[tinkerdol]

Thanks for the response!

Let's assume we want to dominate the market and not create a lifestyle business.

Isn't it a benefit of a more lean/bootstrapping style to be forced into finding a product people love faster (rather than burning money marketing the product)?

For instance, what about eBay as an example of a side project that really took off. Are such instances really anomalies?

[zxcvvcxz]

Well I think it's pretty standard for these types of companies to start as a small project, as a founder's inkling of something people would want. It's not like millions of VC money is being raised before that even happens. Except for some cases of stupidity, like Color or Clinkle; those are the anomalies IMO.

What we're discussing is where to take the venture/project after figuring out, "Holy shit, there are probably millions willing to pay money for this, we've hit gold." Most ventures don't have that moment - or even worse, miss that realization if it's true.

So the smart ones start arming up -- getting those big VC dollars to grow the venture as fast as possible before someone else realizes what they've done and tries to do the same. I can pretty much guarantee you there existed direct AirBnB competitors around 2010 or so. But how many of these got funded by Sequoia? How many had a global vision they had to make happen? This money, and the strong status signal of investor confidence, attracted talent, which let them continue building and outpace all of their competitors whom we've never even heard of.

Anyways, that's what I've observed in a nutshell: hit on something big with experiments at a small scale, and then fund like there's no tomorrow. Because for all but one of these type of companies, there isn't.