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Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

A question someone like me has, is how do you get the attention of these investors? I have a few ideas for products, a couple of which I've done preliminary coding for on the side. But the problem I have is

a) I have no connections

b) I work full time, so I have very little time other than late nights to work on the things I'm really interested in. I feel like I'm missing huge opportunities because I can't work on the things that I find really interesting because I'm doing someone else's work.

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Joshua Schachter started Delicious on the side while working full time. At a trading firm no less. It seems like the keys were (a) to work on something where there was no big initial step to get over-- something that was interesting to a small number of people almost immediately, and (b) to make constant incremental progress.

Getting traction for something you build excuses any number of weaknesses. One customer paying you actual money for a product which actually exists puts you far ahead of the curve. Lots of customers paying money, for any value of "lots", makes you a stupidly attractive investment target.

Thanks for the replies, @pg and @patio11. In an interesting way, being told that I'm already doing the things I should be doing is reassuring. Lots of late nights and weekends ahead!

It's a close knit community, and as such there's little to no chance of getting a good investor's attention without proving yourself within the community first. Without any prior connections, I am in a spot where I am quite certain I can get funding when I start my own thing. The best advice I can give is to get out to the Bay Area and work for a startup. If you're good, you'll get noticed by people that can hook you up down the road.

The good news is that it's pretty easy to get a job with a VC-funded startup right now. Good engineers are hard to come by. The hardest part is making the jump!

You definitely have time to work on a prototype, little by little. Product, product, product. Then work on your connections / traction / freaking out / loosing sleep.

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