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Marc Andreessen
https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part2.html
粘贴从文章中段开始。前面讲的是连续被拒之后怎么改计划，以及 onion theory of risk。
This isn’t very much fun, since it will probably involve making significant changes to your plan, but look on the bright side: it’s excellent practice for when your company ultimately goes public and has to file an S1 registration statement with the SEC, in which you have to itemize in huge detail every conceivable risk and bad thing that could ever possibly happen to you, up to and including global warming.
Some ideas on reducing risk
Founder risk
The tough one. If you’re the technologist on a founding team with a business person, you have to consider the possibility that the VCs don’t think the business person is strong enough to be the founding CEO. Or vice versa, maybe they think the technologist isn’t strong enough to build the product. You may have to swap out one or more founders, and/or add one or more founders.
I put this one right up front because it can be a huge issue and the odds of someone being honest with you about it in the specific are not that high.
Market risk
You probably need to validate the market, at a practical level. Sometimes more detailed and analytical market research will solve the problem, but more often you actually need to go get some customers to demonstrate that the market exists. Preferably, paying customers. Or at least credible prospects who will talk to VCs to validate the market hypothesis.
Competition risk
Is your differentiation really sharp enough? Rethink this one from the ground up. Lots of startups do not have strong enough differentiation out of the gate, even after they get funded. If you don’t have a really solid idea as to how you’re dramatically different from or advantaged over known and unknown competitors, you might not want to start a company in the first place.
Two additional points on competition risk that founders routinely screw up in VC pitches:
- Never, ever say that you have no competitors. That signals naivete. Great markets draw competitors, and so if you really have no competition, you must not be in a great market. Even if you really believe you have no competitors, create a competitive landscape slide with adjacent companies in related market segments and be ready to talk crisply about how you are like and unlike those adjacent companies.
- And never, ever say your market projections indicate you’re going to be hugely successful if you get only 2% of your (extremely large) market. That also signals naivete. If you’re going after 2% of a large market, that means the presumably larger companies that are going to take the other 98% are going to kill you. You have to have a theory for how you’re going to get a significantly higher market share than 2%. (I pick 2% because that’s the cliche, but if you’re a VC, you’ve probably heard someone use it.)
Timing risk
The only thing to do here is to make more progress, and demonstrate that you’re not too early or too late. Getting customers in the bag is the most valuable thing you can do on this one.
Financing risk
Rethink very carefully how much money you will need to raise after this round of financing, and try to change the plan in plausible ways to require less money. For example, only serve Cristal at your launch party, and not Remy Martin “Black Pearl” Louis XIII cognac.
Marketing risk
First, make sure your differentiation is super-sharp, because without that, you probably won’t be able to stand out from the noise.
Then, model out your customer acquisition economics in detail and make sure that you can show how you’ll get more revenue from a customer than it will cost in sales and marketing expense to acquire that customer. This is a common problem for startups pursuing the small business market, for example.
If it turns out you need a lot of money in absolute terms for marketing, look for alternate approaches—perhaps guerilla marketing, or some form of virality.
Distribution risk
This is a very tough one—if your plan has distribution risk, which is to say you need a key distribution partner to make it work, personally I’d recommend shelving the plan and doing something else. Otherwise, you may need to go get the distribution deal before you can raise money, which is almost impossible.
Technology risk
There’s only one way around this, which is to build the product, or at least get it to beta, and then raise money.
Product risk
Same answer—build it.
Hiring risk
The best way to address this is to figure out which position/positions the VCs are worried about, and add it/them to the founding team. This will mean additional dilution for you, but it’s probably the only way to solve the problem.
Location risk
This is the one you’re really not going to like. If you’re not in a major center of entrepreneurialism and you’re having trouble raising money, you probably need to move. There’s a reason why most films get made in Los Angeles, and there’s a reason most venture-backed US tech startups happen in Silicon Valley and handful of other places—that’s where the money is. You can start a company wherever you want, but you may not be able to get it funded there.
Kick the ball further down the road
You’ll notice that a lot of what you may need to do is kick the ball further down the road—make more progress against your plan before you raise venture capital.
This obviously raises the issue of how you’re supposed to do that before you’ve raised money.
Try to:
- raise angel money
- bootstrap off of initial customers or consulting contracts
- work on it after hours while keeping your current job
- quit your job and live off of credit cards for a while
Lots of entrepreneurs have done these things and succeeded—and of course, many have failed.
Nobody said this would be easy.
The most valuable thing you can do is actually build your product. When in doubt, focus on that.
The next most valuable thing you can do is get customers—or, for a consumer Internet service, establish a pattern of page view growth.
The whole theory of venture capital is that VCs are investing in risk—another term for venture capital is “risk capital”—but the reality is that VCs will only take on so much risk, and the best thing you can do to optimize your chances of raising money is to take out risk.
Peel away at the onion.
Then, once you’ve done that, recraft the pitch around the new facts. Go do the pitches again. And repeat as necessary.
“Yes” can still turn into “no”
And to end on a happy note, remember that “yes” can turn into “no” at any point up until the cash hits your company’s bank account.
So keep your options open all the way to the end.
This article was written by Marc Andreessen and originally published on his blog, blog.pmarca.com. These articles are probably some of the best writings on business and startups anywhere but they were taken down years ago. They live here now in this static archive.