Paranoia and new entrepreneurs
August 29th, 2007 by Benjamin KuoI recently emailed out information about the Technology Council’s upcoming VentureNet event (www.venturenet.org), which is a great opportunity to get exposure for your company to venture capitalists, angel investors, and others in the community. Interestingly enough, one of the companies that I’d provided with information about the event treated my email with quite a bit of paranoia, asking on a public forum if “this is a scam”.
Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that “new” entrepreneurs–that is, people who haven’t built a business before, raised money, or worked much in a business role–tend to be fairly paranoid.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked (as a journalist) about signing an NDA — which absolutely no journalist, and no self-respecting venture capitalist–would ever do. I’ve had entrepreneurs ask for news coverage, but don’t want to release details on what their companies actually do in fear of someone else learning about it; companies asking us not to include news coverage on their firms; and other asking to have full “approval” control over what we write on them.
Successful entrepreneurs know that:
- You’re never going to get VC funding if you ask a VC for an NDA
- Journalists will write what they want, and they absolutely won’t let YOU drive their coverage.
- It’s not your idea, it’s your execution, and finally
- You’ve got to have a level of trust in human beings to succeed
Perhaps I’m just naive, but it seems to me that the bulk of people in the technology industry — at least here in Southern California — are honestly looking to help out new entrepreneurs and companies. For those with a vested interest in growing the community, they are willing to refer people to others, offer guidance and help, and nudge others along the path to funding and success. There might be some out there (though no one comes to mind) who are just in it to scam you out of money, but the community here is very, very supportive of new entrepreneurs.
