Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

Idea Pool

Do We Even Need VCs?

Mary Schmidt

Apr 18, 2012

Trex dino dead end sign I’ve written before about the dying traditional VC model. Dinosaurs wandering the earth demanding $100M companies, 10X return, 3-year business plans (complete with a carbon-dating analysis, thank yew), and pounds of spreadsheets. Could a “virus” finally kill them off for good?

And now this just in. Rejected By VCs, Pebble Watch Raises $3.8M on Kickstarter .

..Then he hit a roadblock. A big one. Migicovsky couldn’t raise more money. Few investors were interested in betting on a hardware startup, or dealing with the headaches that often come with manufacturing goods.So Migicovsky posted his watch on Kickstarter, a “crowd-funding” website where anyone can pledge money for creative projects that have yet to be completed.

26,000 people invested. Quickly. Small amounts. No flaming hoops. No endless meetings. No repetitive questions.

Viral funding - could it fit your lean start-up model? Hmmm…

Related posts from the archives:
Three Things Investors Won’t Tell You
Heard ‘Round the Investor Gathering

In Start-Up Sanity Checks

Comments

Peri Pakroo says:

Mon, April 23, 2012 - 10:54:56 pm

Yeah, I’ve always found it odd that the VC model gets so much attention and press (some days it seems that half my RSS feed is advice about, or from, VCs), when studies show only about 2% of start-ups get funded this way.

All the possibilities opened by crowdfunding, on the other hand, are truly exciting! I’m helping someone with their Kickstarter campaign at the moment…learning the ropes as I go and it’s really inspiring.

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