Hundreds of calls and meetings. When does one work on the product? I'm a bit disillusioned by the apparent focus on funding over product in the valley. I hope it is a misconception of mine.
Ideally, there's no "one" working on the product. This is the value of a non-technical cofounder - their job is to adeptly handle the logistics that guys like us find burdensome, minimizing distraction.
Whether (disproportional) funding focus is a problem in the valley depends on who you're talking to. There are a lot of people who view startups as a path to riches - for whom a good product is only means to an end - a good payday. There are others for whom good product is a passion, and money is mostly irrelevant.
The occam's razor explanation: stories about cash mountains have much wider appeal than those about niche product development - so more of those stories get written.
Short answer - whoever raises doesn't work on the product nearly as much until raising is over. That is why closing a round quickly can be incredibly valuable even at a lower valuation.
Really? That's wicked. But most of the times I have witnessed such things, the problem is with process and not people. Processes come from top down. Let's all try to bring this to the attention of the top brass.
If this is a legitimate concern and it's not being addressed after some reasonable initial contact, maybe you can get a mountain of retweets going with some unfortunate hash tag about the bank and a link to some reputable source about this issue. For better or worse, Twitter campaigns do seem to be somewhat effective against the PR machines of big businesses, as sooner or later someone important at the business often hears about them and starts damage limitation.
But they want my Credit Card + Bank Account No + Cellphone no. This is a link that was in the email. My first instinct was that this was a phishing email. Then when the link appeared genuine, I guessed its their way to discourage me from unsubscribing.
"I guessed its their way to discourage me from unsubscribing."
This is likely to be a new internet monetization scheme... Go ahead, mark this as spam, you'll never get another water utility bill again. To save money on your water bill, we send you these marketing messages every day.
One of the great advantages of third world countries - good education is cheap. A student at a top rated engineering school (iit/nit) in India pays less than ~$2k/year in tution, and about ~$200/month in other expenses. Sure, even this is not affordable to everyone without loans, but the salaries these people draw make the ROI tremendous. No wonder these schools are so hard to get into.
Now I feel quite stupid that I got pretty lost and overwhelmed in the Moscow Subway System when using it the first time. I had a printout of the map, don't speak/read/understand the language and had no internet connection. I think the dogs win this one.
