some thoughts on Startup.com

Just finished watching Startup.com, a documentary about an internet startup company that failed during the dot com era. One of their co-founders came to give a talk to our New Ventures class a few weeks ago, sharing some of the lessons learned from their venture. While this venture was launched nearly 10 years ago, when it was relatively easy to get venture capital funding, I feel that it is still very relevant to the current times, even when funding is difficult to come by. One of the key mistakes the team made was in overemphasizing the importance of raising funds over strategy and building the company. They viewed their investors as their customers, when their customers really were the government and those who got parking tickets. The guest speaker also noted that they should’ve brought in more experienced people earlier on, who knew how to manage and had some experience in the public/government sector. The personality dynamics as depicted in the documentary was rather interesting too and I kept thinking how difficult it is to find good partners that would function well, even when the going gets tough? How to manage the big ego’s?