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Alex and I were talking about our recruiting strategy over the weekend, which obviously will only happen if we raise our next round of financing.  He sent me these two e-mails...

"I'm thinking longer term though, we're going to raise this money, it's not an option or a question, this company is too good to not continue, I will do whatever it fucking takes."

Then...

"heh, got a little worked up there. ahem. I am prepared to assist, sir, to ensure that this company remains viable, by whatever means necessary, as I believe in it strongly  ;) "

This is why I think it's a bit silly when people post on message boards looking for a partner without much information at all.  You gotta get someone totally psyched about what you're up to, and to me, that means a lot of transparency.  Without insight into why what you're doing is so special, how is anyone going to get this crazy psyched about the company?

In Alex's case, he's psyched because not only is the company just as much mine financially as it is his, but so's the product.  I didn't come to him after all the wireframes were done and say, "Here, build this."  He joined when all I knew I wanted to do was help people figure out what they wanted to do--to solve one of the biggest problems people have in life.  We whiteboarded and explored and built the feature set together, collaboratively. 

Don't expect someone else to get really psyched about building your product.

Yesterday, I had an amazing call with a guy with thirty years experience in the recruiting market.  For years, he had a vision of a service doing exactly the kind of things we plan to do with Path 101--not necessarily on the helping people figure out what they want to do side, but on the data-centric, getting to know candidates better side.  We saw completely eye to eye on how badly this market needs to do more than figure out eighty different ways to smash a resume and a job post together, or mindlessly connect people without adding intelligence to the process.  What he also believed in, which we do strongly, was that it needed to be a service people opt-in to--something that provides value to the user every step of the way, encouraging them to participate more and submit more information about themselves. 

What was amazing was that this guy went the distance in terms of describing the power of the vision--referring to it as "one of those four or five big stories..."--while at the same time, he realized that we needed to take small steps to get there, but that directionally we were in the right place.  At one point, the grokking was so intense, we had to pull back and say, "Hey, we need to pull back and let this sink in... let's talk next week." 

While I absolutely believe Path 101 can be one of those companies, there's never been a purpose to describe it as such to anyone like that, particularly investors.  In fact, going through the fundraising process actually forces you into quite the opposite mode of thinking.  Your grand vision starts slowly dying a death by a thousand cuts.  They start nitpicking on features they dislike, or question how long it will take before you drive revenues, or they want to know how are you going to get people to come to the site.  (Which is the most ridiculous question of all time, because every single company has the same answer--SEO, social media tools, PR, or some kind of partnership...and maybe some traffic purchasing... what other traffic is there?  Doesn't everyone say the same thing?)   

Eventually, you find yourself thinking smaller--that if you can't find anyone to believe your big world-changing vision, you try to convince people of small things--how you just want to get to the next product step, how you can pull down some low hanging fruit revenue, etc.  God forbid you should look out further than your next financing in your plan--well don't bother because who's going to believe you, right?

Meanwhile, I was at a panel discussion with four VC's and some of them were talking about "Web 2.0" deals and how they need to do extra diligence on the mindset of the entrepreneur because they need to make sure they're in it to build a big company and don't want the quick flip.  Well, how many game changing companies out there had a clear path to the world changing vision at the point of their angel round? 

Perhaps the reason why so many Web 2.0 companies are small ideas and quick flips is because we've never had so much transparency into the VC mindset as we have now, and what entrepreneurs are hearing isn't "Think big", but "What can you show me now?"  Well, big takes time, and small can be built on Ruby-on-Rails this weekend... and don't expect small to resist a $30 million sale to a media company.   Thus far, no new potential investor has flat out asked me how Path 101 changes the world, and only one has even come close to turning the conversation into how big this gets. 

del.icio.us, for example, was a company where lots of people scratched their heads and said, "Bookmarking?  I don't get it," while at the same time, others, like those of us at Union Square Ventures, thought that people-powered search and discovery was a potential game changer and maybe even a Google-killer.

The key is finding that one person who believes in that vision like you do--even if you haven't previously been #2 at Paypal or built Skype or whatever.  It's hard to do that as part of this process.  I told this guy yesterday that while I totally believed in this vision, as CEO, I also had to deal with the harsh reality that the well runs dry in January, and so no one's changing any worlds without some more cash.  Walking in the door and saying, "I know we're in Alpha and rolling out our product at the moment, but here's how this changes the world", unfortunately, isn't usually the path to solving that immediate need.

I wonder if your expected value increases if you grab your pick ax and go find that one person who believes in the big vision, versus thinking small and incremental and showing what you can do tomorrow so someone will fund you today.  Companies would certainly behave very differently depending on what kind of feedback they get from their supporters, and so I wonder how much the early exit/flip Web 2.0 small idea mentality is a product not of entrepreneurs but of the investment community itself.

UPDATE:

Of course, I really don't want to just come off like I'm complaining.  If you know me, you know I always look for actionable next steps anytime I see an issue.  For me, what this whole experience has me doing is thinking about ways I can better convey the vision and end goal to the folks who need to see what that first step on the path looks like.   Sometimes, though, its just nice to get unbridled support on the vision rather than just spend 99% of your time defending the product plan.

"So we are thrilled to be an investor in a company that has been organized since its inception around the key insight that we believe will drive the next several years of innovation on the web – the need to solve real problems in the real world for real people."   - Brad Burnham on USV's Investment in Meetup

If only there were other companies solving real problems for real people.

Paul Graham just posted some ideas on what kind of startups he'd like to fund on the YCombinator blog.  I suppose if you're already working in these areas, that's great news for you, but to be honest, if you're not passionate about one of these things already, I never believed in the idea of just methodically picking picking a sector to start something in.  Fabrice seems to be doing a bangup job at it, though, so I could be totally wrong (although his passion seems to be the methodology and the process itself, though).

Anyway,this isn't the first time one of these lists has popped up before--and I'm sure it sends a lot of entrepreneurs scrambling.  In order to provide balance in The Force, I thought it might be better to tell all the VCs some ideas about what kind of partner I'd like to fund Path 101.  Let the VC's scramble around!

So here goes:

1) We're looking for a partner who is really passionate about helping people find their callings--someone who is looked at by others as a great mentor and actively contributes their career wisdom to others.  If we're talking about our career advice tool and you have to ask, "Why would anyone answer someone else's career questions?" that means you don't actually provide that advice yourself when you get random e-mails from your school's alumni or people from your blog, etc.  We want someone who knows what it was like to not know what you wanted to do and feels like we can really make a big impact by helping people with their career.

2) We want someone who really believes in backing people.  Our product will take many public iterations before it ever feels "complete" and there are still many unanswered questions left that we will only be able to address over time.  That means, at the end of the day, you've got a team and a market.  We're sure the market of "people who aren't sure what to do with their careers" is pretty huge, so that leaves you with team as the real bet--and so we need to feel like our team has the confidence and support of our investors.

3) Someone with access to domain knowledge in our market.  It will be some time before we build the recruiting inroads to our userbase, but it would be extraordinarily useful to be able to regularly pick the brain of someone who knows the space or can open up the right doors here.  That's true for any startup--having a resource to go to in order to help grease the biz dev or acquisition wheels is seriously value add.

4) We want a user--someone who participates in the social web to the point where we say, "and this is how it plugs into people's blogs" they'll get it because they blog or know how they work, not just because "blog" is a buzzword. 

5) Someone fun!  I need to be able to pick on you via Twitter.  If we can't laugh about something, hit up a ballgame, or just kick back and genuinely enjoy each other's company, it's going to make things a heck of a lot harder.  We have a fun team (in a geeky sort of way) and we get along with each other really well.  Our backers are going to be joining that team and need to be able to get along with us.

6) A partner who can get their whole firm on board.  Obviously some level of this has to be attained to get a deal done, but sometimes partners change and other times, different partners or junior folks have something to contribute.  I'd like to be able to walk into my VC's office and have just about anyone there be interested in talking to me--and not have to feel like I'm waiting for just one person.

7) Someone principled and ethical.  We're in this because we want to make an impact on people's lives--because the difference in your life between hating what you do and really finding where you fit is huge.  We also think it can be successful, but that's not going to be from taking advantage of others or squeezing every last dime.  I want to feel like we're in good hands with a trustworthy partner and that's what I think I can offer in return.

In return, a VC will get a team that is extremely dedicated and passionate about solving a big mainstream problem with creative, appropriate solutions, that works really hard, and that they can trust in return.

Anything else I should be looking for?

Mike Hirshland nails how I feel about the timing of Path 101 (except for the market part--there are more people trying to figure out what to do with their careers than you can shake a stick at):

"For the immediate future, what makes sense is to iterate and experiment. During this phase, product, market and adoption risk remains high. The idea is to learn as much as possible about all three of these, and remove a big chunk of these risks, but to burn as little capital as possible during this phase. In the experimentation phase, we want to learn a ton but spend a little.

Once we think we have learned what product will get adoption in the market, and how we will make money from this product/market match (which nearly always takes a few more iteration cycles than originally thought), we then should kick into execution mode, in order to get real live proof points that the model actually works in practice. This is the time to staff up with the team necessary to go to market.

But until then, no need for the bus dev and sales guys that had been in the plan."