Slashdot Mirror
Where Have All the Venture Capitalists Gone?
artlu asks: "I have a great idea for a dotcom company, and I just started to execute the initial stages of my business plan. I developed the initial website, gained a user base, and am about to incorporate in Florida. Now I need to find a venture capitalist! However, every capitalist I approach is fearful of dotcoms. I ask the Slashdot community: How do I find a post-bubble dotcom investor?"
... I wouldn't give you money. Would you trust someone who advocated day trading to manage your investment well? I find it interesting that you quote Warren Buffet in your theory section when essentially you are going against everything that he stood for (regarding investments).
Realize that in order to succeed you will lose - a lot. I lost $11,000 when I started out, but I think of that money as an education. Also, do not even attempt to day trade with less then $40,000 as you will need Day Trading Buying power. PAPER TRADE.
How much did you end up making? If you did/are doing well, why are you changing professions (trader to dotcomer)? If not, why would I trust my money with you? (especially since you're losing your money in such a foolish manner--day trading)
Best slashdot comment
Sounds like someone got carried away with the 24HDC...
And he actually managed to get a plug on Slashdot. This is just slightly pathetic.
Bot Assisted Blogging
What sort of capital are we talking? If it's around $30k or under, you should have no problem funding it yorself (I can easily raise that sort of capital myself through personal savings and personal loans; as a business one can easily receive more from the banks, not counting any business development grants available to you).
If we're talking more, how are you going to pay them back? What are your revenue streams - looks like just ad-driven to me. So as a VC hoping to have made significant profit on my investment in 5 years, what is your forecast? How much do you expect to get from advertising per user? How many users are you going to attract? How many years will it take for this revenue stream to generate $200k profit, to make it worth their while.
As with the parent, my intent is not to be negative, but as someone who is very much involved in the issues of keeping a business afloat, I think you need to come up with viable answers to these questions in the form of a solid business plan before you go asking for VC. And you have to truly belive that the business plan is feasible, else even if you did get VC you'd be opening yourself up for a miserable time.
A more direct answer to your question, though, would be to attend events in the ICT sector. You'll find there are many agencies, all in a close-knit community, with the goal to support ICT companies. They will host events which are of no interest, but you can network, network, network. Once that's done, finding VCs will be no problem whatsoever, as everyone in the community will know everyone else.
Oh, by the way - many people will be displeased that their information is being shared with a tracking company. At the least it looks very unprofessional. You're hosting PHP pages, bite the bullet and write the tracking code yourself.
(Emphasis mine)
Perhaps this is why the VC's are running scared?
As for the something different, I'm hundred per cent behind you on that one. If you don't have a product differentiator, you are dead - there is only so much market and somebody bigger always has economies of scale.
See my journal, I write things there