KAPSLY Blog

1) Believing that you need VC money

Founders often believe that to build a great startup, one necessarily needs venture capitalists’ financial help, or as we call it at BV4: “VC money”. This is the biggest misconception that a founder can make. To all the founders out there: you do not need VC money to be successful. To be successful, you need a strong complementary team that knows each other well, a great solution to an existential problem, a ton of hard work, and some investors that believe in you, but these investors must not necessarily be VCs. And yes, some luck is also essential to success.

The current pandemic has put numerous businesses against the ropes, pushing them to reinvent in pursuit of survival. COVID-19 has challenged where and how companies work, how they engage with customers, and even the customers’ purchasing behaviors. Consequently, many of these companies, from diverse industries, have “turned to practices commonly associated with agile teams in the hope of adapting more quickly to changing business priorities.” Agile, once a software project management tool, is gaining traction across traditional industries that require innovative solutions, increasing their adaptability, and continuous learning.

A common misconception from first-time startup founders is that the most important aspect of their “startup idea” is that it should be original and novel. The large majority of successful startups are not created with an original idea; most often there are several companies that start more or less concurrently in a given space. For example, Google was not the first search engine; Facebook was not the first social network.

Splitting equity is often a neglected topic and done at the last minute. However, it provides an important foundation for the success of your company, so I have asked myself if there is one formula that would allow everyone to get it right.