Curioso, fui à procura do último livro do John Mullins referido na entrevista.
Encontrei "The Customer-Funded Business: Start, Finance, or Grow Your Company with Your Customers’ Cash". Um festival de blasfémias, tal o distanciamento face à cultura mainstream acerca das startups e do empreendedorismo, transformada num concurso de beleza para cativar investidores e financiadores em detrimento da cativação de clientes.
Esta manhã, entre as 7h30 e as 8h30 tive a oportunidade de ler o primeiro e o oitavo capítulos:
"I believe raising equity at the outset of a new venture’s journey is, at least most of the time, an exceedingly bad idea—for both entrepreneurs and investors alike.Não consigo deixar de pensar que o entrevistado, ao recomendar o livro de Mullins o fez com um sorriso maroto.
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[Moi ici: Segue-se um argumento que há anos uso no Twitter, sobre o tema] waiting to raise capital forces the entrepreneur’s atten- tion toward his or her customers, where it should be in the first place.
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making do with the probably modest amounts of cash your customers will give you enforces frugality, rather than waste. Having too much money can make you stupid and lets you ignore your customer! Having less money will make you smarter, and will force you to run your business better, too.
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focusing your efforts to raise cash from customers who are willing and eager to buy from your yet-unproven com- pany is likely to mercifully put to rest a half-baked or not- quite-right idea that requires more development—a pivot, in today’s entrepreneurial lexicon—in order to hit the mark.
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“We think that you shouldn’t start with the assumption that you need to raise money . . . Huge companies have been created with little or no outside investment.”
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- Raising capital demands a lot of time and energy, distracting entrepreneurs from building the actual business.
- Raising capital too early means pitching the merit of the business idea to potential investors, rather than proving its merit among customers in the marketplace."
