Mostly interested in hearing from those who have succeeded multiple times. For those who have launched and produced profitable companies. How important was knowing the right people, how important was having money. How did you meet the right people and how did you get the money you needed.
(Anyone can say anything but please if all you’re gonna say is work hard and eat your green vegetables. It’s pointless.)
People start side hustles that become businesses all the time so of course you can without either.
I started with a chunky vision, no connections or money and then got them. I went to an event and met the CEO of big company that gave us our first clients and travelled around networking, pitch events and meeting investors to raise money.
Most of the time you need them (I needed debt to start out) and having a network and money is a huge head start but people do it all the time without either.
Entrepreneurship best practices I always find a nightmare because everyone has such a different journey. There are no rules!
You can get the odd good advice but it’s like asking how someone won the lottery (maybe a bit more mathematical than that but the point is what works for someone rarely can be applied to another persons business/situation).
Obtaining connections isn’t difficult, I’m thinking of starting a business in the future and I’m slowly picking up on contacts. Talk to Local companies, people who have already started, people you work with.
The only job you have is to know who’s talking shit and who’s giving you good advice.
90%
Skill, experience and tenacity trump money and contacts. You can make the latter two. The former take time and effort that most people won’t follow through on.
Speaking as someone who works with a lot of VC invested founders, the ones that don’t have prior deep experience and network in their domain of focus have extremely high failure rates relative to other startups, so much so that my advice to our investment team and investment committee is just to flatly (but nicely) reject them, usually with the comment like ‘come back when you reach xxxMRR’
no money can me surmounted. after all thats what VCs are for.
I started a bank in Australia, Avenue Bank. I am so grateful for all our amazing investors, staff and those who have helped us and put us in contact with the correct people. Never underestimate how important investors and contacts are.
Don’t you need lot of money to open a bank? Doesn’t meet OP criteria of no money or you raised money to open a bank?
OP was asking for people who have been successful multiple times (not those who did it without), how important was money and connections.
I have no money nor connections.I consider my startup dead, because I can find the right people who would use it. But I gained a lot of experience during this quarter.
So connections are very important IMHO
What’s your startup about?
It’s about archiving photos long-term. It seems that noone is bothered about it :) Well we have Google Drive and other solutions from tech giants, so I kinda get it.
We didn’t have any connections. We’re not there yet, but we’ve raised a 3M seed and are on a good path. Over time we’ve built a network and everything you need. It took a lot of time and effort but it was doable. So what I’m trying to say is that you can start with almost nothing and hustle your way up.
I started with very little money way back 2019, no connections either. Purely based on my skills. Here’s what I did https://www.cuppa.so/post/the-ultimate-guide-to-mastering-client-acquisition-2023
The founder of my former company had no money and no connections. They published their solution on an open-source platform as open source, and it was a big hit! That’s when opportunities and funds started to reach out to them.
The bottom line is that their product really works.
They started it as a side project to solve their own pain point when building their main project, and they decided to publish it because they found it useful. Obviously, many other users had the same problem and their solution was helpful!Real talk:
- connections make a major difference
- money makes a huge difference
The trick is, with time, you get more of both of these things. So start now.