
we’ve been paying ourselves for almost two months now (that’s a fancy way of saying we’ve not been paid). we’ve been splitting our time between building our product and pitching investors from Boston to Palo Alto. we’ve come by plane, car and maybe soon train. we’ve slept on couches and love sacks in Palo Alto and double-upped in a hotel room in San Francisco. we’ve squatted in free office space. eaten a lot of PB&J’s and of course we’ve had plenty of late nights and early mornings. it’s been fan-freaking-tastic!
there is plenty of interest and a few commitments from a kaleidoscope of investors. of course we’ve had our share of rejection. here’s what i’ve learned in the past few months, there are THREE reasons not to invest in us:
- we are NOT in the bay area
- we have hardware
- we’re in a crowded market
this is the absolute freaking truth! this isn’t a rant about how VC’s operate or think. these are three legit reasons not to invest and almost all the angel’s and vc’s who’ve passed have used one, two or all three of these. there are great advantages for being in the bay area; it’s track record for successful startups speaks volumes. hardware can eat your margins like the cookie monster eats cookies. of course we’re about to go head-to-head against great companies like amazon, dropbox, crashplan, sugarsync and others.
eric paley wrote a great article on conviction and w/ each “pass” we’ve learned something more about our own conviction. we’ve also learned a few truths too. here are three reasons to invest in us:
- we’re NOT in the bay area
- we have hardware
- we are in a crowded market
it’s simple, we’re not another groupon knock-off or iphone photo sharing app. we live at the foothills of the greatest ski resorts in the world (this makes for a great lifestyle) and between two great universities producing great “stable” talent. as for hardware, this is how one investor put it: “hardware is the new software … just look at apple”. lastly, google had a pretty crowded market when they started. how’d they do?
there are plenty of other great reasons to invest in us, including our disruptive product vision, our hunger for success, our teams great technical experience and end-user focus to name a few. we look forward to the days and weeks ahead; hopefully it’s days not weeks before we close our seed round. raising cash is such a *bleeping* distraction!






