Startup founders should offer bounties for warm intros-- X% of the upside of my startup for a warm intro to person Y who ends up investing/joining/partnering with startup.
The current warm intro paradigm is a result of institutional VC gatekeeping capital to founders, as if the money were the valuable and scarce thing vs. Founder Energy (the ambition, perseverence, optimism, and charisma to build a startup that changes the world).
The future of warm intros is upside sharing, quid pro quo, coin-gated collaboration, and community venture capital under RegCF.
The 90%++ founder/startup/vc failure rate should bother us all a lot more. It's a very vicious cycle that has a chilling effect on future founder, startup, capital, and startup community formation.
We've come a long way from whaling ship venture capital and YC, AngelList, SeedScout, Pioneer, Beondeck, lots of improvements, but I personally believe there is another step function improvement.
How many startups fail every year because the current paradigm defines startup success as traction that persuades VC to write a check. Outgroup founders never have a chance. Ingroup members have gotten very good at faking heat signature of traction. VCs get bamboozled and make losing bets.
What if we could lower the founder failure rate by X% per year by prioritizing community-led traction and venture capital under RegCF. More founder, startup, and VC success-- and a clearer signal for institutional VC to follow.
There are so many startups that need to be built, especially in the age of AI and crypto that makes it easier than ever for founders to launch and communities to form around startups.
YC had 16,000 applications last year and accepted 1.5% of them. That's a lot of founders that need a better paradigm for success than the great orange validation (and it is great, don't get me wrong).
The markets are begging for efficiency, not nuance. Warm intros are all nuance and no efficiency. It's completely messed up that so many driven, smart, motivated, charismatic, optimistic founders (99% of them) self-identify as failures, their startups abandoned, and the VCs (if any) who bet on them go to zero. Do we think founders and startups are like music/books/modeling/tv/movies? Because it's a completely different game (founders build startups to solve problems that real people have, not purely to express themselves or compete for finite mindshare). And yet it continues to be this grotesque time-wasting treadmill to failure. Something needs to change or human civilization is screwed. We need 1000s of musks and bezos to resist the collectivist tendencies of centralized power structures. I'm dedicating the rest of my life to try to make this change occur, one founder, startup, and community crowdfunding at a time.
Startup founders should offer bounties for warm intros-- X% of the upside of my startup for a warm intro to person Y who ends up investing/joining/partnering with startup.
The current warm intro paradigm is a result of institutional VC gatekeeping capital to founders, as if the money were the valuable and scarce thing vs. Founder Energy (the ambition, perseverence, optimism, and charisma to build a startup that changes the world).
The future of warm intros is upside sharing, quid pro quo, coin-gated collaboration, and community venture capital under RegCF.
The 90%++ founder/startup/vc failure rate should bother us all a lot more. It's a very vicious cycle that has a chilling effect on future founder, startup, capital, and startup community formation.
We've come a long way from whaling ship venture capital and YC, AngelList, SeedScout, Pioneer, Beondeck, lots of improvements, but I personally believe there is another step function improvement.
How many startups fail every year because the current paradigm defines startup success as traction that persuades VC to write a check. Outgroup founders never have a chance. Ingroup members have gotten very good at faking heat signature of traction. VCs get bamboozled and make losing bets.
What if we could lower the founder failure rate by X% per year by prioritizing community-led traction and venture capital under RegCF. More founder, startup, and VC success-- and a clearer signal for institutional VC to follow.
There are so many startups that need to be built, especially in the age of AI and crypto that makes it easier than ever for founders to launch and communities to form around startups.
YC had 16,000 applications last year and accepted 1.5% of them. That's a lot of founders that need a better paradigm for success than the great orange validation (and it is great, don't get me wrong).
What do you think?
More people should be thinking like this, 100%. Deff the right things to be thinking about and solving for.
The markets are begging for efficiency, not nuance. Warm intros are all nuance and no efficiency. It's completely messed up that so many driven, smart, motivated, charismatic, optimistic founders (99% of them) self-identify as failures, their startups abandoned, and the VCs (if any) who bet on them go to zero. Do we think founders and startups are like music/books/modeling/tv/movies? Because it's a completely different game (founders build startups to solve problems that real people have, not purely to express themselves or compete for finite mindshare). And yet it continues to be this grotesque time-wasting treadmill to failure. Something needs to change or human civilization is screwed. We need 1000s of musks and bezos to resist the collectivist tendencies of centralized power structures. I'm dedicating the rest of my life to try to make this change occur, one founder, startup, and community crowdfunding at a time.