> Ballpark, good users will visit my Web site solution a few times a week, and from simple arithmetic the company should relatively soon be worth ballpark $1 T.
VCs almost certainly hear this kind of claim multiple times a week and are thoroughly experienced in how frequently this turns out to be true (practically zero) - hence without some kind of demonstration or hook they can anchor themselves to, it's going to go straight in the bin.
Then the question is how the heck to solve the problem, and why I have a solution and no one else does. The answer there is my original applied math. Sorry 'bout that, but I'm fully capable of doing such math, have done good original math back to high school, and have a Ph.D. from a world class research university and peer-reviewed publications as evidence. For the e-mail I sent SUSA, I included a PDF of one of my papers that clearly shows good math ability; I included the PDF and also the reference to the paper on the shelves of the research libraries. The journal for the paper? Information Sciences, an Elsevier journal. Fully serious stuff.
Exceptionally good projects are what the VCs need, e.g., "another Google", and that's what I write them about.
To take my claims seriously, sure, the VCs and I would have to communicate further. E.g., one poster here says that my pitch should be about five words on one, line, short enough to be just the subject line of an e-mail. I've done that, too, e.g.,
$1 T Quickly
or some such with the e-mail body with an elevator pitch of just 2-3 sentences. That gets ignored, too.
IMHO, a lesson for HN people if they want is what I did or didn't write is just irrelevant. Instead, nearly no VC will ever read an unsolicited e-mail. They all go "straight to the bin".
For the really solid evidence of "demonstration or hook," that would be when I have $2 million a month in revenue, right? Then they can give me a call, and I will look up when I wrote them and told them what I was doing that they ignored. So, I'm at $2 million a month, and they want to buy 30% of my company for a seed round of $1 million? And I should be thrilled by that?
> VCs almost certainly hear this kind of claim multiple times a week and are thoroughly experienced in how frequently this turns out to be true (practically zero)
Right. So, they'd be a lot happier if I projected only 1 million good users instead of 1 billion, a company worth $1 B instead of $1 T? I'd be just the same: Again, once again, the VCs ignore unsolicited e-mail messages, no matter how short, long, rough, polished, etc. The VCs believe that any entrepreneur who sends anything to info@BigVC.com is a fool. Maybe so. But, who is the fool, the entrepreneur or the VC who invites entrepreneurs to send to a black hole?
E.g., as elsewhere in this thread, SUSA claims to "seek out" good startups. Well, they don't "seek" very far if they ignore their e-mail.
The US is awash in people and institutions that can do really accurate evaluations of projects described just on paper. In fact, they insist on descriptions on paper, and projects that pass such evaluations are high payoff and low risk. Examples include GPS, Keyhole, the H-bomb, stealth, and much more. High end engineering projects are done that way -- on paper. There is hardly a single VC in the country qualified to evaluate such papers. For the organizations, e.g., NSF, DARPA, ONR, Army Durham, Air Force Cambridge, CIA, NSA, etc. hardly a single VC in the country is qualified for such a job. The core technology comes from the best US research universities, and hardly a single VC in the country is qualified for a faculty slot at such a place. For commercial work, the IBM Watson lab is comparable, and I've been a research scientist there on an AI project, wrote and gave a paper at an AAAI IAAI conference at Stanford, etc. There's hardly a single VC in the country qualified to do that.
There are not very many projects good enough to be "another Google", and the ones that are the VCs can't evaluate.
So, I have a lesson for HN readers: The VCs are not good partners in a technology project and won't read their e-mail. For warm introductions, they don't know the right people.
How? You haven't given them anything to -verify-! All you've done is say "It'll be worth $1T because lots of people will give me lots of money. Trust me."
> it is obvious that the problem is pressing to nearly every Internet user in the world
I should imagine the VCs hear that every week too.
> $1 T Quickly
Apple is the world's most valuable company (worth ~$830bn). No-one seeing your claim that your company will be worth more than Apple "quickly" will take it seriously. There just isn't any path for that to happen in reality. Sorry.
Sure there is. I can give a good argument, with solid, original applied math in PDF from Knuth's TeX (not LaTeX) and with running code.
Even if I'm wrong, or get run over by a truck tomorrow, for you to be correct means that forever no company will achieve my claim. Forever is a long time!
As I give a good explaination, soon it gets totally obvious. I wouldn't be doing this project or saying this otherwise.
Do lots of people see the opportunity? Nope. With a little explanation, everyone on HN will see the problem right away. In a sense, they see the problem now. But they ignore or reject the problem because, like death and taxes, they see no solution. Like you, you see no possibility. Even if I blurt out the problem here on HN, essentially no one will see the possibility of a solution. So, now, when they see the problem, since they see no possibility of a solution, they ignore the problem.
But the solution is not trivial. I don't see a solution without my applied math. The core of the math is some solid, significant theorems and proofs. The main prerequisites are some advanced pure math topics. The prerequisites are totally, fully, beautifully written up and on the shelves of the research libraries, but the material is not popular in the US. Fewer than 10% of US math profs know this material. Some of what that material says is amazing, and nearly no one would think of it on their own -- apparently no one ever has. I got the material from a prof a star student of a prof at Princeton, and I got it from some books by some star students of a prof at Berkeley. It's solid stuff.
For the $1 T, see some of my other posts to this thread. How to do that? First, start with the idea that essentially everyone on the Internet has the problem and currently it is solved at best poorly. That there could be such a problem is not surprising -- the Internet doesn't yet do everything people want! You will see this problem and how people have ignored it as I announce my beta test on HN. The alpha test is in progress now.
For a little more, so, as you know, there are ballpark 3 billion people on the Internet, if we include smartphones, which for my solution we should. But for good ad rates, I intend to count only users in the more developed countries. There my gross, ballpark figure of number of users is, in round numbers, 1 billion. If you have a better number, then let me know.
Okay, when you see the problem and my solution, you will maybe willing to swallow that, early on users will come to my Web site once a month, then, after some weeks, once a week, then as they start to really like the results, see how to use them in their life, in their family, with friends, for work, etc., they may come to my site, rough, guess, ballpark, average 3 times a week.
Really, that's about enough for $1 T: If can get 1 billion people to come to a Web site 3 times a week for nearly anything, should be able to monetize that to biggie numbers. Add in some more ballpark details, and get to $1 T.
For some more details and the actual arithmetic, see
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15287990
> > it is obvious that the problem is pressing to nearly every Internet user in the world
> I should imagine the VCs hear that every week too.
"Hearing" it is not the point. A claim, like essentially all significant claims, is worthless. In math terms, that's just the statement of the theorem. To be taken seriously, there must follow a proof. Same in law, finance, engineering, etc. -- need evidence.
Lots of people here at HN have advised me to get my descriptions of my project much shorter, including down to just a few words on just one line. In that case, the description is just, say,
$1 T Quickly
So, that omits all the evidence. Some people want evidence; some people want just the bottom line. IMHO, VCs mostly want a product they can play with or better, still, traction, in particular revenue, better still, earnings, and for all of those, significantly high and growing rapidly.
An entrepreneur who starts has none of those. So, there should be ways to know long before earnings significantly high and growing rapidly. And, in nearly all of applied science and engineering, there is. For just one example, there is GPS: It was funded long before the satellites were on the rockets and on their way into orbit. It was funded off paper, just paper. And, given the paper, the project was, really, low risk.
I've explained my project to VCs. They don't want to read. I can explain on paper in lots of detail, but they won't read it. Indeed, they won't read anything from a guy like me because they won't read unsolicited e-mail.
The bottom line of this situation is that by the time I have what the VCs want to write a check, I will no longer need, want, or accept their check. I can do this because I'm a sole, solo founder with tiny burn rate, opex, and capex so that any revenue of $10,000 a month or more gives me and my project all I should need to go for the $1 T.
My main point here was to respond to the OP and warn HN readers.
-Shakespeare
