
Invest in Lines, not Dots - wheels
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/11/15/invest-in-lines-not-dots/
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scottkrager
Why is reading about _raising money_ always such a time suck?

I swear, if we all spent as much time on our products, and less time reading
about fundraising....well, we'd probably force AOL to shutter TechCrunch in a
month.

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harscoat
This could well apply to recruitment of people: lines not dots.

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rythie
Surely someone will invest in the 'dot' and he'll miss the chance. He seems to
assume there is no competition. Or maybe what is a dot to him was already a
line to someone else (because they met earlier).

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msuster
I don't assume that at all. I'm arguing in favor of investors getting out and
spending time with entrepreneurs now that they might want to fund later so
that your line becomes someone else's dot.

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ccoop
For me, the real takeaway for entrepreneurs who want to get funded is to
better "manage expectations." In other words, contact VC / angel early, set
artificially low expectations initially (ones you know you can hit, so you
build momentum), give yourself time, outperform, communicate out
performance...rinse and repeat.

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Jabbles
Can anyone give a better explanation of "performance" as shown by those
graphs. What situation corresponds to performance going down? If performance
relates to "speed", why would you expect the speed to continue increasing,
rather than staying the same?

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msuster
As I wrote in the article the interpretation is left to the investor. It could
be product features shipped. It could be biz dev deals signed. It could be
talented people hired. Whatever. The point is that you get to see how the
person accomplishes things that they set out to do. If you meet them only
briefly over a 2-week period you don't have enough data points to decide.

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qq66
I thought this was going to be about investing in companies that connect
entities together rather than standalone entities.

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donaq
Huh. I thought it was an article about vector graphics vs bitmaps.

