awesome post...same applies for all relationships...founder, marriage...important to have the difficult conversations upfront, rather than find out way later...and totally agree, if you're doing anything worth doing (whether it's starting a company or starting a relationship), if it's to get to a meaningful point, there will be conflict. avoiding conflict is not the goal, but rather understanding how to navigate that conflict and arrive at a place where you are stronger and better for it is the secret to maintaining a healthy team or interpersonal dynamic. but it's far easier to avoid the conversation, cause it's not always easy, and if you avoid it, there's the small chance that you can be lucky enough to never have that conversation. but you might as well go buy lotto tickets. having the tough conversations upfront means that you can sort through things when you have cool heads, when you haven't gone and formed a legal entity together and when you have other employees that are depending on you. it's tough, but the right thing to do. kudos joyce on a fantastic post!!
Good article, but much more applicable for enterprise products vs. consumer. The problem VCs have is that most of the time they need to figure out patterns by which to determine the potential of an early stage company, but most of the great companies don't fall into any pattern. Only after the fact, when looking back, can you see a pattern (other than founders, which is why they put such an emphasis on team, cause team does matter and team is more easy to recognize than product fit). By this criteria, twitter would be vitamin, facebook would be (be honest, has it been a burning desire for you to connect with long lost friends or have a social graph? not until you had it did you realize you needed it). So if your product fails these criteria, it's not the end of the world. But it is useful especially for products targeting enterprise customers.