
Founders Fund Raises $1.3B - bko
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2016/03/25/peter-thiels-founders-fund-bags-1-3b/
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brianbreslin
I'm curious what people's experiences have been with Founders Fund investing
in your companies. feel free to answer anonymously.

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ffceo
Responding anonymously to show there's no incentive to give praise. They led
our (largish) seed round.

Had a slightly negative experience with one partner, but the median person we
worked with beat most firms we talked to in first principles thinking by quite
a margin. They were all very bright and had a wide range of knowledge.

They were far less interested in "who else is in" and more interested in your
analysis of your business from basic building blocks.

When we were doing due diligence on them, the main "complaint" we heard from
people who had raised from them is that it's hard to read their judgement.
They may seem bearish on you then invest last minute or the opposite. Most
people had great things to say though.

Hope this is helpful for anyone considering talking to them.

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RateOurInvestor
Hi ffceo,

Thanks a lot for your comment on FF. Feedbacks on investors are important for
entrepreneurs, but unfortunately hard to find. I know too many entrepreneurs
who spent too long time chasing investors who are unresponsive, unhelpful, or
worst ("zombie investors").

The comments from you and nickpinkston above actually inspired me today to put
together a little project called "Rate Our Investor"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378769](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378769).
It is a crowdsourced spreadsheet that collects entrepreneurs' feedback on
investors. Hopefully you don't mind the plug =)

Thanks again for the inspiration!

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CaiGengYang
I wonder how the 1.3B will be distributed ?

How much capital allocated to invest in each startup ? What is the algorithm
used to generate the investment decisions ? How do they judge which founders
to fund ?

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lowglow
We're thinking of opening a fund for Baqqer to invest in startups/founders
there, so I think about this. I would typically value the worthiness of a
founder by several loose criteria:

1\. Founders/Product fit 2\. Product/Market fit 3\. Social Proof 4\. Team 5\.
Progress and frequency of activity 6\. Dedication 7\. Grit/Character 8\. Past
successes/failures (overall experience)

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logicallee
take facebook:

1: Mark Zuckerberg wasn't a particularly social guy, so his founders/product
fit was 0.

2\. product/market fit: Facebook was a social network just for schools, this
doesn't really show any product/market fit. it's a super niche product with no
obvious revenue model.

3\. founder had zero social proof. couldn't even bag any advertising clients.

4\. founder didn't get along great with team, in fact all team members sued
him.

5\. the very first verison of the site looked and features it had in 2004 -
[https://www.quora.com/What-did-the-first-version-of-
Facebook...](https://www.quora.com/What-did-the-first-version-of-Facebook-
look-like) does not show that much progress or activity.

6\. Mark was just a Harvard student, so were the other team members, no
dedicated staff at all.

7\. No basis to judge.

8\. No prior past experience to judge from.

Based on the above there is a 0.00% chance that you would fund Facebook at the
seed stage, at any valuation. Out of 8 standards, you would have to give them
a 0/8 on nearly all of them.

but hey, the fact that your investment thesis fails with _perfect_ hindsight,
doesn't mean it can't succeed when things are a lot more murky. go get 'em.

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lowglow
Zuck was on IRC coding at the time, IIRC. He had also built and launched some
other software before Facebook.

Coming out of that era with that cred would put him higher than most at his
age.

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logicallee
You misunderstand. My point is lowglow would not have given those things
weight. So even with perfect 20/20 hindsight, we know that based on his 8
criteria he would have Facebook a No thanks.

(More specifically, he wouldn't have given them the time of day or even so
much as returned an email, a 0/10 across 8 categories means that it's not
worth so much as a reply.)

EDIT: I didn't realize you're lowglow. My point stands. You need better
investment criteria :)

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lowglow
Which is why I said "loose" criteria, not a rigid ruleset. ::)

