“Good founders can get capital anywhere.”
I like both Pando and Erin Griffith, but I have to call out that sentence from an article the other day. It is one of those easy phrases that people trot out, but experienced founders know better.
*Famous* founders can get capital from many places. Not even anywhere.
Good founders struggle.
Fund raising is a pretty brutal process for most startups. I know countless brand-name startups that were down to bare life support before they managed to closed a round that bought them another day. Growth-mode startups in NYC like Birchbox and Sailthru had a much tougher time raising their first round than most people probably think.
Two reasons why I hate phrases like that:
1. it makes good entrepreneurs feel like shit. “Good founders can raise from anywhere? clearly I must not be a good founder.”
2. it misleads aspiring entrepreneurs about the true state of the industry, and drives misguided optimism about how hard and how long it will take to raise capital
I view Pando Daily as a generally-entrepreneur-friendly media source (unlike, say, Red Herring, which was firmly in the pockets of the venture capital world), and would like to see them think twice before writing statements like this.
Related 2010 post: The cold reality of first-time funding