>If you have someone who needs to learn how to quickly, you don't teach them theory
Elon would disagree: "One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to."
> Follow the recipe, then don't follow it.
Yes! At first I found it super helpful be ultra-precise: read the recipe twice, use a digital thermometer exactly, measure everything, etc. Then you learn what "good" is by tasting, then you can start improvising and substituting. True of how to learn a lot of things I think
Agree that's the true minimum viable set, and you can cook a lot of things with just that. But I think if a novice cook was trying to work through the cookbooks I recommended, they would find it frustrating not to have some of the other stuff I recommend. My "minimum viable" is sort of "your lack of X won't be a substantially annoying obstacle from completing most of the recipes in these essential books"
Agreed! But, I think very novice cooks should rigorously follow recipes, learn what a good result is across a wide variety of dishes, then learn how to substitute things or change up recipes. Or rather that's what worked for me.
Hi folks, Tyler here from Earnest Capital. I'll be leading one of these Mastermind Sprints and happy to answer any questions or hear suggestions here.
Basically like a lot of folks we've been looking for ways to increase our motivation and stay productive during gestures at everything
Mastermind are great for collective accountability and learning from peers, but my experience has been that they are often too unstructured and open-ended. So we've created a more structured, focused, time-boxed, and mentor-facilitated version. We beta tested it over the Summer and founders loved it so we're opening it up to broader applications.
Focused on bootstrapper type founders/businesses though we're open-minded about that.
I've been looking for something like this for the past few months — we've recently shipped our MVP and I'm gearing up for the long push to find good marketing channels and the right features/message to fit. I find it incredibly valuable to have good community support during this phase because there's often very little outside positive feedback.
And I personally love the bootstrapper focus and the entire SEAL concept (this was the first I'd heard of it).
investors like me are at a basic level middlemen. We have to raise capital from other sources and then invest it in founders. So it's not so much a questions of what kind of returns we're 'happy' with as it is, what kind of returns will enable us to keep collecting more money that we can turn around and use to back founders. If I was already a billionaire deploying my own capital, it would be a different story (and I'm actually a big proponent of folks investing with lower return expectation because I think entrepreneurship is an inherent social good) but that's not our situation.
> is all just ear candy and hype without evidence
the only evidence i can think of would be reviews from other founders who've worked with us. They are a super nice bunch and are generally happy to have a chat if you're curious. Here's one founder quoting another on the non-cash benefits of working with us: https://twitter.com/_rchase_/status/1233074457406771208?s=20
>Maybe earn trust with founders before asking for or expecting extra icing?
100% Agreed.
What I dislike most is the unlimited extra icing. The first part with the cap is nice because the return is measurable. The unlimited extra icing required to be given on the tail end (based on negotiated %, whatever that range may be) is however not measurable, nor is what value the network may actually bring even at a basic level - and assumption is generally bad. If it was a % up until a cap of $ then arguably that's more digestible, more tangible, because it allows weighing of a reciprocal relationship within a best or worse case scenario; and of course you think that extra payout on selling company is nice but that is weighted towards the investors. A different mechanism does introduce an issue with figuring out how to implement follow-on investment agreement if future funding is a loan with 2-5x return with % equity until a $ cap; not explaining myself so well here.
I just don't like uncertainty and I like measured fairness. I understand the excitement of getting an extra payout if there's a big exit but I feel 2-5x return on investment is already a great payout - and I don't like the VC justification that a higher return is aimed for to diversify risk because that's just an excuse for VCs that are making bad investments in an unskilled, inexperienced way, hoping for a few unicorns of 100x+ return that cover the losses of bad investments + that provide all their profits.
Ultimately my goal, if I ever raise any outside money, is to retain as much equity as possible, for myself and for the team - especially early on so then later at higher sums of money are necessary for expansion then equity is more likely to be necessary to be part of the equation but the company being in a better position allows better leveraging.
I'm not trying to disparage, this is much better than traditional VC already and I also like what Indie.VC is doing - the flaming unicorn in the hero of their landing page is a nice Minimum Viable Personality touch too. Just used this opportunity as a thought exercise, I appreciate your responses. Maybe the timing just isn't right for me to be able to as reasonably consider this model until I am certain I would continue on the external fundraising path.
