Start-Up like sex and musical instrument: practice wrong, perform wrong. Best way to have farm league is with start-ups built to make money from customer.

SO, INSTEAD TAKE VC MONEY, RUN LONGER-TERM INCUBATOR TO CREATE LIFESTYLE STARTUPS THAT MAKE MONEY, BUT NOT BLOW UP, WITH INTENT LEARN HOW TO DO STARTUPS RIGHT?

THIS ACTUALLY GOOD IDEA. WHICH VC WANT TO GIVE GRIMLOCK MONEY TO TEACH BABY STARTUPS TO FLY?

This what me doing in Chile. When launch in March, plan to send money fly Grimlock here where we have good weather and good local beer

HOORAY!

AWESOME

Problem with this branch thing is we are having the conversation in 2 places. It is duplicative. Twitter sucks, but everybody is having the conversation there.

Skinner, that's true. Because twitter is relatively hurdle-less, we put up with its suckage.

Meanwhile, just logging in to Branch required me to click through about 5 screens and open in Safari. Hurdles. Fo not want.

IT ISSUE WITH TWITTER.

IF ME, GRIMLOCK, REINVENT TWITTER TODAY, ME MAKE IT REPOSITORY OF ANY SIZE DATA, BUT ONLY VIEW 1ST 140 CHARACTERS ON TWITTER.

THEN OPEN TO ANY INTERFACE FROM OUTSIDE TO SHOW 141+ CHARACTERS.

THAT WAY LONG VERSION OF THIS CONVERSATION HERE, SUMMARY WITH LINKS ON TWITTER.

BOTH BENEFIT.

That good idea, Dino. Sort of like posting links in a tweet. lulz

oh - I like that! I would use that.

I hope you meant "WHEN GRIMLOCK REINVENT TWITTER"

BUSY DOING OTHER THINGS.

ME JUST NOTICE @BRANCH CHECKBOX FOR SHARE REPLY TO TWITTER JUST REPOSTING SUBJECT OF BRANCH OVER AND OVER.

THAT FAIL, BRANCH.

Other reason conversations happen on twitter vs here:
On twitter you can multitask & jump back in when you're @-ed.
Here, as with other social networks, if you leave, you're gone from the conversation and it continues without you (and maybe w/o your knowledge).

And yes Dino: Branch has lots of UX fails for a hotshot team with shit tons of money.

CONSTANT PING IS REQUIREMENT IN WORLD DRIVEN BY INTERRUPTION.

@Skinner Let's make sure we have enough beer and bacon down under before committing to Grimlock's arrival, or else face bloody extinction.

Beer is covered. Bacon will require careful planning.

Oh hello everybody! I see more people are joining, I don't know whether Branch has formed an etiquette of some sort yet.

On a different note, some guys tried to do something a bit like Branch last year. You probably saw Convore.com, right?

WHERE CONVERSATION GO? EVERYONE GET TIRED, FALL ASLEEP?

Still have window open...

TAKE VC MONEY, USE ON DUMB IDEA TO LEVEL UP TO NEXT STARTUP: SCAM OR SMART?

Not mutually exclusive. If VC dumb enough, it like the old saying about a fool and his money.

Unfortunately most people take VC money too short-sighted, more likely to get acqui-hired and become Zuck's minions

GRIMLOCK, you think VC should focus more on make investments work as way to avoid get scammed?

IT NOT VENDING MACHINE.

PUT IN MONEY, EXPECT SUCCESS ROLL OUT = FAIL.

INSTEAD INVESTOR NEED TO ACT LIKE WHAT THEM AM, OWNER.

WORK JUST AS HARD AS FOUNDERS TO MAKE COMPANY WIN. EVEN BEFORE GIVE ANY MONEY.

Problem is that it's not mostly their own money. They are just playing roulette on a insurance company/pension fund's dime and earning 2% management fees.

YES.

AND THAT WRONG WAY TO DO IT.

It like bring artificial growth hormone to nature. User may survive, rest of ecosystem die.

Investment should be a trade. The founder should get access to the VC's contacts and experience. The VC should get a big return (in theory). Money is an enabler for both, a good VC can do a lot with little as long as there is communication and skill share. If there isn't what was the point? At the very least the VC has to believe in the founder, their idea and their vision.

VC should get a return commensurate with risk. He should always be working to reduce risk. Which goes to GRIMLOCK's point about working hard to make founders win even before give money.

Return Commensurate with risk = roulette like Grimlock said. If I cover ever spot with a small amount of money I'm more likely to win (see also 500Startups etc) even if it's a small win.

In Vegas the trade from the casino to the player is the "enjoyment" and the potential win.

In VC the trade from VC to founder should be "expertise" and connections as well as the potential win. Too often I hear founders look at funding like I look at the Roulette wheel in Vegas - it will give them more time to "enjoy" being a startup instead of working to be successful.

Funding is like rocket fuel - it'll get you a long way from here but if you're pointed in the wrong direction you're going to have even farther to go to get to where you want.

“I think angel investing is like roulette. Angels in seed rounds have few to no data points, and often just have to go with ”gut" or their belief in one or more aspects of the team/idea.

VCs, on the other hand, generally come in later and get to ask the hard/fun questions about traction, revenue, profit, burn rate, etc. these things are measurable. So, they definitely have more knowledge at hand with which to make a decision. There's still an element of the gamble, but I liken it more to Texas Hold 'Em than roulette.

I absolutely agree with Skinner that any investor should be working to reduce risk.

To get back to GRIMMY'S question though: "feature-not-a-product" is definitely harming the ecosystem in many instances.

Angels have 1 ace of a full house. VCs should have 2/3 of a full house, it's very unlikely that a entrepreneur will have the rest of the hand. They pick them up along the way.

Instagram is a feature any way you look at it. It was something FB and Twitter were missing. I could write a missing feature for FB in a day, but they could just re-write it in a day too. If I had 1m or 100m users it's now a much more viable "product". It's not about features v products, it's about trading users. I could come up with a social product, that if it suddenly got 50m users FB or Twitter would sit up. Users are their currency, a threat to that is a threat to their business model. If they can buy users like that, and create a link to their model they will.

Angel Investing and Venture Capital would be better off if their practitioners took Andrew Carnegie's advice to "Put all of your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket."

Agree that Instagram is a feature all day long - but again all comes back to what is success - is working to build a feature and get acquired for a billion $ success? Or is it more successful to make a dent in the universe? </jobs>

It made a few people very, very rich... they had 13 or so employees when they were bought. They had no profit and no *real* way of making any all they had were users... these kind of cases ruin investment potential for other companies. Entrepreneurs or wannatrpreneurs think they just need an idea of a feature instead of a proper business plan, basic features and a clue about what to do next... I'm all for lean and pivot based companies, but even at this reduced scale.. you still need to have an idea and an eye on the future.

Successes like this belittle the effort and risk taken by hundreds of VC's and startups. There are quick wins, but you're unlikely to be one of them.

IMHO a success will generate jobs>useful/needed products>money

there is no doubt that Instagram isn't a model that's easy to replicate - except that there have been a number of times where someone has done exactly that.It's not ideal for long term innovation, but it does seem to work in the short term