Startup Opportunities, 2nd Edition

Foreword

“Dear Chris. I have an idea that will revolutionize a $34 billion industry . . .”

Do you know what that is? An email I will never open. No matter how elegant the prose that follows, I see a snippet like that in Gmail and immediately hit Archive.

Why? As you’ve heard me say for years, “Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.”

At some point, each of us has had that moment where we say, “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . . ?” Every single human being is capable of churning those out. In fact, I am certain some of you once thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could push a button and have a car and driver show up?” “Wouldn’t it be cool if people could rent out their houses for just a couple days at a time?” “Wouldn’t it be cool if there were an API for payments?” “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could make phone calls and text into your app by using just a little bit of HTML?”

You came up with those ideas, so why aren’t you a billionaire founder on the cover of a magazine? You even bought the endearingly vowel-free domain name, so why aren’t you going public?

Because all the value, all the magic, all the accomplishment, and everything else that matters in entrepreneurship comes in the grueling months and years following the “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . . ?” question.

Since I started making seed investments in 2007, I have been obsessively focused on founders. I spend tons of time with them and go deep in the areas I know well. I never worked on Wall Street or at P&G, and I suck at Excel. ...