Andrew Goldner, co-founder of GrowthX, talks through whether founders should actually pursue venture capital. He breaks down lifestyle businesses versus VC-backed scaling, explains what GrowthX invests in (post-revenue B2B SaaS and marketplaces), and answers a founder worried about competing with a startup that already has 1 million users.
Before you get crackalackin' on trying to convince me about why you deserve it, spend time with your friends and your family and your partners talking about whether you want it. Because the behaviors of venture may not be congruent with how you want to live your life and how you want to build your company. Hi, I'm Andrew Goldberg. I'm one of the founders of GrowthX, and I'm here at Draper University. And if you want to be a great entrepreneur, I suggest coming here, Draper University.
So our competitor has 1 million users right now. Will GrowthX invest in us or a company like us with a competitor with already million users? We also have a better product with a better user interface and which can provide you better user experience.
Well, it's an easy question to answer. The answer is no. But let me be more helpful than that. Part of our— one of our core values, one of our 7 core values which you can find at growthx.com is transparency. We think it's really important. We don't think it's helping anybody by hiding behind a perceived set of knowledge or a fancy building or terms that are purposefully meant to obfuscate. We don't think it's helpful to the system to make you as an entrepreneur guess at what it is that we invest in or who we invest in. And so if you go to growthx.com and you choose startups to read about what's relevant to you, you'll see that we just fund post-revenue B2B SaaS marketplace startups where the founders have a need and interest to be helped with market development to complement their expertise of product development. So that's the answer. 2, what I would also say is, and again, this is also a whole other talk and I'm happy to come back, is about how do you raise capital? It's not— and by the way, it has everything to do with how you raise revenue. It's the same scientific method and process you follow. But my point here is, don't treat me like a transaction and I won't treat you like a transaction, right? How is it that we can be helpful? You don't know nearly enough about me and you don't know nearly enough about my partners and you don't know anything about the people whose money I'm spending, my investors. And if you don't know those things, you don't know how I or my money is going to behave. So how do you know that you want my money? Don't be naive and think just because you're an entrepreneur, you're entitled to have venture capital. Venture capital is just one type of asset class, and before you get crackalackin' on trying to convince me about why you deserve it, spend time with your friends and your family and your partners talking about whether you want it, because the behaviors of venture may not be congruent with how you want to live your life and how you want to build your company. And for those that are coming from around the world and relatively nascent startup ecosystems relative to Silicon Valley, This is really important. This is really important that you think about. Decide whether you want venture before you can decide whether you can raise venture. Venture is all about big, fast money, right? To me, an entrepreneur is someone who wants to work in their own store. They don't want to work in your store, period. That's an entrepreneur. And here in Silicon Valley, we own venture. Venture, but we don't own entrepreneurism. And I'm sorry that I have to apologize for Silicon Valley who has created a 4-letter dirty word out of lifestyle business. I disagree with that. Just because you want to work in your store and not someone else's store, you are an entrepreneur and you are not a second-class entrepreneur if you choose a lifestyle business because rather than wanting 13 stores in 6 countries in 18 months, maybe you want to spend time with your daughters or maybe you want to be active in your community, right? And so, don't let anybody in this town tell you that somehow you're below the first class because you don't want to go after something big and you don't want to go after something fast. And so, make sure you determine whether the people and what they're doing and the money they're spending are congruent with what you want to do. Okay? Hey, I'm Andrew Goldner. I'm the co-founder of GrowthX, and I'm just off the stage talking with the new cohort at Draper University. What an amazing audience, super international, super diverse, and a lot of great questions. That was one of the best audiences I've had here at Draper University.
