Filed in archive Entrepreneurship by tj on June 7, 2006

Chris Campbell at ParticleTree reflects on his funding experiences:

"1) Who else have you spoken to?

I believe every single investor asked this early on and I'm not completely sure why they cared so much since they should be basing their judgment and strategy on the strength of the idea and not on its popularity. I think it's because Silicon Valley is a lot like high school in that you're basically as cool as the people who talk to you. Being funded by Sequoia, is not unlike dating the hottest cheerleader in the squad. Then again, maybe it's just natural human curiosity. Either way, it's a good idea to keep at the top of your head who you've talked to and their appropriate place in the pecking order.

2) How will you make money?

If Adsense is your stratetgy, you might want to start thinking of some alternate revenue models. After one investor asked us this question, he quickly said under his breath in a little prayer, "Please don't say Adsense." If you already have a million users, then the investors are going to listen to you no matter what you have planned. That said, investors are getting hip to the notion that funding a Web 2.0 startup that's obsessed more with the technology than the revenue is just asking for trouble.

If you need help thinking of alternative revenue models, I highly recommend checking out Startup Pricing Models and Giving Your Software Away For Free for some good reading on the subject."

Read on - he has more good stuff.

Related Entries:

Working with Jajah - 29 May 2006
Meme - 17 Questions to Reflect - I - 11 December 2006
Meme - 17 Questions to Reflect - II - 12 December 2006
Understand Your Customer With Open-ended Questions - 13 June 2007
Seven questions for creating an ethical culture - 14 June 2007

« Working with Jajah | Main | Carly Fiorina at Lead21 »

Permalink: The Top 10 investor questions

Tags: investor questions entrepreneurship technology 2003 investor+questions venture+capital please+enter

Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/23785

Addthis

Ask

Blinklist

del.icio.us

Digg

Fark

Facebook

Google

Lycos

Ma.gnolia

Mr Wong

Netscape

Netvousz

Newsvine

StumbleUpon

Slashdot

Tailrank

Technorati

Wink

Yahoo

Vote for The Top 10 investor questions:

Currently 6.00/10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Rating: 6.00 out of 4 vote(s) cast.

Add your response to The Top 10 investor questions:

Name: *

Email: (will never be shown)*

URL:

(* marked fields are required)

Notify me if more comments appear?

Subscribe to TJ's Weblog newsletter? (Newsletters are sent out weekly).

Remember me

Security Code: *
(Please help us to sort out spam.)

Please enter your comment here: (Sorry, no HTML is allowed - URLs will be made clickable automatically if you add http:// to your URL.)

We welcome your comments, however all comments are moderated. Offensive or off-topic comments will be deleted and not displayed.

Share It

Use the search to look for other interesting posts

Contributors (Last 90 days)

Donald Greg (3)
Greg Cruey (11)
Creative Weblogging (6)

This site has 1829 entries and is powered by Creative Weblogging since June 2003.

Our Editors recommend

Disclaimer

Some of the contents of this site are protected Creative Weblogging Inc. 2004-2010.

Check out our Sponsored Blogs!

Business Computer Blog (UK)

Are you interested in writing a blog in our network?

See which positions are currently open.

Testimonials

'After visiting your site, I feel that your articles are very enriching and aspiring, and I learnt a lot after reading your articles on entrepreneurship...'

Asia, Singapore

'I really look forward to reading content from your site. You really do a great job of keeping yourself and (your readers like myself) ahead of the pack.' Asia, India

'...very inspiring! Really like your site!' Europe, Netherlands

'BTW I m addicted to your website :)' Europe, France