04 Apr Would you have invested in this guy’s startup (called “The Facebook”) based on his pitch?
Imagine for a minute that you can jump into the DeLorean and travel back to 2004. And once you are there you have this guy, called Mark Zuckerberg, doing a one-minute pitch about his product called “The Facebook”
Let’s highlight the key elements of “The Facebook” pitch:
– Question: How big do you think your product or your service is?
– Mark: It’s impossible to tell… (Adrian’s note: great answer). When we first launched, we were hoping for 400/500 people (Adrian’s note: now 1 billion daily active users on average).
– Question: What is “The Facebook” exactly?
– Mark: It’s an online directory that connects people through universities and colleges through their social networks.
Now let’s go back to the hypothetical scenario that you are back in 2004. Would you have trusted him? Would you have invested on “The Facebook”?
Think for a minute a “no” or a “yes” for an answer.
If “no”, right now you may feel the most stupid person on earth (or even worst). And if “yes” you are for sure right now a multi millionaire having an “x” share of a 275 BILLION dollars company (and growing).
Every time that I’m in front of a founder pitching his startup, I ask to myself: What if this guy/girl is the next Mark Zuckerberg? What if I say no? What if I say yes?
And this is the beauty of the startups’ ecosystem. No matter how many analysis and parameters you will put in the evaluation’s process, you’ll never know for sure if a startup will fail or will succeed. And whether you like it or not, there is a big component of “visceral intuition” that needs to be used to make your final decision.
To conclude: When we have a founder in front of us, we should always answer the journalist’s question at the beginning of this interview: Is this perhaps the next big thing? And then, based on our gut’s instinct, be fast and act accordingly.