Inspirational

bijan:

I’m probably being too kind here - his belief was that VCs only want to deal with market and business model risk vs technology risk these days. We don’t’ build products that are hard to build or might not be possible to build. As a result entrepreneurs are working on those types of things. The problem in his opinion:  ideas get smaller, innovation levels off and me-too thinking sets in as yet another “myspace on steroids” gets funded.

He summed up this point with “Where’s the ‘silicon’ in Silicon Valley” ?

I think this is correct, we could use increased investor interest in hardware.  As an advisor to two angel-funded companies working on hardware products right now, I can add that entrepreneurs often blame too much of this on investors — companies should take significant business risks or significant technology risks, not both.

Too many risks tend to scare off investors, usually for good reason (i.e. the risk/reward profile looks better on another company)

Of the two companies I can speak from experience with, one got this and one did not. The one that got this from the start had a clear model and raised money quickly. The one that didn’t had to retool and solve one of the problems first (they did, and consequently got funding).

If you’re building innovative technology, have a clear business model.