Review: Fundable Startup (AngelList)

7th Founder Showcase - Naval Ravikant Keynote from Founder Institute on Vimeo.

Be Exceptional at one of the following (Importance is ranked by sequence, where Traction rules)

1. Traction (Perhaps 20% per month)
2. Team (Reputation, not self acknowledgement)
3. Product
4. Social Proof (Reputation, Reference by someone known, Herd Mentality)
5. Market ...

Markets & Approaches (Unfundable)

• Services, multiple products
• Small Markets
• Desktop Software / Dead Platforms (Silverlight, Flash, etc)
• Conquered Markets with Network Effects (beating eBay or Craiglist)
• High atom content (required brick and mortar)
• Not too large, not too small

Team (Unfundable)

• You don't get to call yourself visionary
• Outsourced development, business-heavy
• Sole founder
• Part-timers
• 12 years experience (too genetic, what have you done)

Exceptional Team (Fundable)

• Keywords: MIT, PHD, Columbia, CS, Cisco, Sun, Google, Microsoft
• No adjectives / opinions of yourself
• Show, not tell
• Quantitative and precise, not qualitative and vague
• Branded or measurable output
• Recruit only the best. And if you can't, you're not ready.

Product Guidelines

• No promises / vision
• Show, not tell
• Quantitative
• Something hard with specific knowledge
• Expect competition
• Build only the best

Real Hacks

• Advisory Round (Notable VC)
• Cast a Broad Net, move simultaneously
• Easier to pitch a new investor than to convert one
• Sell the option to invest more later?
• If you're having a hard-time, restart (go back to drawing board)
• Don't sell more than 20% at seed round

Summary

• Get to a funding hub
• Recruit an exceptional team
• Build something you are passionate and knowledgeable about
• Test it against customers
• Get social and customer validation
• Raise on at least once exceptional characteristic