Submission + - The Hacker's Guide to Investors
jdavidb writes: "Paul Graham writes today on what hackers should know about investors if they want to build a company that will attract funding.
Because most investors are a different species of people from founders, it's hard to know what they're thinking. If you're a hacker, the last time you had to deal with these guys was in high school. Maybe in college you walked past their fraternity on your way to the lab. But don't underestimate them. They're as expert in their world as you are in yours. What they're good at is reading people, and making deals work to their advantage. Think twice before you try to beat them at that.
If you're a hacker, here's a thought experiment you can run to understand why there are basically no hacker VCs: How would you like a job where you never got to make anything, but instead spent all your time listening to other people pitch (mostly terrible) projects, deciding whether to fund them, and sitting on their boards if you did? That would not be fun for most hackers. Hackers like to make things. This would be like being an administrator.
Investors always say what they really care about is the team. Actually what they care most about is your traffic, then what other investors think, then the team.
"