Bryce Roberts, a venture investor behind Indie.vc, writes about founder-friendly funding, alternatives to the standard venture path, and startup culture.
HN commenters link it in discussions of alternatives to flip-or-IPO startup funding, citing his Indie.vc ideas as a response to venture pressure.
That resonates deeply with me, and I've been struggling to put across all of that when all I hear from peers is the intention to flip or IPO and on the importance of grabbing as much money as possible whenever possible.
Not to say YC isn't the answer. There's certainly many good reasons to do YC or something similar (the two biggest being the people/network and the atmosphere/environment - from what YC alumni have said), but I would say that unless your business needs the money... try and do without it.
I read this last month and it also resonated with me: http://bryce.vc/post/17396972172/rise-of-the-independents
I know what company I run: it's an indie company, currently ramen profitable after a few months full-time and probably with an unconventional path in front of us.
This should trigger alarm bells in all would-be startup founders. These sorts of patterns should have founders debating about doing things like Bryce Roberts' indie.vc experiment.
http://bryce.vc/post/116925485725/drafting-a-declaration-of-independents
I think given this environment (the barbell shape of current day funding) the next financier who wants to make a big impact should fix this middle part of funding. I'd wager right now companies are dying in the series B land that shouldn't be, which means probable opportunity. (YC seems to have fixed early stage financing, so maybe some vc could be innovative enough to have YC level clout in series A land? Maybe it'd cost too much money to pull it off?)
Am I the only one that read the first two or three lines of Jason's comment and got a headache? http://bryce.vc/post/3520840379/why-i-deleted-my-angellist-account#comment-156695915
He made a good point, but why does he have to express himself like that ? Srsly!
Oh, and don't tell me it's passion. Gimme a break.
Kthnx :)
Fred's blog is great, but this post is really a link to Bryce's blog post: http://bryce.vc/post/130071493425/my-xoxo-talk
Perhaps just go read Bryce's post, which was Fred's intent.
It's worth reading indie.vc's response to this article: http://bryce.vc/post/111385165695/the-biggest-misunderstanding-about-indie-vc