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0 pointsRestlessMind3y ago0 comments

Access to huge upfront principal/capital in order to build a talented team and compete against a Trillion dollar corp: gated on your connections.

A cushy exit when your ambitious plans fail: gated on your connections.

So the market is technically open but plebs do not have credentials to play at all. Or to quote someone, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."

Not a rap on Neeva team, btw. They did nothing wrong and kudos for tackling a big problem even if they failed at it.

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warthog3y ago· 1 in thread

I was also thinking in these terms. The reality is there is virtually no possibility of starting a startup, getting VC money and making a buck without connections in your customers or investors. This is especially true with VCs.

Kind of disappoints the romantic story but it is what it is

spacebanana73y ago

> virtually no possibility of starting a startup ... without connections in your customers or investors.

I feel this frustration is strongest with enterprise software which is usually the most capital intensive to build and requires a lot of trust to sell.

The number of people who get to make decisions about, for example, data warehousing services is already pretty small and the subset of those willing to be somebody's first customer is even smaller.

However, there are plenty of other startup opportunities outside of that space. Consumers, media people and developers are generally easier to chat with than CIOs and still need software to do what they want to do.

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