In the scheme of things we’ve had an interesting week so far. Some downer moments followed by some great highs. Sometimes you just have to turn the tables upside down, you have to create the momentum, the mindset and the attitude shift to make things work in your favour. Learn the lessons from the setbacks and focus on what you can turn into key wins.
Daryl has just come back from a great Ebay/PayPal conference in San Francisco where he managed to make HUGE inroads with the right people that will help FundRazr greatly, solve many of our problems and create a potentially brilliant partnership…… that’s all I’m saying for now. On top of that he wrote up a mind dump of all the critical areas we need to focus on and get done, which was luckily the same as the one floating around in my head and I’ve now prioritised so we can become more effective. It’s still daunting but then so many entrepreneurs feel the same way.
The testing this week has been invaluable – thanks to Zeenat, Vincent and Jamie, Troe, Chris, Nate and Dave! The same consistent feedback is coming through, the patterns are forming on what we need to tackle and improve straight off, and in addition some excellent ideas have been suggested – we’ll be prioritising those too.
Clearly one thing that is always on our minds is funding so that we can keep creating this kick ass application and change the game of fundraising and payments in the social network landscape. That’s why I got a great chuckle out of reading this from founder of OnStartups Dharmesh Shah, I particularly like no. 5:
10 Things An Angel Investor Will Never Say
1. I really want to support entrepreneurs — but just those that are going to make me money.
2. I dread having to explain your business idea to my spouse (who can veto any deal).
3. I don’t really have enough stake in your company to spam my network on your behalf.
4. I was lying when I said that some of my best friends were VCs. Even VCs aren’t best friends with VCs.
5. I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about 50% of the time. What’s a socially-semantic mobile platform for non-virtual currency mean? (Oh, it’s an iPhone/Facebook payment app).
6. The other 50% of the time, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Anti-dilution provisions in a termsheet are not about beer.
7. How the public market did last week does impact my decision making.
8. I like to invest in cool startups because it helps make up for high school.
9. I don’t understand what half the things in the funding agreement mean either, but I’m betting that most of them are to protect me, not you.
10. I really didn’t put the check in the mail the day I said I did. I was golfing that day. I sucked.
11. I’m in it to mostly have fun. If I wanted to do unpleasant work, I’d have my own startup.
It’s come off the back of Venture Capitalists doing something similar
4 wonderful testers and the feedback was invaluable. Just observing them interact with the application was fascinating. Their suggestions, feedback, comments, criticisms, positive statements and actions were all recorded, noted and assessed.
Today is important for two reasons.
