[NSX2]

Uh ... not sure what business plans your talking about, but I would take the worst business plan any VC gets and wager that more people would pay money for whatever it describes, however poorly, then stuff that most programmers put up on the web with a "me and all my programmer friends think it's cool, so give me your money, how about it?" approach ...

[pg]

When Greg Mcadoo of Sequoia spoke at YC last week he said that Sequoia looked for startups founded by people solving problems they themselves faced.

[NSX2]

Good for him.

I'm sure he, like all VCs everywhere, says exactly what he means and would never tell an audience of prospective entrepreneurs what they want to hear just so he doesn't narrow his own investment options in the future.

Not sure what a speach on venture capital funding has to do with creating a successful business based on convincing customers to hand you their money, but I digress ...

Let's say a "business" is defined as "getting a venture capitalist to write you a check."

Try to get him to follow through with cold, hard cash for for, say, a problem you face that nobody else cares about, let alone cares enough to pay for.

For example, go call him up and tell him, "I have this problem: there's this annoying poster on Hacker News called "NSX2" and rather than manually respond to posts he puts up that I disagree with, or, for that matter, rather than respond to any such posters, in a flash of inspiration I created this superb program that summarizes all the key points of my essays into a set of 79, prioritizes their uses as responses, and anticipates what annoying posters are most likely to say based on empirical data I've collected since starting Hacker News and matches their anticipated annoying posts with a point in one of my essays that has the most statistical probability to express what I disagree with and how. Fund me."

Please let me know how that works out for you.

[mixmax]

"Not sure what a speach on venture capital funding has to do with creating a successful business based on convincing customers to hand you their money, but I digress ..."

VC's are an integral part of the setup for many startups that go on to become successful businesses. The list includes Google, Cisco, Ebay, and almost all other big tech companies.

[NSX2]

Perhaps you're aware that these days VCs are exponentially more likely to invest in you if you have paying customers than if you have a solution you think is interesting but nobody else agrees with you enough to pay you for it.

And I think Ebay was actually making money and showing a clear proof of concept before it got funding. Google began during a period of collective insanity; I doubt they'd be able to raise a penny with a similar starting proposition today.

Cisco I have no idea about.

But as for "all others", not sure what you mean but Microsoft, for example, was making money as a private company before getting VC to help with the IPO process, and the terms they got investment on a clear indication of their cash-based negotiating leverage at the time.

Oracle if memory of my reading serves correctly was making money first.

SAP had paying customers ...

When you say, "almost all other big tech companies" started off with VC as a prerequisite, can you specify what you had in mind?

[mixmax]

What I mean is that not all products can be developd using only your own money, and even less can be grown to successful business without taking in money from investors. This is a normal procedure in many startups, where the goal is to grow fast. This requires money, and this money comes from investors.

And if the best search engine we had today was Altavista I don't think it would be a problem for Google to raise money today.

[paul]

That would be a pretty cool product if it actually worked -- it could be used to automate a lot of customer support. I'd invest.

[NSX2]

I'm pretty sure PG could build such a thing. You have my blessing. If it works out for you guys you can make even by hooking me up with some programmers.