January 28, 2006

“don’t be an a.t.m.

2 Comments

From Fred Wil­son:

Fra­ser Kel­ton has an exce­llent post on the cha­llen­ges facing the ven­ture busi­ness up on his Dis­rup­tive Thoughts blog.

Fred also adds this thought:

I would sug­gest one rule and only one. Be the entrepreneur’s part­ner. Help him or her. Be there for them. Sup­port them. Coun­sel them. Share the risk with them. Have fun with them. Laugh and cry with them. And make boat­loads of money with them. It’s a time tes­ted for­mula and it will work forever.

Ok, so what sayest Rick Segal And Doc Searls?
[Rick and Doc are having an ongoing con­ver­sa­tion about how the ven­ture capi­tal busi­ness can work in a “Web 2.0″ envi­rion­ment, when large hel­pings of cash aren’t always nee­ded. How then does a VC add value, if his main rai­son d’etre [i.e. Cash] is not nee­ded in the equation?]

2 Responses to ““don’t be an a.t.m.”

  1. Andreas Duess says:
    January 28, 2006 at 4:21 pm

    Hi Hugh, this is of per­so­nal inte­rest to me.
    A cou­ple of years ago I star­ted a small online com­pany that helps authors to become publishers, com­ple­tely bypas­sing the tra­di­tio­nal publishing and vanity publishing industry.
    We star­ted the com­pany with $20,000 in cash, rai­sed by the two part­ners. Some of that money paid for web deve­lop­ment, but most of it was just in the bank to make sure that we had ade­quate cash flow. We attrac­ted the atten­tion of a cou­ple of money peo­ple but deci­ded to build the com­pany slowly and without giving up the day job.
    We’re still around, gro­wing orga­ni­cally and moving for­ward. I still have a day job, but that’s mostly due to the fact that I love my day job. I’ve just taken on a new part­ner who is brin­ging a modest invest­ment which we’ll use for R&R pur­po­ses but that’s all. We have no debt, no sha­rehol­der obli­ga­tions, no pro­jec­ted ear­ning reports. Most of our busi­ness is coming from word of mouth — it’s enough to keep us busy.
    It’s not always stress free, but it’s a really nice way to build something that is 100% yours.

  2. Ematite says:
    January 28, 2006 at 11:41 pm

    Hi. I have a blog at http://www.ematite.livejournal.com, and I think I will post (or link) your “How to be crea­tive” thing, one of these days. I’ll put cre­dits, of course.
    Just wan­ted to inform you about this and –above all– to thank you. I enjoy dra­wing car­toons and illus­tra­tions, too, and I’ve found all you wrote very helpful.