Thoughts on Investment Money (for Technology Startups)

It is hard to say no to investment money.  It really is.  Who doesn't want to "roll in the dough."  

However, I think it is somewhat important to understand what to do and what makes sense.  Unless you have a great idea with a team that is awesome and have already proven the items I am about to list out, then this isn't really for you.

If all you have is an idea, don't take much/any money.  Venture and angel money chased ideas in the rollup to the dotcom bubble bursting.  They don't want to do that again.  You won't get any from anyone outside the 3Fs, but it is important to not take money to early.  Who wants the awkward family dinner?  Ah yes, nothing brings a family together more than the awkward fight about money, politics, and religion.  If you want to see some love, go to a family event where you've lost $75k of the family's money and say something like "I'll just do better the next time."  Another good one is to be sitting there and your mother say something like "My son lost $75k of our money this year on a stupid idea, how has everyone else been doing this year?"  Yeah, those could be fun times.  Assuming that everyone was on the up-n-up and it is just bad blood, not stealing that occurred, these are times when you really just want to slink out the door and head home.  In case #1, there won't be a next time.  No one from the family will make another investment.  It does not appear that the "son" had a good idea.  He didn't take the money seriously anyway with that flippant attitude.  In the 2nd case, the family did not understand the risks of investing in technology.  Typical technology investing is either win big or 100% loss.  There usually is not place in between.  In neither case will the 3Fs ever invest again.  Neither will the son/daughter ever make the ask again.  This is just an awkward situation for years to come.

There is a next step after having an idea and creating an MVP.  You show it to people, get their feedback, and work on someone to pay for it.  Now that you have a theory on how to make money, you have to actually go get them to pay money.  Basically, you have to go prove your theory.  Get people to like what you build, bring them some value, you scrape off some of the value, and lather, rinse, repeat many times.  

Hopefully, this is a short time frame between idea, to mvp, to feedback, and to income.  If you can do this, you have eliminated some amount of risk.  The elimination of some amount of risk is good.  You won't be able to eliminate all of the risk associated with a startup, but you can eliminate some of the risk of the startup.  Eliminating some of the risk of a startup will definitely help you with raising some amount of angel/venture capital.  And it will definitely make Thanksgiving dinner a bit less noisy.