Yea, kind of bizarre, especially as point #1. How would a VC even know you're working on a start-up? I also don't get random E-mails from VCs asking me whether I am working on a start-up and if so would I like to drink a beverage. Is this really a common problem for people?

She's a lot more popular than your average person, and more tied into SV than most. Her resume includes Google, Youtube, Twitter, and Postmates before founding her own company, plus she's got 35K followers on Twitter and had a TechCrunch article written about the startup. I think a lot of what she wrote is applicable but she also moves in spheres the average person doesn't.

"0. Spend your free time building your network before you don't have free time anymore."

-1 be born in USA or get a green card.

Still to be fair are we expecting a single article knocked up in an hour to apply everyone's situation? Not even a book could be that.

So looks like this article applies mostly to people like her.

Thank you for the clarification. It makes more sense in this context.

I assume that the author already had funding when she decided talking to VCs was a waste of time. It makes sense; at some point you need to stop networking and just do the work.

Also, I assume that well connected female founders in an untapped market really get a lot more calls than average.

Not saying the advice is right or wrong but VCs that "send invitations to drink a coffee" are usually lower level employees with little to no decision making power. Job titles at VC firms are a bit misleading too (e.g. "Principals / Associates" are relatively low level employees and rarely have a vote in deals). It might be common knowledge but I was surprised by this when I initially found out.

Not sure how common but I worked on a side project at the Launch Hackathon in Feb then slowly made progress from prototype to real thing. In July I put up a website for it so people could sign up but I keep falling behind in actually launching the damn thing (and believe me I want to launch ASAP, warts and all, just need everything working first).

I have gotten emails / tweets from two VCs regarding my project and another from a group wanting me to apply to their start-up incubator. I sorta solicited one as he was tweeting "hey what's your idea and I'll give you feedback" so I mentioned it, pointed him to my website and he seemed interested in wanting to help when I was ready.

So I'm not sure. It probably depends on if a VC happens to come across it somehow and it's probably pretty rare. The 2 + incubator that contacted me, hell, they may never invest anything. I did setup a twitter account so I tried tweeting during my hackathon but after that was one it's pretty rare for me to tweet on it.

Fyi my side project is www.simex.io (yeah I know the date is wrong but I am still working on it and I did have a real working prototype; I _will_ launch but it'll likely be in January at this rate).

She had an article written about her on TechCrunch. That would likely put her on a lot of VC's radar.

I'm curious as to what the author's goal in writing this point. The point itself could have been achieved without mentioning VCs.

It's pretty rare to "persistently" be contacted by any VCs, even if you live in SV.

Most the startup founders I know would love to have this VC "persistence" problem.

Building her brand I suspect. "Look at meeeeee"

Exactly. Its kind of similar to Hollywood where people boast about their connections to so and so producers, directors etc.

I'm a parent who now knows about her app. If I lived in the states hell I'd probably use it

Heh... I'll say that these points are not surprising to me. The title (as well as the, urm, Medium) strongly suggested a Silicon Valley bubble point of view. I didn't read the article, and instead came to the comments to see if my initial expectations were wrong (in which case I may have decided to read it). It seems my expectations were in the ballpark.

I wouldn't take point 1 literally. It's more like avoid time-wasting meetings which also includes conferences, entrepreneur meetups, team-building seminars, you name it.

(Unless the people you are selling to are at those meetings in which case it's probably not a waste of time.)

Thank you! That is what I meant. More generally, don't waste your time chatting with people (unless they are your potential customers and you're trying to get to product market fit). Spend your time BUILDING!

She's likely well connected, certainly better than most first-time founders. Don't feel dejected. Even Travis Kalanick had to tweet and hope someone responds (like mere mortals) to find his BD person.

I have a feeling this whole article is an attempt at a super meta/reverse psychology maneuver to grab VCs attention.

>> Decline invitations from VCs to drink a coffee

More generally I read this as... What are my priorities? 100% focus on building an MVP with resources I have now. Someone with resources I may need later wants to chat now. Does that fit into my priorities? No. Politely decline, offering to keep them updated as my priorities start to consider the need for external resources.

Think about it for a moment. You don't have VCs chasing you to do what they expect from you (drink coffee with them) but probably other people, e.g. parents who want you to get the best grades possible, a group of friends who expect you to go with them to cinema like you do every Tuesday night, etc.

And as an entrepreneur building the MVP is ONE OF YOUR LOWEST PRIORITIES! Product market fit is, and for that you need to have a MVP, but you don't need to build it. Fake it or try to get the money to have someone else build it while you find more money and other awesome people to work with. If you want to figure out everything after you create your MVP and your MVP is taking more than a few hours/days to set up, then you are just a programmer who dreams about getting rich, not an entrepreneur. Nothing wrong about it, but it's a different thing.

For #1, I get random emails now and then from various equity firms including VC. If your startup is listed on AngelList, Crunchbase, or other startup lists then you will likely get them. Or you are in the news for some reason like winning a competition. BTW I am not in SV and not well connected.

I Agree, this is not a good article. Somewhat generic solutions for improbable problems.