Disclaimer: I've personally been part of founding teams that have raised over $40,000,000 in venture capital. I've made a lot of money personally working with venture capitalists and plan to continue to do so. For some ideas and some ventures, venture capital makes a ton of sense. That said, I co-founded Founders Co-op because I thought that the venture capitalist market has holes in it and I'd like to fill those holes.
So does founders co-op suck less (and yes -- as investors we still suck -- i.e. if you can bootstrap your company with no investors you should do so!!!)?
- We're entrepreneurs and founders too. We know what it takes to build companies and we know what it takes to raise capital.
- We strive to be responsive to entrepreneurs with quick decisions
- We're investing our own money
- We're willing to invest small amounts of money -- anywhere between 10,000 and 250,000. We don't need to invest at least $2,000,000 or own at least 20% of a company. You'll hear this from vcs.
- We're comfortable taking risk and even supporting the occasional flier. We don't have to justify our thinking to LPs.
