Rosenbloom's dot-com startup Handshake raised $25M and failed from overcapitalization
Micah Rosenbloom · 20VC: Why Founders Should Not Focus On Top Line Valuation, Why Capital Efficiency Is Key To Returns And Investment Success & Why Despite Popular Thought, $100m Is An Exciting Exit For VC with Micah Rosenbloom, Managing Partner @ Founder Collective · Feb 15, 2017 · at 6:13
Micah Rosenbloom, Managing Partner at Founder Collective, reflects on the failure of his first company Handshake.com during the dot-com boom.
0:00 / 0:07exact quote · 7.5s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We raised twenty-five million dollars. We had 40 or 50 people. And, you know, the business really just was overcapitalized.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Micah Rosenbloom
Mark Suster's 'always be raising' advice distracts founders from execution
“There is a headset that has become the norm, which is always be raising. I don't know if that's always right. I think it's where we are, but I don't think that's necessarily the right thing for all founders. I think it's often very distracting and very, and ma…”
Managing for Series A metrics makes founders build decks, not companies
“You can become obsessed with what you need to achieve for the next round. And, you know, every board meeting then becomes, well, what are the series A guys want? And you're not really building the business. You're building the deck for the series A.”
East Coast VCs gain clarity by avoiding Silicon Valley's echo chamber
“I think starting our career on the East coast kept us a little outside the eco, you know, the echo chamber. And I think that did give us some perspective. We weren't around all the VCs every day.”
Financial modeling for seed startups is a complete waste of time
“There's no model. We're not building discounted flat cash flows or weighted average cost models or black shoals. We're just not doing that stuff. There's not enough data to do it. You'd waste your time.”