Avocode at 500 Startups; Week #10: Paradox
Last week can be summed up in only two Missions, which are surprisingly contradicting with each other.
Mission #1:
“Don’t be alone.”
Earlier I sketched you out the atmosphere at the office. It used to be like the Moon. No people. Nada. Zilch.
At first, we thought it’s great: at least we can focus on work. But soon, we realized it’s just not right. All of these people came here to learn something, right? So why are they not here?
When suddenly, on Wednesday they all started coming back. It turned out that from this week on we are supposed to be preparing for Demo Day (this big presentation for investors at the beginning of August which will be streamed over TechCrunch or something). To kick this off, the 500 staff invited the founding father of 500 Startups, Dave McClure to share his story during the weekly Fireside chat on Wednesday. Plus there was free pizza.
Here are some notes from his talk:
- Dave swears a lot, quite likely it’s a big part of his personal brand. He’s still a great speaker and judging from his portfolio a pretty successful (or lucky) businessman.
- He worked at PayPal with all of its “Mafia” as a Marketing Director, though he doesn’t claim any of the PayPals success since as he says: “I came in pretty late”.
- He founded 500 Startups as a scalable organization which he hopes will grow to the extent that it will be advising and working with governments when it comes to startup funding.
- Venture Capital sector is super tiny in comparison to Private Equity.
- 95% of this Batch startups (and any Batch for that matter) are going to fail. Dooh.
- Dave recommend us to make friends in our Batch, so if our company fails we can go work for them. #betterbecomefriendswithAvocode
- If 10% of 500 Startups get acquired or exit nicely (a couple of millions, nothing crazy), the accelerators business is still doing pretty good.
- You can have a bite of Dave’s wisdom here.
I sense that only a few people in the Valley care about cause, peoples lives, joy or other meaningless things. In other words, success in the Valley is measured by money. Deal with it (I’m still in the process).
Movie Night
It got me too. I thought: finally some Lord of the Rings bing watching. Nope. As I mentioned earlier, it’s the demo-day-preparation period. So we all gathered in the lobby and watched the previous startups’ Demo Day 2min pitches for two hours. Take a look at some of them here.
Some of the strategic key points from the movie night:
- Don’t waste time with your product. Hook the investors with your traction numbers and then show it to them once they come talk to you after the presentation. Hm, sneaky.
- Show that you (and your team) know what you’re doing and that you’ve been doing it for a long time.
And I would add: Make sure your product is actually solving a problem, that the need for it is real. If you are making the problem up, you’re not only bulshitting the investors but most of all yourself.
Big Game
When people ask you here: “are you going to the big game?”, you should take those words by their most definitive meaning. And this time it was a “Big Game of Giants”. That’s right. Not many things can be bigger actually.
As a part of 500 we got free tickets for the baseball game of San Francisco Giants vs. Arizona Diamondbacks at the AT&T Park on Friday.
Baseball is great. Though I didn’t understand its rules at all (the game virtually stops every minute after someone throws a ball and another person catches it), I had a great time.
It turns out that this “social event” can take more than three hours. So even when the Giants crushed the Diamondbacks (not only because they have a cooler name) I managed to crush a few beers with the Brazilians and Dougie, had a few interesting chats, met some new people and most of all enjoy the heck out the Bay view.
Lands End
After a long Friday evening in the city, me and Bolek crashed (!) at Alison’s new place in San Francisco. This place rocks, they have an industrial tin kitchen, aristocratic table that could serve for the entire Avocode team, garage painted with graffiti, and a cat which is actually nice to people.
The next day Alison planned for us an amazing trip. We ubered to the edge of the city and then walked about 8 miles down the Land End trail all the way to the Sutro Baths which burned in 1966 and are now in ruins. It was so refreshing to just sit on the ground and watch the sea, Karl the Fog above the Golden Gate, deadly rocks and cliffs. Thanks Alison! Here is some of our Saturday chill walk. 👇🏼
Mission#2
“Be alone.”
It’s more than marriage. Here we do everything together. We sleep in the same room, eat together, play ping pong, watch movies, work, party. We even have just one lock for two bikes so wherever we bike we have to go exactly together.
No hard feelings, we are colleagues, we are friends, but we both just need a little break from this cabin fever. We planned a separate Saturday — I was supposed to go biking and Bolek shopping in SF. The fate had a different plan for us and even on Saturday we were together in San Francisco.
On Sunday I finally found exit.
We’ve been here for two months and the only notion of the nature around Mountain View I had, was from behind an office window. So I took my Blue Lightning (i.e. bike) and went for a ride to the Bay.
The trails here are amazing. Sometimes I even felt like in Vienna or Amsterdam. Google and the City of Mountain View is to thank for.
Speaking of Google, after riding my bike for about 15 minutes out of our apartment I noticed various bright colors shining through the trees. Yes, without any previous planning, my trail was leading through the Googleplex.
I did a few circles in between Google buildings and finally headed out to the sea. I found a little empty bench at the Bay and just watched the nature reservoir birds. Peaceful. Alone. Satisfied.
As I biked further I noticed a fenced off area with gigantic building. After reading a few signs it stroke me: those buildings shelter space ships that are being built and tested here. I was riding around the National Aeronautic and Space Station Research Laboratories.
Just when I though my little bike ride cannot get any more “Sillicon Valley” I met the Linkedin HQ.
Ok. Time to go back.
I arrived filled with positive energy, ready to have a dinner.
Together.
Matt out. 🎤💥
