
The Day After You Get Funded - brianmwang
http://tout.ly/jmRJ6s
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pge
This post is a great post to remind entrepreneurs that getting funding is not
a success. I often discuss with companies coming to us looking for funding
that things change when they get money. You now have shareholders with
expectations and you have obligations to them. When you are running on a
shoestring, often decisions are easy because only the most important things
can get done; everything else falls by the wayside. When you have cash in the
bank, suddenly the universe of options is much larger - do I hire more people,
do I invest in marketing, etc. It's an exciting but daunting moment.
Congratulations on the funding; your job just got harder:)

~~~
Shenglong
I often hear people say that sometimes having options can be more difficult
than not having options, but in a business context, I wholeheartedly disagree.
Even in the small (300k total accounts or so) project I founded (that I _just_
killed off), I still had to plan multiple steps ahead. Just because something
wasn't realizable at a given moment, did not mean I didn't have to make
decisions.

In fact, I had to make more decisions: "Once A, B, and C are complete, I need
to find funding. If I get funding from X, then I can proceed with Y. If X
falls through buy N gives me funding, I'll do Z because of M. If both come
through, then I'm limited by H and J, and therefore I'll go with either Q or
W." Obviously, it's more complicated than this, and sometimes my mental maps
gave me headaches - but what I'm trying to illustrate is that once you have
something solid, I think things become simpler. Instead of planning for a
myriad of possibilities, you only need to make one or two per instance.

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jvandenbroeck
I would pop the champagne, you get the opportunity to realize your dream,
isn't that amazing? Instead of growing slowly / difficult / .. you now have
money to hire amazing people and accelerate your development progress.

Damn, I get even excited typing about it.

~~~
tptacek
Growing a business is difficult whether you take funding or not. Many people
who think like you seem to be are just kidding themselves. They're popping the
champagne because they've deferred the reckoning over their lack of a viable
business for 1-2 years, instead of finding out immediately that their idea is
dead in the water.

You do this a couple times and then you realize, the salary you picked up from
the investment round is cold comfort compared to the _years of the most
productive chunk of your life_ that you gave up.

There's nothing inherently wrong with taking outside money, but if you're
doing it because "now you have the opportunity to realize your dream"...

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jvandenbroeck
I think you're taking things out of context, I never said you don't have to
built a viable business. Or that building a business is easy - or that you
don't have to work hard anymore - or that you have some crazy ass dream, you
didn't do any market research etc.. If your dream is to built a great
business, deliver lots of value to your clients etc. than I don't see a
problem - for most idea's you need some investment to be able to find out if
they are good. And if you get funded, I assume you have done the numbers on
your idea, worst-case/best-case and that you picked smart investors - who also
did their numbers. So if you get funded that would also mean smart people
believe in your idea.

I think it's good if you're excited about the business you're building. It is
only logical to take outside money if it would help you build your business.
Ofcourse you don't always _need_ outside money to build your business - and in
some cases it might be better without - but if you're in the case that outside
money would help you - then I don't see anything wrong with it.

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veb
Nice article. I would've assumed you were so hungover, that none of that
would've happened. (I would've replied that if someone had asked me).

It makes sense in a very practical way. You're a startup, and you really need
to _focus_ on that startup, no matter what happens.

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jacques_chester
Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

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Sylg
Didn't know about this service. But it look awesome! I'm going to try to start
using it tomorrow at work :)

Whats the limitation on the "free trial" version except the 7 emails/day ?

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jbwyme
Congrats on getting funded. Even if it doesn't change your day to day it is an
excellent milestone. Where did you post your open positions?

~~~
sachitgupta
Check here: <http://toutapp.com/about> and here:
<https://twitter.com/#!/Tawheed/status/83864457880678400>

~~~
relm86
The idea sounds awesome and I signed up but the site needs to be redone to be
far more clear on what they are offering. I showed this to 3 people in my
office right now and no one could figure out what they were offering until
signing up and there is no clear call to action to go and sign up to the free
version and then doing a proper upsell to the paid from that point Site looks
nice though but needs to be far more clear on there product and the free
option on the main page.

~~~
Tawheed
Not having a link to the Free plan was a conscious decision. In fact, once we
made that decision, revenues increased.

