Simon Willison’s Weblog

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41 items tagged “funding”

2012

Is it worth accepting an investment from YCombinator if you have an established network in the valley?

Yes. Plenty of the companies in our batch at YC already had well established networks, and they still benefited enormously from the advice and introductions YC could offer.

[... 295 words]

Why are web applications more popular than desktop applications with investors?

How often do you install a new desktop application? How often do you try out a new web application?

[... 36 words]

Is it even possible to think of a new idea? Anything that I think of has either been done, or someone is doing it. How do you keep yourself motivated enough to pursue it?

A lot of the time it’s not just about the idea, it’s also about timing. There are plenty of ideas which have failed in the past but could succeed if tried again today. A few things to consider:

[... 180 words]

While raising money, what tool are you currently using to manage your relationship with investors?

When we raised our seed round we used Highrise from 37signals. It worked out VERY well for us, especially during Y Combinator demo day. I’ll describe how we used it there...

[... 289 words]

Which angels or VCs like to invest in fitness companies?

The easiest way to answer this question is to take a look at existing fitness companies and find out who their investors are. CrunchBase and AngelList are invaluable for this, but many companies also list their investors on their own sites.

[... 57 words]

2011

What criteria should a company meet in order to have a 5 million dollars valuation?

They need to convince an investor to buy 10% of the company for $500,000.

[... 35 words]

Does Y Combinator ever fund British startups?

Yes. Our startup http://lanyrd.com/ went through Y Combinator Winter 2011 (Jan to March this year) and we’re a pair of UK co-founders. We’re back in London now.

[... 41 words]

What are the most recent Y Combinator startup companies as of 2011?

We (Lanyrd) are a YC startup! We’ve just announced our participation: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31...

[... 31 words]

What is the best way to find about the upcoming startup events in India?

There are quite a few events of interest to entrepreneurs showing up on Lanyrd: http://lanyrd.com/places/india/—you can also subscribe to our Atom feed for that page to hear about future events.

[... 53 words]

2010

What are some ways I can get the word out about my startup/entrepreneur focused conference?

Add it to lanyrd.com and make sure you list all of the speakers. Then anyone who signs in to Lanyrd and is following at least one of your speakers on Twitter will be told about your event.

[... 59 words]

2009

Google’s first press release. From 1999, announcing $25 million in equity funding. I’m impressed to see that the mission statement already stated “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information, making it universally accessible and useful.” # 27th September 2009, 8:35 pm