That someone could see the future of smartphones when a mobile phone was a box of 100 pounds in the trunk of a car is a bit much. There WAS a possibility just by (1) talking to the electronic radio engineers about spectrum, bandwidth, propagation, and power, (2) learning about encryption, and (3) talking to the experts in microprocessor lithography and where that field was going. E.g., quite early on, IBM had their eye on line widths small enough to need X-ray wavelengths as a light source and built a cyclotron as an X-ray source.
The OP missed the possibly crucial role of original advanced technology, e.g., from applied math, that is difficult to understand, duplicate, or equal. Reasons for the OP to miss this possibility is that (1) they have seen little or no such on Sand Hill Road and (2) are unable to evaluate such technology themselves and unwilling to direct such evaluations by others. That the US DoD, DoE, NSF, NASA, NIH, etc. are willing to evaluate such technology early on and have done so with fantastically good effects is just ignored by Sand Hill Road. My guess is that the main cause is concerns by the institutional investor limited partners.
The part about building a demo to prove that the team can build serious software is not good: From all the months I contacted Sand Hill Road, apparently it doesn't much matter WHAT software a team has written in the past or what abilities the team has demonstrated, Sand Hill Road won't invest based on software yet to be written.
Writing such as the OP long misled me: I guessed that such considerations would be part of a VCs investment decisions. But after experience, I concluded, NO: Instead IMHO it appears that that the investment decisions are based on (1) traction significant and growing rapidly, (2) in a large market, (3) with little or no current competition, (4) with a team with not much obviously wrong with it, and (5) the team desperate for a check. The rest in the OP might tempt an entrepreneur to send a pitch deck but won't have anything to do with the VC writing a check.
That someone could see the future of smartphones when a mobile phone was a box of 100 pounds in the trunk of a car is a bit much. There WAS a possibility just by (1) talking to the electronic radio engineers about spectrum, bandwidth, propagation, and power, (2) learning about encryption, and (3) talking to the experts in microprocessor lithography and where that field was going. E.g., quite early on, IBM had their eye on line widths small enough to need X-ray wavelengths as a light source and built a cyclotron as an X-ray source.
The OP missed the possibly crucial role of original advanced technology, e.g., from applied math, that is difficult to understand, duplicate, or equal. Reasons for the OP to miss this possibility is that (1) they have seen little or no such on Sand Hill Road and (2) are unable to evaluate such technology themselves and unwilling to direct such evaluations by others. That the US DoD, DoE, NSF, NASA, NIH, etc. are willing to evaluate such technology early on and have done so with fantastically good effects is just ignored by Sand Hill Road. My guess is that the main cause is concerns by the institutional investor limited partners.
The part about building a demo to prove that the team can build serious software is not good: From all the months I contacted Sand Hill Road, apparently it doesn't much matter WHAT software a team has written in the past or what abilities the team has demonstrated, Sand Hill Road won't invest based on software yet to be written.
Writing such as the OP long misled me: I guessed that such considerations would be part of a VCs investment decisions. But after experience, I concluded, NO: Instead IMHO it appears that that the investment decisions are based on (1) traction significant and growing rapidly, (2) in a large market, (3) with little or no current competition, (4) with a team with not much obviously wrong with it, and (5) the team desperate for a check. The rest in the OP might tempt an entrepreneur to send a pitch deck but won't have anything to do with the VC writing a check.