2. Do you need the money?
S Funding important for scaling, intensive capital needs,
accelerating growth
S Funding much easier to get after proving concept
(valuation also higher)
S Not all startups need outside funding
S Advice: Go as long as you can without asking for money
8. PCH
S Located in Shenzhen, China
S Huge supply chain company
S Needed $200k USD to build circuit boards
S Banks, VCs, turned them down
S Founder Liam Casey asked factory to build it for him first
S Offered his passport as collateral
9. Do you need the money?
S Hustle, hustle, hustle
S Build prototype, demo, proof of concept before asking for
money
S If possible, find a way to acquire customers, get real
world data, then seek money
S If cash-flow is business supporting, may not need funding
ever
10. Looking for money
S Ideas are a “dime a dozen”
S Investors want to know your team can pull it off
S Management team covers all needed areas to succeed
S Technology / Development, Marketing/Sales/Business
S Prove the concept with real customers
S Go out there and get customers with your product
S “Pivots” are essential | Your original ideas rarely work
12. DropBox
S Total VC capital funding of 257.2 MM USD
S Valuation possibly > 1 Billion USD
S Annual revenue > 240 MM USD for 2011
S Very interesting method of getting initial funding
13. DropBox
S Founder Drew Houston originally use “Customer Development”
methodology by Steve Blank
S Customer Development process
S Talking to customers
S Using feedback to develop and refine product
S Then, Drew Houston had an animated video created of a
product that did not exist
S Shopped the video to investors as “alpha version” and got
funded
S … then built the product.
14. Summary
S Ideas are just ideas
S You need to execute and test the market, to know what’s
out there
S At least have working prototype to show people, get
feedback loop (Customer Discovery)
S Real data (proof) trumps all funding at that point is just
to scale a working model
