As a budding and a small-time Angel Investor I often get to hear passionate founders of start-ups. Their energy, conviction and optimism rubs on anyone around and I'm no exception.
This week I saw a tweet from Paul Graham of Y-Combinator, in which he had shared an old mail from the founders of AirBnB, when they became Ramen Profitable. Ramen Profitable means the start-up is making just enough money to pay founder's living expenses as Paul describes in his essay.
A flurry of thought entered my mind as I read the tweet, the original essay, and things I had read about AirBnB in the book Upstarts. It just means laser focus, continuous tinkering till you get it right, not getting distracted and keeping it lean and mean. For investors, it cannot get any better and what a joy to work with such founders and both help and learn from them.
It also brought back memories of my failed investments. As an Angel one should expect and be ready to lose entire investment. But then there are a few founders who fought and fought to keep it afloat and some wound-up without any fight after squandering investor's money. The first will have no trouble raising monies again when they move on as their integrity remained intact and their demonstrated grit made them even more valuable in the eyes of investors. The latter might have burnt all the goodwill and likely to struggle raise monies again - they are well advised to internalise being Ramen Profitable.
No comments:
Post a Comment