

Fred Wilson's Survival Matrix - lanceweatherby
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/10/the-survival-ma.html

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wensing
Wow. The lowest burn rate means spending more in two months than we've spent
on Stormpulse in 2 years.

Either I'm way out of my league and everyone else has amazingly-capitally-
expensive ideas, or we're the cockroach on the cockroach's back.

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emmett
Are you working on your startup full time? The cost of a single person working
on a startup is at least $30k/year, even if you cut salary to the bone.

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wensing
We've put about 5 man-years into the project, spread out over 4 years time.
That time includes 3 years of full-time effort (myself for 1 year, co-founder
for 2).

To be completely thorough, we ended up spending a lot of our personal savings
to pay our personal bills, which was not included in the official seed
investment. Still, that only amounts to perhaps an extra $25k (so all told,
we're in the $70-80k range).

With a family of four I've gone back to working full-time at a corporate
employer; my co-founder has not and continues to work on it full-time, as he
is single and lives a pretty spartan life.

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ojbyrne
Anyone else find it weird that a VC lacks basic Excel skills?

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helveticaman
Not to mention the inability to edit the resulting image if Excel isn't
playing ball.

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swombat
Captain Obvious, is that you?

That entire article and its charts can be summarised in 10 words:

Hoard cash and decrease burn rate to improve survival chances.

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ivankirigin
Metrics to slice real data are the basis of informed decisions.

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swombat
Certainly, but some insights are "duh" insights and not particularly worth
sharing with the rest of the world.

"Spending less money and having more money in your bank account improve your
chances of survival" should be, from a VC's point of view, roundabout on the
same level as "water makes you wet".

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ivankirigin
Well, lots of people fail to understand "make something people want", right?
And I'm getting doubly annoyed with the "less is more" UI advice so often
repeated, and then not followed!

well known and obvious to everyone != not worth sharing.

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shafqat
Was happy to see that NewsCred is in the comfort quadrant!

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nostrademons
I am too...oh wait, I don't have a startup at the moment. Maybe that means I
should start another one...

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shafqat
Just read your post on your last startup - great post and seems like you
learned a lot. I would really encourage you to jump in again. You sound like
you're made of the right stuff! Good luck with whatever you do.

