I know some people in (1) the top of
business in the US, (2) high end US
research academics, and (3) information
technology (IT).

(A) Bluntly likely none of those people
knows anyone at First Round Capital. (B)
Bluntly, with the exception of Howard
Morgan, the qualifications of the people
at First Round Capital in business,
research academics, and technology are not
high enough to be respected by the people
I know. Net, the people at First Round
Capital and myself know nearly none of the
same people.

Moreover, for my technology startup, there
is no one at First Round Capital with
business, academic, or technology
qualifications good enough for me to hire
for a significant position.
I'd have a tough time respecting any of
them to take their advice on my startup.

Once, just once, I did call a person I
know, the founder, COB, CEO of a major,
world famous company and asked for an
introduction to his CIO. The CIO and I
talked and had a nice review of history, and
he gave me an introduction to a partner at
a venture firm with a partner on the BoD
of the company. Net, the introduction
meant nothing -- the venture partner paid
no attention to the introduction or my
project at all; we did communicate but
just as in a cold call.

I never again wanted to bother any of the
high end people I know, bother them to
introduce me to a venture firm just to
get past some absurd hoop the venture
firm erected but ignored.

Net, venture firms who want
introductions get put at the bottom of
my list; the venture partners and I nearly
never know or respect the same people; I'm
not going to pester the good, important
people I know and respect to have them
waste their time communicating with people
as poorly qualified in business, research,
and IT as all but a small number of
venture partners. No way.

Next, in contacting venture firms just via
cold calls, I've had little trouble
getting through and getting a response
including several hour long conference
calls. In particular well known venture
partners at well known venture firms are
aware of my work on my project, all
without any introductions.

Net, it appears to me that introductions
are not really necessary and not very
helpful.

What was helpful was having a team: For
a while I did that, but too soon I
encountered the common problem --
disputes. So, now I'm a solo founder.
There are some serious advantages being a
solo founder, but it does appear that
getting a phone conversation with a
venture partner as a solo founder is more
difficult. For whatever reasons, venture
firms don't like solo founder startups.

Moreover, it appears to me that, really,
venture firms have their feet locked in
concrete that, with only some rare
exceptions, they just will not pay much
attention to an IT startup before the
software is developed and there is
significant traction growing rapidly.
E.g., venture partner Fred Wilson at his
Union Square Ventures recently made it
clear on his blog AVC.com that he just
will not fund software development. Okay
by me.

But at

http://a16z.com/2014/07/30/the-happy-demise-of-the-10x-engin...

with

"The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer"

By Sam Gerstenzang

is in part:

"This is the new normal: fewer engineers
and dollars to ship code to more users
than ever before. The potential impact of
the lone software engineer is soaring.
How long before we have a billion-dollar
acquisition offer for a one-engineer
startup? How long before the role of an
engineer, artisanally crafting custom
solutions, vanishes altogether?"

So, Andreessen-Horowitz is admitting the
possibility of a solo founder creating a
billion dollar startup.

I don't see just why not: Venture firms
want the code written and traction
significant and growing rapidly. If the
startup is ad supported, then it doesn't
take much traction to let a solo (single)
founder startup have cash enough for
organic growth, that is, without equity
funding. Then, if enough of the 3+
billion Internet users like the work a
lot, presto, bingo, a billion dollar
startup.

Indeed, for my startup, I believe that, as
the founder, I need to "know my business"
(a traditional criterion), and that
includes the code, the servers, how to
please the users, how to please the paying
customers, how to handle the billing,
bookkeeping, accounting, legal, etc. So,
I'm not seeing where a larger founding
team is necessary. First hire? Likely
an Office Manager, and not a co-founder.

There is some irony: Necessarily venture
firms are looking for highly exceptional
projects, but their means of looking are
mostly to compare with simplistic patterns
from the past -- not promising. And as in

http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional-limit...

and

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital-returns.html...

on average the venture firms are not
making much money doing this.

Thankfully the US NSF, NIH, DARPA, various
other parts of the US DoD, commonly ignore
simplistic patterns from the past and,
instead, actually get expert evaluations
of projects submitted on paper. Moreover,
the history is that projects that do well
on such evaluations have much better
batting average or ROI than US IT
venture capital.

E.g., for the Manhattan Project, the US
DoD (then the War Department) didn't
reject the project because it looked
nothing like the long history of bombs.

The CIA didn't reject the SR-71 because it
looked very different from anything in the
past of aviation.

The US Navy didn't reject the first
satellite navigation system because it
looked nothing like anything in the
history of navigation.

NSF prize winning research rarely looks
much like the past.

The Human Genome project funded by the NIH
looked very different from anything in the
past.

Intel is shooting for 10nm -- again, new
ground significantly different from
anything in the past.

But only a tiny fraction of US IT venture
partners have the ability, say, of a
project reviewer for a leading
peer-reviewed journal of original research
or the NSF or NIH, to review leading-edge
technical material. That's been their
business model. Okay.

Yes, venture firms on their Web sites
commonly claim to have "deep domain
knowledge". Curious: Only a tiny
fraction of US IT venture partners have
the qualifications even to be admitted to
the graduate program where I got my Ph.D.

Indeed, Google search

"deep domain knowledge" venture

gives "About 40,600 results". I've read
the backgrounds of hundreds of US IT
venture partners, and I doubt that I've
seen over 10 that have the qualifications
for "deep domain knowledge" in anything
very technical. I've seen a lot of
lawyers, history majors, MBAs,
international studies majors, English
majors, etc. and darned few math, physics,
engineering, or computer science majors.

It looks like in their educations, only a
tiny fraction of the US IT VCs liked the
STEM fields.

I published a paper in computer science.
The paper has a typo. Here I make a
public bet, of one dollar, that no US IT
venture partner on their own can find the
typo. Should such a person wish to try,
then reply here, and I will send a PDF of
the paper.

Hint: It would be good to be able to
find, say,

Patrick Billingsley, 'Convergence of
Probability Measures'

fun and easy reading, and for that should
have greatly enjoyed, say, at least the
first (real) half of

Walter Rudin, 'Real and Complex Analysis'

and

Walter Rudin, 'Principles of Mathematical
Analysis'.

Come on US IT VCs: You've got "deep
domain knowledge", high determination, are
all-go, never stop, never give up,
commonly leap tall buildings at a single
bound, have over the top self esteem, etc.
Should be a piece of cake for you, right?

I'll save you some time:

(A) Look up the definitions of
countability and of a sigma algebra. Then
show that there are no countably infinite
sigma algebras.

(B) For positive integer n, the real
numbers R, R^n with the usual topology,
and subset C of R^n closed in that
topology, show that there exists function
f: R^n --> R zero on C, positive
otherwise, and infinitely differentiable.
Notice that examples of C include Cantor
sets of positive measure, the Mandelbrot
set, and sample paths of Brownian motion.
Curious result.

If you find (A) and (B) easy, then by all
means, also with your "deep domain
knowledge", read Rudin and go for the
typo also using Billingsley.

What does the paper with the typo have to
do with IT? It's likely the best thing so
far for detecting zero day problems in
large server farms and networks.

Point: Only a tiny fraction of US IT
venture partners have the "deep domain
knowledge" necessary to evaluate new work
in information technology.

So, they have to evaluate based mostly
just on traction.

As far as I can tell, nearly everything
else US IT VCs say they want to see is
just smoke to cover the one thing they
really want -- traction significant and
growing rapidly.

Point: Due to the possibility of a solo
founder with tiny burn rate, waiting for
traction will be too late.

Can a solo founder of an IT startup hope
to be successful without equity funding?
Should be: All across the US, cross roads
to the largest cities, solo founders do
well mowing grass, selling pizza or
hamburgers, pumping gas, paving driveways,
..., big-truck, little-truck distribution
businesses, etc. without equity funding.
IT should be an advantage.