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Comment by chrisaycock | Hacker News Reader

One of their investment paths is "Beacon":

> We believe that there are exceptional individuals with great ideas who likely have the skills to build a company but lack the network or personal financial means to get started. So we will invest a small amount of capital -- $50K (for roughly 2% of the startup idea you pursue) -- to support very, very early-stage founders explore an idea, validate a key hypothesis, or build an early prototype.

https://github.com/Bloomberg-Beta/Manual/blob/master/1%20-%2...

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Just a hunch, but it's likely something close to 100% of said individuals will have a (pre-existing, not a result of reaching out specifically for this investment) network to connect them the "right way" for the money. That's just the way this industry works. It's exceptionally rare for someone without connections to make any headway.

They pretty much say that in this document.

> If we don’t know you ourselves, we prefer if someone we trust knows you.

I believe Marc Andreessen has said the same thing in the past. When he was accused of elitism, he said:

"That is my test of whether this person is a true entrepreneur. If they are, they will find a way, by hook or crook, to get to someone who knows me"

It’s a good test for whether when the entrepreneur needs to close a big sale they can get connected to the purchasing decision maker.

What's not elitist about that statement?

I think what he's saying is, if that stops you, you weren't going to get very far anyway.

It will obviously be easier to draw Marc's attention from a high socioeconomic stratum, but as a VC it's not in his interest to make it completely impossible for anyone. At least that's the way I read it.

Also something similar in the manual!

> If you don’t know how to find us, figure it out.

That is likely true but would they settle for 2%, probably not. 2% is a very small price to pay for essentially a years time of one employee. The startup I am working on has spend roughly 55k over 18 months and have a prototype that is on par with tools I had seen used commercially in my previous positions.

That's great! Beacon is a separate, experimental type of investment we started recently. For these, the terms are straightforward ($50k on a $2M post-money SAFE). This is different than our typical Seed investments, which are much larger checks and target much higher ownership percentages.

If either are opportunities of interest, many of us on the team can be reached a variety of ways (email, twitter, LinkedIn).

Thank you for the positive comment! I will keep Beacon in mind.

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