If they come for hypnotists, they will leave for hypnotists…

If your competitors are hiring devs with the lure of life coaches and dog day care, you bet you better have both and the on-site hypnotist.

If you could provide more hypnotist and less options, then does it make sense? Then are you drunk? If so, with genius.

But too much money, too early can make you drunk.

Aeron chairs — check
HUGE launch party — check
PR firm — check
Cool SF digs — check
30 inch monitors, everywhere — check
Life Coaches for team — check
Dog day care — check
On-site hypnotist — check

Then, you know you are screwed.

PS If you make tons of cash and are executing you *should* indulge.

I would rather be able to pursue my desperate need to create the ass-kickinest app I can over my desperate need to generate revenue for it.

Money allows you to reduce revenue based desperation and replace it with product building desperation.

You probably raised the money in the first place because you didn’t want to be desperate for revenue.

I can’t say it’s a false statement. I can say it doesn’t make sense to me or apply in Grockit’s situation. Raising the Series A we did, as opposed to a few hundred K seed round, has given us an engine with a lot more horsepower. That knowledge, if anything, should keep your foot feeling like lead. That said, keep in mind, a more powerful car requires more adept steering, braking and maintenance.

Money well spent buys time (far more precious than money), quality (translate: scalability and user satisfaction), people (translate: your company), access, resources. Do you need any of these?

Money is to a business what oxygen is to a human. But, I digress….

I hope there was something helpful in there.

Cheers

One thing: a referral is the single most powerful way to get into a VC firm. Most of their deals come from people they trust.

If you can, go through this method, it works.

Go for it.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step?

If I worded things well, I think every founder fits in either situation 1 or 2.

Situation 1
Founder knows literally nobody in the VC community or, knows nobody who knows anybody. The founder is literally unconnected in anyway to anyone or anything in the VC or Angel world anywhere in the world.

Situation 2
Founder knows one, just one, or more people in, or connected to the VC/Angel world.

Response 1
I think the first situation is not realistic. Everybody knows somebody, who knows somebody. If you take yourself seriously as a internet founder, you’re in LinkedIn and should be making sure you have a presence there. Make sure you follow and contribute to blogs like venturehacks.com and get people’s blog reading lists so you know what blogs to follow. Get to know these people. Get yourself into situation 2. If you can’t, you cannot be a founder, it’s the first cutoff.

Response 2
Once you know one person, you ask them to connect you to another via an email introduction. You ask the new person for a meeting. Keep adding quality people and impressing them with you and your business idea. Rinse and Repeat.

Anything useful in there Denis? Hope so.

Best!

Thanks!