Often times after a radio show or podcast has become popular there is a desire to release a book and How I Built This fits into the pattern. There is a podcast called How I Built This by Guy Raz which resulted in a book published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, NY, 2020. The podcast is Guy Raz interviewing entrepreneurs about their journey to become successful. In the book, Mr. Raz groups the answers into categories and as a journalist adds stories around the theme of the chapter.

For smaller companies to grow, after the friends and family stage, then government loans, the next stage is venture capital funding. One of the founders of Andressen Horowitz is named Ben Horowitz. Two piece of advice he gave to one people who job was to develop and evaluate new ideas.

First what usually look like good ideas are bad ideas, and what look like bad ideas are good ideas. The problem with a good idea is that everyone tries to do them and as result there is limited value to be created. Second, you need to the do thing that you believe you are the best person in the world to do, where you have a unique proposition, given your story, to solve a problem.

If you are going to use venture capital funding, it is important to understand the VCs on the other side.

The first thing to understand is that raising venture capital money is about making a promise. A promise that you have a product or service that people will pay money for, that you have a plan to reach as many of those people as possible, and that in exchange for lots of money, you will bust your butt to reach them.

The next thing to understand is that good investors know the promise you are making to them is just that – a promise. They know you cannot make any guarantees. You can everything right, but if the world shifts under your feet, there’s nothing you can do about it. Venture capital is by its very nature a gamble. The mitigate the gamble they ask lots of questions –

How do your expect to scale this? Where is the growth coming from? Who is the customer for this? Doesn’t something like this exist? How will you get costs down? Where will you manufacture? Where will you be based? What is your marketing strategy? Why does anyone need this? Why would anyone do this?

As an entrepreneur you have to expect these questions. The more you are asked, the better your answers are because of the additional research you have and continue to do.