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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!

What do entrepreneurs use to fund their startup in its earliest stages? Themselves. According to Profit, 98% of those behind Canada's hottest startups fund their startup with their own capital. 62% continue to do this post-launch for growth capital (check out their infographic after the jump).

Growth hackers are creative, constantly on the lookout for ways to increase acquisition, adoption, retention, revenue, and referral. They are disciplined, subjecting themselves to an empirical process to determine what works and what doesn’t. They understand that the product itself is the most effective marketing tool. And they are technical enough to leverage existing platforms to reach the billions of users at their fingertips.

often get asked about finding cofounders and I usually give the standard list of characteristics of what I look for in a founder.  And I emphasize the value of a founding team with complementary skills sets – i.e. the hacker/hustler/designer cofounder archetype for web/mobile apps.

But Jessica Alter, Cofounder & CEO of FounderDating, pointed out that cofounders did not mean two founders in the same room.  She suggested that I was missing one of the key attributes of what makes successful startup teams powerful. She suggested that how cofounders fight was a key metric in predicting the success of a founding team.  

one of the key things to pay attention to in a search for a cofounder is how you fight.

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.

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.

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.

Mistake 3: Failing to quickly fire disrespectful and destructive employees. Nothing is more poisonous to a young company than an employee who doesn’t fit, especially jerks.

"investors are in a sense "buying" your time, not much different than consulting"Brilliant. I've never heard the concept of investing in a startup phrased so well.

My company has a really good chance of succeeding, but I still face these doubts every day. Here are some of the things that make the game worth the candle for me, even if we end up failing: * I'm proud of the product we've built. Even if it doesn't take off, nobody can take that away from me. * I'm incredibly proud of my engineering team. We're "a bunch of kids" who've built something incredible. Even if the company ultimately doesn't survive, we will have done really well. * I love my work and I love the people I work with. There are conflicts, sometimes I have to deliver bad news, deal with stress and monotonous work, firefight problems, etc. but in aggregate the work I do and the people I do it with bring me joy. I will always remember this time fondly. * When I started, I was a good engineer and a terrible product manager. Now I'm a good engineer and a good product manager, which makes me 100x more valuable. There is a bazillion other things I've learned, but this alone makes everything worthwhile.

* Facing doubt every day made me face the darkest corners of my soul. I stopped being an obnoxious cynical windbag and started appreciating the nuances of life, people, art, poetry, strength of human spirit and true magnitude of human dignity. * We're taking a real shot at building hard, sustainable technology that has a good chance to change the world. Even if we fail, I'll never regret taking the chance. * I met hundreds of people on my path. I dismissed some of them, but in retrospect I've learned from them all. I appreciate humanity a lot more now, and I understand where the dark parts of it come from much better. * Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. If you start a company you gain a lot of perspective. I could keep going, but I hope I've made my point. I'm not trying to sugar-coat anything -- failing may very well be the worst thing you've ever experienced emotionally to date. But keep everything in perspective and don't get cynical. You might still change the world in a big way. You might still change it in a small way. It doesn't matter. Enjoy the people around you. Get into adventures. Try to do something meaningful. Do the best you can -- things may not turn out how you wanted them to, but they'll probably turn out ok.

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.”

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.