Maybe. But an entrepreneur who has a history
of being successful with silver bullets and
wants their advantages in his start up and contacts A16Z needs
to know if an A16Z guy on his Board will be
able to work effectively with silver bullets.

For Ben, his background doesn't look
very technical, i.e., like someone able to
draw from the research library, add some new
ideas, and come up with a silver bullet in,
what, two months, two weeks, over a weekend,
in the shower after a 2 mile run?
Next, in the Bayesian sense, there is a high
'prior' probability that a guy with Ben's background
would resent technical work under him that he didn't
understand.

An entrepreneur needs to know, to be quite sure
he has a Board able to work effectively with
silver bullets. I know many such people although
only a few in business, and all of those people
had good advanced technical backgrounds. Net,
finding such a person in a VC firm looks tough.

I will add a point from my project: Back there
many moons ago, I wanted some info from the Internet
and couldn't get it. So, I put my feet up, popped
open a cold can of Diet Pepsi, reviewed the problem
and some of my best graduate school math, and had
some new ideas. For both mathematical reasons and
just simple judgment, the technical ideas look at least
comparatively good as the crucial, core technology needed
for a business to let users get more info from the Internet. Then I noticed
that my ideas solved much more in getting
info from the Internet than my original problem;
such a situation is common because commonly a solution
does not use every detail of the original practical problem and, thus,
also applies to other problems that share the details
that were used.
It's like someone cooked up the
Pythagorean theorem to help survey farm land
in Egypt after the flood waters receded but
use nothing about farm land. So, the
Pythagorean theorem also works for carpentry,
stone cutting, navigation, astronomy, and
with some generalizations, much of multivariate
statistics, Fourier theory, Hilbert space
theory, and, thus, quantum mechanics --
my ideas are not nearly that powerful, just
have utility nicely beyond my original question.

So, I wrote the corresponding, core software. Then
I needed to put a Web site in front of
my core software. Then, given my thin checkbook,
reality came between me and my keyboard and
typing, and I got delayed. In addition,
I ran into computer
security problems with Windows XP SP3,
some Windows system administration problems
with SQL Server, etc. -- more delays.

So, I'm a pre-revenue project that needs
just a few more Web pages, one moderately
involved and the rest dirt simple,
some initial data, and some routine things
like a domain name to go live. For where
my techniques for getting info from the
Internet work, if Internet users, in the
US and around the world, like my work, judging from the
latest version of Mary Meeker's (KPCB)
report, then the project
will be able to grow to be a big thing.
Right: For a large fraction of what's on the
Internet, a much better way to get that
info for the US
and around the world, 2+ billion people,
so, sure, $400 billion. My project didn't
start out with any such ambitions;
I just wanted something fairly routine,
but the usual Web sites were not much help.

It does look like even with my thin
checkbook I can (continue to) bootstrap
this thing, still, if only for
a source of what aviation calls
"reserve fuel", I contact venture firms.

I've learned that apparently most of the
firms have agreements with their limited
partners that they will fund only projects
with good 'traction', that is, usage
and/or revenue significantly high and
growing rapidly. And, then, the venture
firms will 'play with the Web site',
look at the user interface and user
experience, and try to estimate how
2+ billion Internet users, desktops to
smart phones, would like the site.
Okay. Fine.

But the key to the work was some silver
bullets. That is, the market need is
easy enough to see; the issue is how
the heck to get data and write software
to manipulate that data and get the results
for the users. From efforts from others,
clearly cooking up how to do that ain't
easy. For that, my answer is
some original applied math -- then the
core software just implements the math.

Well, not a single venture firm has
shown any interest in the crucial,
core silver bullets. A16Z essentially
deliberately laughed at any possible
role for applied math (NSF and DARPA
don't). Okay.

Fine with me to continue on with my
thin checkbook, go live, and get
some traction. Shouldn't be much
more work for me
assuming that people like
the site at all (even if my
math works as well in practice as I hope,
still people might not like my
site).

But, then, I come to the idea of
what might come after a venture
check? Okay, there will be a Board.
If A16Z were to write the check,
then Ben or one of his colleagues would
be on the Board. Setting aside
A16Z, there would be one or more
venture partners on the Board.

Then once the initial crunch after going live dies down,
and if the usage is growing quickly
I've hired a COO to help address that,
it will be time for another silver
bullet, in this case, for some quite
different approaches to ad targeting.
I want especially effective ad targeting
but only from my own data and with
next to no concerns about invasion of
user privacy. I have some ideas how
to proceed, but they are silver bullet
ideas. If I put up the applied math
in a Board meeting, could count with
shoes on all the venture partners in the
US with educational backgrounds to
understand.

So I will be asking my Board to back a
silver bullet project for ad targeting.
And there's a lead bullet approach
-- mostly just use ad networks
with their pros and cons. And I can
see Congress getting all concerned
about privacy and severely constraining
what ad networks can do. Tilt;
my revenue could be at risk.

Sure, some VCs emphasize how much freedom
they give their CEOs. Fred Wilson
and Brad Feld do. But a lot of VCs
also emphasize how they are 'hands on'.
Either way, the Board can fire the CEO,
before the stock is vested,
and that's me. So, net, I want a
Board that can work effectively with
projects to generate silver bullets
(or to use Mother Goose, golden eggs).
For more in Mother Goose, the story of
Little Red Hen is too close for comfort.

So, how do I know if a VC can work with
silver bullets? Sure, contact them
and see what questions they ask and
how they react to my answers. Do they
ask good questions? Or if they can't
evaluate the silver bullets I've already
got in production quality software,
what the heck are they going to do
with a silver bullet ad targeting
project that starts from much less?
More generally, what would they do
with other silver bullet projects?

The US DoD got the scram jet
working, after only a few failures.
Good for the US DoD. They've been
nicely successful with silver bullet
projects since early in WWII --
drag free satellites, GPS, etc.
So, it is possible to work effectively
with silver bullet projects. There
are lots of people who know how,
and I've worked with some of them in my
career in DoD work, in grad school, and in
computer science research.
And if I have to have a Board, then
I want such people on my Board.
When I look at VCs, I don't see
that they have such backgrounds.
I'm concerned.