Hard agree. It's why i'm trying to land the ship despite some of my own investors just telling me to pack it up and move on to the next thing.
HN user
MagnitudeFC
Wow. The investors did so much to protect a $3M seed investment? Those are really good investors and a stand up founder. Think these days most investors just write off a $3M investment and move on.
I'm taking that into account in my runway estimate
Really helpful to hear this from your perspective - thank you!
Couple of follow ups
1) What stage was your company at / how much had the startup raised when you got acquihired? Just curious about how this compares to where we are.
2) What was the interview process like? Any details would be helpful for me to get our team prepared
Yes I've been very transparent with the team - everyone knows our cash zero day and knows that I am looking for a soft landing.
Yep
Appreciate the frank perspective. Understand that time is not our friend here.
I guess I'm just wondering / hoping if it is possible that the BigCo just hires our team? I understand that there isn't going to be a big (if any) pay out for us as the founders here. We've proven that we can ship product and work well together.
The interview process shouldn't take too long if they want to do it, right? Or am I being naive / grasping at straws here..
excellent advice, thank you!
What we are working on is very relevant / core to what this BigCo does so there are legit reasons why they are interested. One of our investors made the intro to a very senior VP there who told Corp Dev to speak with me.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
sound advice, thanks!
Thanks, that is really helpful to know going into this. Any insight into what an interview process might look like? I am non-technical (founder/CEO, mainly focused on sales/biz dev) while the rest of my team (co-founder/CTO and 2 engineers) are highly technical. Our product is in the wheelhouse of what this FAANG is already working on.
Hi everyone I'm working on Zolt, a business intelligence tool that lets you analyze your content with AI. The platform allows you to upload multiple content formats (PDFs, audio files, videos, docs etc) and search across them.
As an example, here is an example of the Primary Debate. You can ask for candidates positions on various topics that are interesting to you or ask for fun facts.
Would be grateful for your feedback on how I can improve this!
for real
Papa Elon inspired me
What are the odds of this being reversed mid-batch if covid isn't as big of a deal in say July?
busted!
... and th biggest bubble of them all might be in early stage startups..
wow. she has so much poise for her age. I'm sure she will go far.
if you're a native Saudi citizen you pretty much are guaranteed a very cushy govt job plus tons of perks (free education, interest free loans for building a home etc). Many parts of the middle east work like this (relying on expats to do all the real work).
It will take generations for this mentality to change (if it ever can..) and by then the oil will have run out.
presumably because you'd need to give up a lot of equity to this woman of color you hire to be the front...
i don't have high hopes for VC funds like this.. seems more like a charitable grant than venture funding..1
yeah, i don't think you understand how free speech works or why reddit is so popular
why isn't there more excitement around this? This could be huge for SNAP
"India can take a big lead in AI and other things if it managed to reform its higher education and get rid of government controls in that space. If India opens up higher education sector much higher quality talent can be bred there."
Sadly its going to take the Indian government decades to reform even if they want to.
Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on SHOP as an investment? Do you think Square (now that they've acquired Weebly will be able to slow down their growth)?
Also, SHOP is sitting on >1.3B of cash and their new CFO hinted at an acquisition - any guesses on who/what kind of business might be a good acquisition for them?
Thanks for the feedback and glad you liked it so far!
The donate a book campaign is our way of encouraging users to share our app. Instead of spending $ on facebook ads, we figured we'd donate a book every time 2 of your friends download Zolt using your referral code.
The Shout feature is meant to give users another way to express themselves (in addition to the usual share on FB, Twitter etc). It's still a work in progress, admittedly.
Thanks again though for the caution - will be careful of avoiding feature creep.