Founders, if you can’t get to market (albeit slowly) with your founding team, you probably aren’t ready to start your business, let alone raise capital.
Earlier this week I spoke with a founder who is raising money for a medtech startup. They are a doctor with years of experience and my initial vibe was “woah, total founder/market fit!”
But only a few minutes into the conversation, it became clear that the startup is a marketing play, not a science/technology play. Yes, the market opportunity is huge, but the founder has no experience as a marketer. In fact, a primary use of proceeds is to hire an agency or employee to create the GTM strategy.
Straight up, if you were an investor, would you invest in a company where the founder(s) has no experience in the most critical area of the business?
Asking investors to trust that you’ll hire the right person is exceptionally hard right now. Your job as CEO is to assemble the critical knowledge IN ADVANCE of raising money.
What can founders do in a situation like this?
Communicate the vision and find someone to come on board before a capital raise. If you don’t think you have access to the relevant type of person, think hard about why that will change with a small investment. Hiring a vital early partner rarely happens with a job ad.
Most importantly, this post isn’t just about raising money. This is a post about launching any sort of business.
If you are a business person trying to start an AI company without deep software experience on your founding team, you’re implicitly saying that you view a core aspect of your startup as a fungible commodity. Good luck with that.
Again, if you can't launch your company with your founding team, you probably aren't ready to start executing. You can see why this is especially hard for solo founders.