Canadabased London 856m 3.1bgopinathbloomberg: So the recent demonstration by Balaji Srinivasan and a16z partners to show that they, too, can tweet (albeit in not-quite-140-characters) is understandable. But I’m going to throw it back at them. If they’re so good with all their billions of dollars worth of venture capital funding, why don’t they do more than just tweet? What new products are they announcing or selling? It’s alway’s the same: They buy a company, they announce it to the world and then they wait a year or so before they flip it. I totally get why they do this. It’s easy, quick money, especially if you’re using other people’s money (OPM). But what about the real entrepreneurs out there?
The guys with no venture capital funding who are doing it all from their own savings? Guys like me. I’m sure that a16z would say that there are many companies that have been financed by them. They don’t have all the answers, but I would hope that a16z would not just sit on their fauxtfolio and hope for the best.
I’ve been having an interesting discussion with Jody Shimmin over at VCGolf about this. Jody writes a blog, “Fintech People”, and has started to focus on how VCs are using Twitter (and other social media) to their advantage. He asked me to comment on how social media and business are intertwined.
You see, I’m a real entrepreneur. I have no idea what the term means in Silicon Valley. I’ve self-funded my company for many years now, with help from family and friends, or the kindness of strangers, which can be just as good at times.
I started my first company when I was 13 years old and have been an entrepreneur ever since. But I’m feeling the pressure of being a business person in 2014.
I’ve been losing sleep over this. I’ve been up at all hours of the night, wrestling with my thoughts.
It is so easy to be a good entrepreneur. All you need is a good idea, an idea that others may not have come up with yet (and wait, they won’t). People will pay you money to build what they want; it’s like magic, if you just do it your way.
But business isn’t always that easy. It’s more calculated than you think, and involves more than just an idea. You have to think long and hard about your business plan. And you have to get a lot of help, a lot of advice (and reality checks). You have to hire people or find a partner or find the right funding.
But what if I told you that all this was unnecessary, that you could achieve anything with no money? Yes, it’s possible. If Twitter was threatened, a lot of people would immediately open a Twitter account and start tweeting. Anyone can tweet.
The same is true for building a great company. Just keep working at it and you’ll be successful; it’s as simple as that. And if you build something that people want, you’ll have no problems getting funding if you need it or selling your product or service to the market.
I know that some of my readers will not want to hear this. They’ll tell me that I’m stupid and can’t do anything, and I should be a software engineer who can only build software. They’ll say people like me “stink” at businesses.
We don’t need venture funding to build great companies. In fact, we need to get away from the term “venture funding” altogether .
