
How A Kid Funded VoodooPC With His Credit Card And Sold It To HP - mikeyur
http://mixergy.com/voodoopc-rahul-sood
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staunch
Pet peeve: I hate the use of "kid" in this context. It seems insulting and
condescending.

~~~
mikedouglas
Every link from mixergy.com seems to follow that same format, too. "How
[Someone Just Like You] Made [Large Sum of Money]". Why make your site sound
like a late night infomercial? Maybe there is decent information about
starting a successful company in these interviews, but I never bother reading
them because the titles are lowest common denominator.

~~~
pchristensen
1) If you click on the link, the first four words are "At 17 years old", so I
think it's fair to call him a kid.

2) He used a credit card instead of seeking investors, waiting until he saved
up money, or just foregoing entrepreneurship because he had not money.

3) His company was called VoodooPC (context).

4) He sold a company he started with a credit card.

That's an awful lot of information to put into a 14 word title. I just took
about 100 words to describe it. I think Andrew's headlines are very well
written.

There's a reason they sound formulaic - _he interviews successful
entrepreneurs_.

Who are the entrepreneurs everyone respects, and how would you tell their
stories in 20 words or less?

College dropout writes software for PCs, makes billions.

Ex hippie makes PCs more stylish, then does the same for music, makes
billions.

Two college braniacs use research project to find all the world's information,
make billions.

Wannabe artist helps people sell stuff online, then helps start startups.

They all sound trite compared to what we all know about Gates, Jobs, Brin,
Page, and pg, but for these less well known entrepreneurs, it's helpful to get
a concentrated dose of context.

For what it's worth, I think Andrew's interviews on Mixergy are some of the
most useful content on the internet.

~~~
electromagnetic
Why is #3 relevant? Voodoo was the name of (at the time) the hands down best
quality graphics cards on the market. Was 3DFX some 'kid' because it decided
to name its product after magic?

His product was a well made, top end PC and was aptly named. Compared to the
rest of the market, his PC was literally magic. Why this makes him a kid, I
have no fucking clue.

I hate seeing the word 'kid' used to describe anyone young and talented. It's
derogatory. "Look someone young did something mentionable" it's as derogatory
as "Look a woman's in technology _gasp_!"

This guy was obviously going to fund this project himself, so again I don't
see what the relevance of #2. It's $1500, if he had it in his account he'd
have likely used it. If he'd have taken out a loan, he'd have been charged
almost an identical interest rate . . . but he's 17 so he'd have likely been
denied for a loan anyway. How could he have got investors? It's $1500, the
only people willing to give that would have been family and dealing with money
with family tends to be a bad idea. Instead of going to family, like a child
would, and simply asking for money that may well have never been paid back he
took the debt onto himself.

How not being a leech on your family can be childish, I don't know. I still
know people well into their 20's who still leech off of their families for
cash, this guy at 17 acted _maturely_.

Mixergy links virtually always get a click from me because they're _good_. If
I hadn't heard of VoodooPC before, I wouldn't have touched this link, the
title is god awful. It tells nothing, and the article (at least the writing)
is shit awful. No mention that this "kid" now works for HP!

This was very poor writing by Andrew. He's a good interviewer, but he
seriously needs to work on his copy editing to sell his interview talents.

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breck
Andrew, can you stop doing so many of these please? They are so good that I
feel compelled to drop what I'm doing and read them.

:)

Just kidding. I know each minute spent on Mixergy will save me multiples of
that over time.

~~~
petercooper
Good point. I came in to post that it's remarkable that nearly every Mixergy
interview (maybe even _all_ now?) makes the HN front page. This stuff is like
brain candy to entrepreneurs.

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jasonlbaptiste
I keep wanting to do the same with HTPCs (not so much the high price/ferrari
aspect, but the niche aspect). This interview may have given me the kick in
the ass to stop being so scared/hesitant and move from prototype/research to
production.

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dschobel
I sat in on the venture class at UChicago last night (I'm auditing the MBA
program).

They actually talked about this and the professor referenced some study out of
UVA of successful entrepreneurs and one of the recurring traits was that their
investments are guided not by the size of the opportunity but by their own
conception of 'acceptable loss'.

It was emphasized multiple times that _you really should _not_ fund your
venture on credit cards_ , 2nd and 3rd mortgages on your homes, etc even if
you think an opportunity promises to be the next google, twitter, whatever.

~~~
AndrewWarner
I can't disagree with that. It's a reasonable point.

But when I left school, I used tens of thousands in credit card debt to build
my first business because I just HAD to be an entrepreneur and there was no
other way.

\- I didn't want a side job, because I felt it would be an excuse to
procrastinate when the going got tough at my startup.

\- I couldn't raise money, because I didn't have the slightest clue where to
begin. (All the books I bought on how to raise VC money were useless. My
family didn't have the cash. And my family friends kept telling me I should
get a job.)

I would have given anything just for a chance to start a business. My kid
brother and I actually talked about me selling a body part to raise money.
Sounds ridiculous now, but it shows how determined (desperate?) I was to be an
entrepreneur.

Losing my money, credit, house, etc, all that meant nothing in comparison to a
shot at being like the people I admired.

I wonder if you can make it without that kind of determination. I wonder if
someone who thinks rationally about not taking on too much debt can have the
irrational passion to be an entrepreneur (or to do anything exceptional).

~~~
patio11
_I wonder if you can make it without that kind of determination. I wonder if
someone who thinks rationally about not taking on too much debt can have the
irrational passion to be an entrepreneur_

I'm thinking "You can" and "Plenty of people _do_ ", and that we just filter
out their stories because they don't fit the narrative.

~~~
Psyonic
37 signals would be an obvious example that it can be done, wouldn't they?

~~~
dschobel
Again, 37 signals like VoodooPC is just an exceptional example. That's why it
is useful to look at aggregate numbers like the UVA/Darden study (I'm still
trying to find an online copy for you guys) which tells you what the majority
of successful entrepreneurs (who themselves are already a minority of
entrepreneurs) do.

And the majority of successful entrepreneurs _do not invest assets based on
their perception of the magnitude of the opportunity but rather on their own
idea of acceptable loss_.

Stripped of the emotional mumbo-jumbo and romantic appeal of putting literally
everything into an investment, the statistically successful position makes
perfect sense.

~~~
Psyonic
Sounds sensible. If you do find that study, make sure to post it. I'd love to
see all the conclusions they came to

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breck
If you read the transcript, make sure to hit the bottom.

The healthcare startup and twitter stock trading stories are also very
interesting.

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johnl
Find a niche market and dominate it, works every time.

