Investor Herd Dynamics

Investor Herd Dynamics

The largest component of you, in the opinion of most investors, is the opinion of other investors. Which is certainly a recipe for rapid growth? An investor wants to invest in you, that makes others want too much, and other investors want to make.

Sometimes inexperienced founders mistakenly conclude that manipulating these forces are the essence of fundraising. They panic stories about successful investments in startups to hear, and that, therefore, it is to be the mark of a successful startup. But the two that are not highly correlated. startups that cause panic flaming out at the end (in extreme cases, partly as a result of a stampede) lots and lots of very successful startups money they raised for the first time quite popular with investors Were.

The point of this essay, how to make a stampede, but only to explain the forces that produced them is not convincing. Fundraising these forces are always at work to some degree, and they can lead to surprising situations. If you understand them, you at least can avoid being surprised.

Investors a reason to like you more when you have other investors like you is actually a better investment. Reduces the risk of failure to raise money. Indeed, investors hate it, because you later investors to increase their market capitalization are to justify. When you had no money to investors who were taking more risks and are entitled to higher investment returns. Also, a company that has raised money is really valuable. After you raise the first million dollars, the company because it is the same company as before, at least a million more valuable, moreover it is a million dollars in the bank.

Beware, though, because later investors raised the price on them that they are opposed to the logic of self-hate. Only one investor at a price you are comfortable with losing some anger will refuse to increase.

Another reason investors like you more when you have had some success in fundraising is that it makes you more confidence, and one of the investors' opinion is the basis of your opinion of your company. Founders often are surprised to know quickly when investors begin to be able to raise the money they seem. Methods for such information and to spread among investors are lots fact, the main vector is probably the founders themselves. Although they are often not aware of the technology, most investors are very good at reading people. When the fundraising is going well, investors increased their faith are quick to sense it. (This is a case where the average profit for its founder's inability to remain poker-faced works.)

But the most important reason investors like you more clearly when you started to raise money that they are bad at judging startups. Given that even the best investors are hard to startups. Mediocre ones as well are flipping coins. So when investors see that mediocrity you want to invest in a lot of other people, they should not be a reason to assume. The 'Hot Deal, "where you can handle more interest from investors as the valley that leads to a phenomenon known.

The best investors are not influenced by the opinions of other investors. It is simply to average together with others their own judgment will weaken. But the practical sense that they indirectly impose a time limit on the interest of other investors  affected. The fourth way in which it produces proposals. Yet with a firm offer to you with the track to get a start, it sometimes other companies, even the good ones make up your mind to provoke, lest they deal will lose.

Unless you are a wizard in the conversation (and if you're not sure, you're not), the exaggeration of a good investor to decide to push to be very careful about. The founders of this kind of thing all the time, try, and investors are very sensitive to it. If something extreme. But so long as you are telling the truth are protected. Investor B, getting along with you yet, but you also want to raise money from investors, an investor can tell you that it is happening. That is no manipulation. You're really in a bind because you really are rather than raise money, but it is still uncertain what will set you safely can not reject an offer from B.

Not, however, able to tell which one is B. VCs will ask other VCs sometimes you are talking to, but you should never tell them. Angels sometimes, other angels because angels tell about can cooperate with each other more. But VCs ask, just say that you want to talk about other companies are not telling, and talk to you for any firm is obliged to do the same. If they push you, that you always have a secure card for which fundraising is-playing-on are inexperienced and you point out, you have to be extra cautious.

Some startups tend to experience a holiday of interest, at least initially, almost all the event, where the herd away the remains clumped together will experience the other side. The fact that investors are influenced by the opinions of other investors so means that you will always start in a few holes. So how hard is to get the commitment of the difficulty comes from the strength of the outside do not be discouraged. The second will be easier.

notes

An accountant can say that a company that has raised a million dollars if the convertible loan, but in practice the money raised as a convertible loan into equity round is slightly different from the money raised is no richer.

The founders are often surprised by this, but investors can be very emotional. Or rather angry; The main feeling is that I saw, But investors to the point where it sometimes to act against their own interests for the causes are very common. I have an investor who invests in a startup to a $ 15 million valuation cap is detected. Before he got a chance to invest in a $ 5 million cap, but he refused because a friend who invested in a $ 3 million cap had been able to invest.

Things that do not scale

Things that do not scale

The most common type of advice we give to Y Combinator is one of the things that do not scale. The founders believe that a lot of startups will either take off or not. You build something, it is available, and if you have a better mousetrap, as promised people beat a path to your door. Or they should not exist, in which case the market does not.

In fact, take away the founders of startups can take them away. There is only a handful that can be increased by itself, but it usually takes them to some sort of push to get going. Crank the engine of the car was a good metaphor power before they would have been the beginning. Once the engine was running, to keep it going, but in a different and laborious process to get going, it was there.

Recruit

The most common trivial thing to do is enroll users manually start the founders. Almost all startups have to. For those of you, that can not wait for you to come. You have to go out and get them.

Stripe is one of the most successful startups we funded, and an immediate solution to the problem they had one. Anyone could have sat back and waited for the users, it was a stripe. But in fact, they are famous within aggressive early YC for user acquisition.

Other startups building things for other startups we funded companies have a large pool of potential users and nobody took advantage better than the stripe. YC we invented the technology they term "Collison established use". Founders shy to ask "will try our Beta?" And if the answer is yes, they say, "Great, we'll send you a link." But Collison brothers were not going to wait. Anyone can say that when they try stripe agreed to "right then, give me my laptop" and set them on the spot.

Two reasons the founders of going out and users are personally opposed to recruitment. And a combination of laziness is a shame. They sit at home writing code to go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably most of them were rejected. But a startup founder to be successful, at least one (usually the CEO) will have to spend a lot of time on sales and marketing.

Another reason to ignore the way that the absolute number of founders first seem so small. How big it is, can not be begun famous startups, they think. The mistake they make is to underestimate the power of compound growth. We have to measure your progress weekly growth encourages every startup. You have 100 users, you get more than 10 to 10% a week next week is needed to grow. And may not look much better than the 110 100, if you keep growing 10% a week you will be surprised to receive a large number. After a year, 14,000 of them, and after 2 years you will have 2 million.

You'll be doing different things at a time when you get a thousand of them, and at the end of growth is too slow down. But in the market, you usually start by recruiting users manually and then gradually switch to manual methods.

Airbnb is an excellent example of this technique. Rolling markets so you should expect at first heroic steps are hard to get. Airbnb case, these are homes in New York, to help recruit new users and existing ones improved their listings included. YC Airbnb's during I remember, I, Rolly bag dinner Tuesday to photograph them because when they came back they always just sent elsewhere.

Friable

Airbnb now seems like an unstoppable juggernaut, but early on it is so weak that going out and engaging with users in person about the difference between success and failure was 30 days.

That was not a unique feature of the early weakness Airbnb. At the start of almost all startups are weak. The biggest things that inexperienced founders and investors (and journalists and know it alls forums) is one of them got wrong. They installed unknowingly judge people by the standards of larval startups. They see someone like a newborn and are concluding "there is no way this little creature can ever achieve anything."

It is harmless if your startup dismisses journalists and know it alls. They always get things wrong. It's also fine if investors rejected startup; They'll change their minds when they see growth. The great danger is that you will dismiss your own startup. I've seen it happen. I often founders who are building the full potential of what they do not see is encouraging. Even Bill Gates has made that mistake. He said that after starting Microsoft returned to Harvard for the fall semester. He did not stay long, but he felt Microsoft was going to be a fraction of the size it turned out, he would not have returned at all.

The question to ask about an early stage startup, "the company is taking over the world?" But "How big is the company, the founders may have done the right things?" And correct things often seem irrelevant in both laborious and time. Microsoft may not have looked very impressive when a few thousand hobbyists Albuquerque in writing a BASIC interpreter for the market were just two people (as they were called then), but looking back that microcomputer software was the optimal way to dominate. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia and I did not feel like they are en route to the big time as they host their first "apartment"were taking professional photos. They were just trying to survive. But in retrospect, he was a great way to dominate the market optimally.

How do I find the manual for you to recruit? You have to solve your own problems to build something, you just find his teammates, which is generally straightforward. Otherwise, a more deliberate effort to find out who the most promising vein must. To do a relatively untargeted usual by launching some of them to get the initial set, and then to observe the enthusiasts who like to look, and seek them out like is. For example, Ben Silbermann soon noticed that a lot of Pinterest users were interested in the design, so he designed was for a conference of bloggers to recruit them, and that worked well.

happiness

You just take extraordinary steps to get them, but also to make them happy. As long as they could (which turned out to be surprisingly long), Wufoo each new user sent a hand-written thank-you note. Your first users should feel that you have to sign up with one of the best choices they ever made. And you, in turn, think of new ways to delight them to be racking your brain.

Why do we have to teach this startup? Why is it counterintuitive to the founders? Three reasons, I think.

One is that a lot of startup founders are trained as engineers, and customer service is not part of the training of engineers. There are things that you build strong and beautiful, not like some kind of slavish seller must be attentive to individual users. When you're Scotty, but you're not Kirk be naughty.

Another reason the founders to focus on individual customers is not enough to worry that they will not scale. But the founders of startups larvae do not worry about it, I have to say that in their current state they have nothing to lose. Existing users can be super happy if they go out of their way to, one day they will have to do so much to too many people. That would be a big problem. See if you can do that. And incidentally, when it happens, you will make customers happy scales better than you expected. Usually, you then you predicted, and partly because the customers happy by then permeated our culture will be finding ways to make anything more scale, partly because.

I've never seen a startup once their initial users happy by trying hard to lure down a blind alley.

But perhaps most importantly, they realize how attentive to their users that they can prevent the founders themselves have never experienced such attention is. Its standards for customer service for corporate customers, they have been, most of which were determined by growing. Tim Cook, after you buy a laptop you do not send a hand-written note. He can not. But you can do it. That is an advantage to be small: a big company you can provide a level of service can.

Once you realize that the existing conventions are not the upper bound on the user experience, it's about how far you can go to delight its users think is interesting in a very pleasant way.

experience

I have a phrase to convey how extreme users should have your attention I was trying to think of, and I realized it already had Steve Jobs: insanely good. Steve just "insanely" to use as a synonym was "very." He means more literally that the disease in everyday life to a degree that would be considered should focus on the quality of the execution.

All of the most successful startups we funded, and that probably will not surprise founders. What you do not get novice founders insanely great is to convert it into a larva startup. Steve Jobs started using that phrase, Apple already had established a company. He meant the Mac (and its documentation and even the packaging such is the nature of passion) insanely well designed and should be built. That is not hard to grasp engineers. It's just a strong and elegant product design is a more extreme version.

What a hard time grasping the founders (and Steve themselves may have had a hard time grasping) as you back the first two months of the life of a startup slider roll insanely great morphs. This product must be insanely great, but the user does not experience. A product that is just one component. A need for a large company is one of leading. But you have a great experience and the one insanely early, unfinished, buggy with the product, you may need to make with caution.

You can, perhaps, but should? Yes. More than just the development of lucrative early users to get rolling is not an acceptable technique. Most successful startups make it a necessary part of the feedback loop that is a good product. Make a better mousetrap is not an atomic operation. Even if the way the most successful startups, something you need to start by building, the first thing you build is not quite correct. And to make mistakes with big punishments except in the domain, it is often better not to start aiming for perfection. In the software, in particular, it is usually best as soon as the amount of utility to get something in front of them, and then see what they do with it works. Perfectionism is often an excuse for delay, and in any case, those of his early models is always wrong, even if you are one of them.

Your earliest response you get from engaging directly with users the best you will ever receive.