May 07
23
Navigating The Capitalist Rapids
Startups are like downhill skiing. Fast, fun, dangerous…. there are heaps of epithets. Lots of adrenaline, lots of heartache, and – if you get it right – hugely profitable….
And its hard to play without playing close to the edge. Because if you really believe in what you are doing you have to have the flexibility to be able to follow your dream. I am sure you know what I mean. It means that even in a world that is supposedly awash with cash, you have to be careful about whose you take… We have been really fortunate so far with Vquence, to not only have some really fine and enthusiastic angels, but to have a bunch of people around the company who are tremendously generous with their time…
Take Dan Pitt for instance. He is on the advisory board of Vquence and is unbelievably dedicated to helping make the company work. He has great engineering skills (was with Nortel and other corporates, then was Dean of Engineering at U Santa Clara); he has a great rolodex; and he has also invested in the company. What is there not to love about that! A cheer leader who is also prepared to write cheques.
Then there is Roger Buckeridge. He has been intimately involved in the company from the beginning as a participant in Information City Australia, a company that provides very early stage capital. They supplied the initial funding for the idea behind Vquence. But the money is nothing compared with the time that he has contributed to give Silvia Pfeiffer and I really valuable insights into how to avoid some of the mistakes that we would almost certainly have made without him.
Vquence is still very early stage in it evolution as a company, an idea, a vision. But without people like Dan and Roger cheering from the side lines it would be an impossibility for us to get to the point of releasing Alpha – due in the next couple of days!
And there are lots more… (to be continued).