bottom line: finding great partners of any stripe is tough. it goes beyond mere competency to chemistry, empathy and passion. a bad choice and it sinks the business and leaves a trail of tears. a good choice and, assuming a truly good idea, the potential is hard to quantify. social intelligence and patience on both sides is essential for success. a good match on paper does not necessarily make for one in the real world. it's similar to finding a good investment: personal recommendations, e.g., an effective reputation filter, help winnow down the possibilities immeasurably. but the only thing that matters if whether coder and business dude click. everything else is noise.
brianobush, the company is not "from" me. i am merely first money in and lead this round. soren macbeth and howard lindzon first had the idea. i did wallstrip with howard (sold to cbs interactive) and mytrade (sold to thinkorswim) as well. i think stocktwits has the potential to be much bigger than either of them. i learned a lot from my monitor110 experience; stocktwits is being built in a manner completely opposite from the way we built monitor110. and for good reason.
ahoyhere, you clearly haven't used the service and clearly aren't in the target market, which is why your comments are absurd. if you spent time on the site and participated in the community, you'd see the value pretty quickly. your focus on where the feeds come from is a small piece of the overall value prop. and why the ?? concerning the $800k? care to be more specific? wtf??
dhuck, let me clarify. what i am looking for is a clear path to that level of an exit without a company needing to spend more than $1-$2 million. this means getting customer traction, market validation, and revenue momentum. However, I acknowledge that some businesses require a B round to get there. I don't view this as a problem. What i do view as a problem is needing $5-$10 million before you can say "this is a viable business with an attractive exit opportunity." thanks for raising the point. roger
Couldn't agree more with the idea with about ignoring companies that say they need $5-$10 mil in order to be a "viable business." Today's companies (look at ycombinator) can do that with much, much less. $1-$2 mil seems like a good level - more than I would personally need! :)
To restate/clarify my original point (messed up the thread, my bad): getting a valuation of $25 mil to $50 mil, with a TOTAL investment of $1-$2 million is very hard. Google and a few choice companies may have done that, but I think that's definitely the exception. A lot of good companies are out there that aren't Googles (take over the entire market in 5 years) that deserve investment, as well.
These investments might not produce a valuation of $25-$50 mil after 5 years (like Google, etc etc) - but maybe they would after 10, 12, 15 years. This is where I think we agree.
Everything you said makes sense. In fact, I think your requirements should apply at all times, not just during tough market conditions. There's really no excuse for startups not to be lean, agile and cheap. Maximizing output from scarce resources is what entrepreneurship is all about.
