‘Unknown’ founders – should we be getting out there with audience, or investors?

AAnonymous ·June 5, 2014 ·6 answers

We believe we have a great product, great idea and testing with our audience shows us it could work. We (being two of us) have enough money to last for the next six months to see if we can get good traction. We do not have tech backgrounds, or contacts in the tech community in London, or elsewhere, and have not been creating them as we have been focusing on the product and audience. However, we can’t help feeling that we should be talking to investors/tech community now, to help us scale quicker.

Should we launch our Beta, get traction and then approach investors six months in, or should we be thinking about this right now. If you are an ‘unknown’ do you need to prove yourself?

6 answers from the community

AAnonymous· Jun 5, 2014

The best way for an unknown to prove themselves is to become known (aka traction). If you have spare cycles, going to meetups and reaching out to luminaries/investors etc could be worth your while but you should focus your time on:

a) Getting your product done

b) Knowing your target customer

AAnonymous· Jun 5, 2014

Thank you for this, appreciate you responding and your thoughts are reassuring. We may feel like outsiders in the tech scene, but I suppose that also comes with advantages. Will get on with it!

AAnonymous· Jun 6, 2014

Are you in the UK or SF? Big difference in investors between the two.

AAnonymous· Jun 6, 2014

Original poster: Thank you, that's very helpful! Based in London and no contacts with investors in either here, or SF. However see start ups with similar scale ideas raise millions in SF, so not sure if we are a bit silly trying to get on with it on our own, with very little resources... However, agree on the traction.

AAnonymous· Jun 6, 2014

I'm london based too, general consensus is that investors are more risk averse here, harder to raise funds if you're startup newbies with no track record so demonstrable traction is essential.

UK Govt has made it so attractive for anyone with spare cash to angel invest there are a lot of moneyed fat wallets out there who will bring cash and little understanding, you'll need metrics that will keep them off your back as they pressure you for immediate ROI.

Good luck though!

AAnonymous· Jun 6, 2014

Thank you, that's v helpful.

‘Unknown’ founders – should we be getting out there with audience, or investors?

6 answers from the community

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