

How I met our first investors - axiom
http://www.tophatmonocle.com/blog/2010/11/24/how-i-met-investors/

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zbruhnke
great story. I have found the same to be true all too often, never giving up
says a lot for those who make it. I will never forget after dropping out of
college to chase my dreams how mad my parents were at me. When I met my first
investor and told him I had dropped out to pursue this even though I had a
full ride scholarship and less than a year to finish he was amazed. It was
something that had never struck me as odd before.

And I will never forget after the long board meeting I had with the VC firm
who eventually bought my company. The guy who had originally found me walked
out of the meeting shook my hand and said the words I will never forget, at
first they stung, but after a while it meant the world to me.

"Zach, you know what we like so much about you?" what's that?, I asked "You
have too much of an ego to fail, we're in."

Sometimes having the right amount of belief in your project means that you do
not even realize how dedicated you are, you make irrational decisions that
seem like the only choice at the time and you sacrifice things that however
insignificant they seem to you, would be a huge deal for some people.

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adaugelli
More broadly, it just shows how important time is to any startup.

You never know when some chance meeting will lead to a key hire, a biz dev
deal, or even a new investment.

The longer you keep going and working at it - the more chances you have for
this moment to happen.

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jonathanjaeger
The car crash threw me for a loop, very entertaining read. Not sure if this is
exactly relevant, but here's a good TED Talk ("Keep Going Until We Stop"):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cakm2nIQWo>

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mkramlich
luck = preparation + opportunity

and you'll have more opportunities the longer you stay in the game, and the
more you expose yourself to other people. I've heard it described elsewhere as
"maximizing your people surface area" in order to maximize the
chance/frequency of opportunities that will available to you. do that, plus be
prepared to act on them, and you're golden.

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amackera
Reminded me of pg's "How Not to Die" <http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html>

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JCThoughtscream
Irrelevant to the topic, perhaps, but... tophatmonocle.com? I am envious of
your address, sir.

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51Cards
I actually read To Phat Monocle the first time I glanced at it :)

