It’s been a while since my last post. Lots to report but
notably the Fall 2014 Business Concept Competition is rounding into shape.
First round entries, in the form of one-two page abstracts, are due Thursday
October 30. The Finals are slated for Thursday November 13, with the winner
automatically qualifying for the second annual Future Four in the springtime. Rules
and an abstract submission guideline are available at the Center website.
This long delayed post is also a great chance to announce
that soon after Thanksgiving, the Center will be hosting a round of presentations
for funding through our Accelerator Fund. For those of you unfamiliar with the
Fund, it is a seed funding mechanism for students to help get their business
off the ground. Chico State is one of the few universities in the country with
ample money available for undergraduates.
The biannual Business Concept Competition, of course, is the
Center’s signature event. Past winners have included Upper Park Designs, Bizness Apps and last year’s
two winners: Soul id and Outdoor Ally (website
coming soon). Each of these businesses later
received funding through the Accelerator Fund. You could be next! Go here for
the Accelerator Fund Application.
Last, a final word on seed funding from Sam Altman, who is the
president of Y Combinator, one of the world’s leading incubators. Altman has a
fascinating take on the initial seed round of funding; here are some excerpts
from a recent blog post.
For
all of the really good seed investments I’ve made, other investors I respected
thought they were bad ideas. Stripe started before it was cool for very
young founders to take on very established industries, and the prevailing
thoughts from people I asked about were that it was never going to work (the
initial plan was to be a bank) because Patrick knew nothing about the
industry. Teespring got passed on by most investors, saying “It’s just a
t-shirt company.”
Right
before I invested in Zenefits, a prominent investor told me I didn’t understand
the health insurance market at all and that the company was unlikely to survive
another 3 months. When I made this investment, the company was worried
about imminently running out of cash. I almost got talked out of
investing by the other investor.
Great companies often look like bad
ideas at the beginning—at a minimum, if it looks great, the seed round is
likely to be overpriced, and there are likely to be a lot of other people
starting similar companies. But even when I attempt to adjust for price,
the hot-round investments still have underperformed.
This is NOT to imply I
think you should come to the CSUC Accelerator Fund with a bad idea, but rather
that you take the risk of at least trying out your idea -- good, bad, ugly or
just plain weird -- in the crucible of the Business Concept Competition. Who
knows, it could turn out to be a bad idea like these successful Y Combinator graduates:
Reddit, Airbnb and Dropbox.