Should you launch at a conference? - very good insight on Product Launch ( they worked 9 months for Trello )

by Joel Spolsky

How to Pitch a VC: 11 Insider Secrets

STARTUP MORE THAN BRAIN, MORE THAN MONEY, MORE THAN WORK HARD.
STARTUP IS VISION.
STARTUP IS MAKE FIST OF CODE, PUT IT THROUGH THE WORLD.
VISION IS PUT FIST IN RIGHT PLACE, BREAK WORLD IN HALF.

VISION IS SEE WHAT OTHERS NOT, DO WHAT OTHERS WON'T, WIN WHEN OTHERS CAN'T.
VISION NOT A BULLETPOINT. NOT GO IN SPREADSHEET. THERE NO ALGORITHM FOR AWESOME.

SMART STARTUP BUILD, ITERATE, FAIL FAST.
WITHOUT VISION FAIL FAST IS JUST LOTS OF FAIL.
VISION NOT HOW. VISION IS WHERE. TAKE EVERYTHING YOU DOING THAT NOT MOVE TOWARDS VISION.

STARTUP IS SEE WINDOW, START BUILDING WINGS.
VISION IS JUMP OUT WINDOW, TRUST WINGS HAPPEN BEFORE GROUND.

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Fundraising: See Investors Early and Often

asr: see this kind of guys are available for advice ..

- Set a minimum level. I like $25k; if you need $250k the max number of people you have to keep informed is 10, which is manageable.
- Raise money on a rolling basis, meaning, don't create a deal where you have to wait for all the checks to come in. Structure it so you can deposit checks and get to work, rather than having to aggregate dollars.

Burn Rates: How Much?

Stage Team size Burn Rate funding

---------------- ---------- -------- --------------
1/ Building Product 5 $50k/mon $600k at 3mm post
2/ Building Usage 10 $100k/mon $1.8 M at 9mm post
3/ Building The Business 25 $250k/mon $4 MM at 20mm post

Based on the burn rates above, this would suggest 12 months, 18 months, and 16 months of runway respectively at each stage.

1 product: / Most MVPs can be built by a team of three or four engineers, a product manager, and a designer.
2 Usage: / This is the stage after release, when you are focused in iterating the product, scaling the system for more users, and marketing the product to new users.
This can be done by the same team that built the product with
- a few more engineers, a community manager, and maybe a few more dollars for this and that.
3 Business: / This is when you've determined that your product market fit has been obtained and you now want to build a business around the product or service. You start to hire a management team, a revenue focused team, and some finance people.