Hey Sunir, those are all excellent points you make. Let me see if I can clarify what I was initially going for on my initial rant.
The mistake I made in our early days, and one that I still see amongst early-stage entrepreneurs (of course always easy to see in hindsight!) is that they put too much weight in how much somebody else can help their venture, particularly in those embryonic stages.
Let me pick on myself here, which is pretty easy to do. I had a lot of misconceptions about what made startups successful. I thought that building a great advisory board could take you to the promised land. I thought finding the right angel/VC could do it.
Which goes back to #1 that you point out above - the sell side - in the very early stages of Chrometa, my sell side value prop was not strong enough. You hit the nail on the head.
Hence, I wasted a lot of time trying to "sell" potential partners and such - when I should have been focused internally. These people were kind enough to take a meeting, and kind enough to act interested - that wasn't their fault, it was mine.
I got a little fired up here - partners are of course important. What I learned early on perhaps is don't get your hopes up on partnering before you've got your own house in order.
The mistake I made in our early days, and one that I still see amongst early-stage entrepreneurs (of course always easy to see in hindsight!) is that they put too much weight in how much somebody else can help their venture, particularly in those embryonic stages.
Let me pick on myself here, which is pretty easy to do. I had a lot of misconceptions about what made startups successful. I thought that building a great advisory board could take you to the promised land. I thought finding the right angel/VC could do it.
Which goes back to #1 that you point out above - the sell side - in the very early stages of Chrometa, my sell side value prop was not strong enough. You hit the nail on the head.
Hence, I wasted a lot of time trying to "sell" potential partners and such - when I should have been focused internally. These people were kind enough to take a meeting, and kind enough to act interested - that wasn't their fault, it was mine.
I got a little fired up here - partners are of course important. What I learned early on perhaps is don't get your hopes up on partnering before you've got your own house in order.