Chowrangi

When the first bubble burst in the late 90s, most of the small and medium sized fished was roasted. Big time players not only survived it, but many also even leveraged the blast. The same aura of web dynamism has returned, and so is the return of the fears of yet another burst.

Everyone seems to have a new killer idea with rosy promises. Startups are mushrooming everywhere and passionate young entrepreneurs are striving hard to find some venture capitalists. They are adopting all the means to attract the much-needed funding. Most of them are living in the fool’s paradise, and they come into the wild market thinking that VCs are just throwing their money away at everyone who is stepping in the door with an idea on the back of the napkin.

Capital raising for a new startup thinking grand of its killer idea is not easy, and is as difficult and savage as everything else. VCs are not clowns and they only invest if they see any potential. After the first bursting of the virtual bubble, they have also learned some lessons and now they are much more technical savvy than before, and majority of VCs are only funding those who are known, or have done it before, and therefore probably already have an existing nexus with the VCS, so perhaps this in itself is a strong driving force in perpetuating this cycle.

And VCs are ruthless. They are not really interested about their idea mostly. They are only interested in their money and return on investment. VCs even want a stunning performance and return from the people who have done the marvels before, so even the repeaters of ideas would have a great difficulty, but VCs tend to favor them more. So someone who’s been successful in the past and has the existing relationship will much more easily get their new idea funded than the ‘young’ (unknown) person.

Hard work and luck is the primary factor of first timers. Fate does have something to do with it. Win the lottery second time around. It does happen, but lightning rarely strikes the second spot twice. So in that case luck is more unlikely to favor the second timers who are known by the VCs, but luck is more likely to get friendly with the first timers. So do dare and take a flight.

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