* It's harder to "stand out" amidst the crowd of startups that easy capital has created.
* It's ridiculously hard to hire.
* Seed funding is slowing down.
* Something about the "innovation cycle".
These might be very good reasons to defer the dream of financing a startup with venture funding, but they're also advantages for bootstrapped companies, which:
* Lock in viable business models early out of necessity and can outlast most of the built-to-flip companies in the current VC cohort.
* Are founded by people who can actually execute on technology.
* Don't require outside financing at all, and can thus look at "increasing difficulty" of capital raises and grin.
I don't know what to say about the "innovation cycle" though. That might be a killer.
It reminds me of something Caterina Fake (Flickr) said some years ago. The problem is, both these things come off like "I got mine, but it's too late for you."
Comments
Note his core concerns:
* It's harder to "stand out" amidst the crowd of startups that easy capital has created.
* It's ridiculously hard to hire.
* Seed funding is slowing down.
* Something about the "innovation cycle".
These might be very good reasons to defer the dream of financing a startup with venture funding, but they're also advantages for bootstrapped companies, which:
* Lock in viable business models early out of necessity and can outlast most of the built-to-flip companies in the current VC cohort.
* Are founded by people who can actually execute on technology.
* Don't require outside financing at all, and can thus look at "increasing difficulty" of capital raises and grin.
I don't know what to say about the "innovation cycle" though. That might be a killer.
It reminds me of something Caterina Fake (Flickr) said some years ago. The problem is, both these things come off like "I got mine, but it's too late for you."