printed a larger card, then a leaflet, then a series of booklets, each one expanding in size and scope. After fifteen years of experimentation and research came this book.

What I’m starting to notice more and more, is that great things almost always start small.

I made it myself. In 1995 I started a company to put art galleries online. But galleries didn't want to be online. It's not how the art business works.

Khosla wasn’t trying to defame Y Combinator, noting “There’s plenty of smart teams out of YC that we fund.” But he stressed that heavily prepared presentations can backfire. “Too much of the polish of the five slide deck” distracts a team and can repel mentors like him. For a startup that believes it has a great idea, the next thing they need is great execution, and that requires an all-star team and savvy strategy — elements that the right angel or VC firm can offer. A pumped-up valuation might help the founders retain more equity, but that doesn’t matter without success.

If your idea is risky, but with a huge upside that isn’t valued too high, you can gain the support of people like Vinod and his Khosla Ventures. ”I spend most of my time recruiting for my companies. Once you hire the wrong people… it’s really hard to get a company back on track.”

Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. You can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of “blah”, the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close. And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account.

The best will be in contact all the time (or at least well before they have a news story to pitch) in an attempt to figure out how to maximize the chances of something being picked up. It’s a wonder there aren’t more of them.

Sadly there aren’t and 80 - 90 percent of pitches I received followed the tired format of "Hi X, Company Y is launching a product next week and we thought it would be of interest to publication Z."

So here's an idea to try when getting media coverage for your startup - don't start by pitching the product. Start by pitching nothing.Clearly showing that you understand that a journalist doesn't just exist to publicize you is one of the fastest routes to his or her heart.

“Hi Elle, what’s the angle?”

“Arbitrage on parsing shipping data,” I reply. “Well, everyone has an angle.”

My Dad explained that hedge funds are truly a dime-a-dozen in the finance world, not dissimilar from angel investors.

Behind the term 'growth hacking'The concept for growth hacking grew out of the fact that most startups fail, and needing to not fail. When you think about games, the market is filled with large companies with lots of money to throw into marketing. Sean summed this need up well, with: When you're competing against Sony, you can't go dollar for dollar

2. A Must-Have Experience Sean focused on the importance of a Must-Have Experience (MHX) - you must have a hook that clearly identifies what this is.

3. Uncovering your MHXTo get a clear understanding of what your MHX is, Sean suggested reaching out to your Must Have Users (MHUs)… but what is a MHU?

In its simplest terms, a value proposition is a positioning statement that describes for whom you do what uniquely well. It describes your target buyer, the problem you solve, and why you’re distinctly better than the alternatives. One of the classic mistakes of building a value proposition is diving headlong into the solution definition phase before really understanding the problem you’re looking to solve. To understand whether it’s a problem worth solving, I recommend exercising four U’s: Is the problem unworkable? Does your solution fix a broken business process where there are real, measureable consequences to inaction? Is fixing the problem unavoidable? Is it driven by a mandate with implications associated with governance or regulatory control? For example, is it driven by a fundamental requirement for accounting or compliance? Is the problem urgent? Is it one of the top three priorities? In selling to enterprises, you’ll find it hard to command the attention and resources to get a deal done if you fall below this line. Is the problem underserved? Is there a conspicuous absence of valid solutions to the problem you’re looking to solve? Focus where there’s whitespace, not scorched earth.

Khosla is very passionate about assisting his companies with recruiting, even suggesting that talented folks send him their resume.

Khosla went on to discuss what happens when you hire the wrong people, and he says that it’s hard to get a team back on track once those mistakes are made early on. I spend most of my time recruiting for my companies. You hire the first 15 people and they hire the rest.

Not only is it about hiring the “right” people, but as Khosla has said here on TechCrunch before, you don’t have to be a jerk to be successful. Finding the right spot for someone in a company is key: If people aren’t performing, put them in the another job where they can perform or fire them.