ReviewMe: GoBigNetwork.com
January 4th, 2007 • Business, Entrepreneurship + Startups
Continuing the thoughts from my posting about diversifying revenue generation, I signed up to be a paid reviewer for ReviewMe. The following is a paid review for ReviewMe. To ensure that this review is not just about getting search engine links, I’m not directly linking to the reviewed site. If you want to visit the site, just copy and past the URL into your location bar.
GoBigNetwork.com (GBN from here out) targets entrepreneurs seeking financing and investors seeking new investments. The goal is to take both sides of the equation and more efficiently match funding seekers and funding providers. In theory, this is something that needs to happen so that new entrepreneurs can more efficiently find capital and then shift their focus back to what is most important - building their business. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is the right answer.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, raising startup capital isn’t about who you know, it’s about how you know them and your history. Investors and (especially) venture capitalists get a ridiculous number of business pitches and plans daily/weekly/monthly. If they were to attempt to read even a few pages from each plan, they wouldn’t have much (if any) time to do anything else. So naturally, they prioritize. Entrepreneurs and business plans referred by others who have, in the past, been good filters for garbage ideas float to the top of the pile. Everything else gets looked at if the investor has time. If he/she doesn’t have time, the “other” stack gets dumped.
Personally, I think sites like LinkedIn are much better for accessing folks that you don’t know. But the problem, like GBN states, is that you don’t know who you don’t know. Starting a company is all about your hustle/enthusiasm - you have to hustle for customers, partners, and investors. If you don’t have the ability to network and find investors, how are you going to find the people who will actually make your business successful?
Of course, this review is fully with my mindset being on Internet/technology businesses. Looking at the site, a lot of the funding requests are for more “traditional” businesses - real estate, doctors offices, sports entertainment, etc. Perhaps what GBN is doing works for these types of businesses. I wouldn’t know the funding issues for these businesses since I’ve only started an Internet technology company.
Overall, the site itself is fairly intuitive and the idea makes sense. I just don’t think it’ll work.
I may have shot myself in the foot for getting these paid reviews in the future, but I’m not about to say nice things about someone/something if I don’t believe in it. I’ll update this posting if and when I get paid for it.
6 Responses (Add Your Comment)
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It’s funny - I had the same initial thoughts.
I’ve been shocked and pleasantly surprised at how wide the market for funding really has become on-line. I don’t think the Internet is really limited to the tech-savvy any longer (MySpace has 110 million users).
We get all kinds of entrepreneurs on the site and it’s refreshing to see how many types of businesses are being actively capitalized.
As a tech guy myself, it took a while to break out of this mindset, and I’m still trying to get used to it.
Sanjay - most of the people that I spoke to when I was thinking through Go BIG (I’m the Founder) were tech guys like you and I. They were always thinking of funding in terms of going to Sand Hill and pitching a new idea.
But the reality is that tech startups represent a very small number of the new companies that get started (550,000 each month in the U.S.). The goal for Go BIG is to make investment dollars available to all types of deals, not just the tech ones.
Tech circles are inherently nepotistic - so it’s a lot easier to find investors through friends. But with the other 99% of businesses getting started, there are rarely such circles.
There are also a lot of other considerations when starting a company that go beyond funding. For example, earlier this year a friend of mine needed to find someone who had Konfabulator skills and would do a project for equity. Within an hour he had 3 guys (from Go BIG) that were able to help him out under those conditions.
What we’re trying to do is more than just help find funding - we’re trying to help people find the resources they need to start companies. Go BIG is my 9th startup, so I can say first hand that the importance of connecting to resources of all types is paramount to a startup.
Thanks for the review.