VC for Hackers

[_pius]

http://chimeracoder.github.io/vc-for-hackers/#1

[chimeracoder]

Author here. I prepared these slides with go.talk/present[0]

If you see any issues (mistakes, things that need to be added), feel free to submit a pull request! https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/vc-for-hackers

[0] http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.talks/pkg/present

[qdpb → chimeracoder]

I found it very unsettling that there is no way to know how many slides were left -- I know that's probably github limitation, but maybe worth inserting summary/progress slides?

[samspenc]

This is pretty awesome. Wish this had been around a few years ago. I've pretty much "reverse engineered" these concepts by following HN discussions...

[nnq]

Could someone explain the "Your main differentiator is the market -> raise venture" vs "Your main differentiator is your advantage -> not raise venture" thing better?

[chimeracoder → nnq]

Sure, this would be more clear if I had the audio to go along with it (which I should probably post too).

Basically, many (not all) successful venture-backed startups are creating new markets for themselves. Google wasn't successful because it was the best web portal - Google was successful because it rendered hierarchical web portals irrelevant. They created a new market that obsoleted an existing one.

In other words, if you're creating a market, you have a huge potential for upside. If you're entering an existing market with a superior product, that's possible, but more difficult.

These are all rough rules of thumb, of course, not hard-and-fast criteria.

[nnq → chimeracoder]

so from a VC's pov, a company that could create a new market has more potential upside than one that could take over an existing market? ...seems a bit counter-intuitive because for an existing big market you know exactly how big it is, so there's no "market size related risk", whereas for a new market, there's a big risk that it will turn out to be a very small niche market. Isn't the optimization being made for something like [upside]/[risk], even if it's an intuitive estimate of course, with an important component of the [risk] being market related?

[julien421]

Your link does not seem to work

[chimeracoder → julien421]

Author here. You can scroll through the slides with the keyboard (press 'page down', the right arrow, or the down arrow).

(The slides were generated with go.talk/present: http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.talks/pkg/present)

[cobrabyte → chimeracoder]

Thanks! I've seen quite a few of these presentations and have never been able to get them to work. Naturally, I want to scroll with my trackpad and this works up through Slide 3. I didn't know you could use the keyboard to actually load more slides. I wish they'd fix this in the presenter software.

[julien421 → chimeracoder]

ok, thanks :)

[namenotrequired]

Slide 8 uses the acronym "ROI" but doesn't define it.

[Blahah → namenotrequired]

Return On Investment (ROI) is very widely used, including in the general press. He probably thought it unnecessary to define.