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VIDEO: The Anatomy of a Fundable Startup by Naval of AngelList

Do you live outside of Silicon Valley? Watch this video
For all the startups and entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley, I want to direct you to this incredible summary by Naval Ravikant of AngelList and VentureHacks on the anatomy of a fundable startup.

This video is a much more comprehensive and detailed version of what I often talk to non-Valley entrepreneurs and startups about. It’s part of the “grooming” process that startups out here get to become fundable and to focus on the right things to get there. People spend a surprising amount of time on things that will contribute little or no value to getting them to a seed round, and this talk is the best I’ve seen in terms of presenting the issues in its entirety.

Naval broke down the 5 main qualities of an “exceptional startup,” in the following order:

  1. Traction
  2. Team
  3. Product
  4. Social Proof
  5. Pitch/Presentation

And while all these qualities are important, Naval explained, the most important thing is to understand that:

“Investors are trying to find the exceptional outcomes, so they are looking for something exceptional about the company. Instead of trying to do everything well (traction, team, product, social proof, pitch, etc), do one thing exceptional. As a startup you have to be exceptional in at least one regard.”

(via Founder Institute)

Anyway, please watch it all the way through and enjoy!

7th Founder Showcase – Naval Ravikant Keynote from Founder Showcase on Vimeo.

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Written by Andrew Chen
June 21st, 2011 at 12:41 pm
  • http://venturehacks.com nivi

    Andrew, I put the slides here if you want them http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/anatomy-of-a-unfundable-startup

  • Facebook User

    This is just great!

  • Facebook User

    This is just great!

  • http://andrewchenblog.com Andrew Chen

    thanks sir!

  • http://twitter.com/AndrewKorf Andrew Korf

    awesome talk. one of the best I have heard on what you one needs to get started with funding.

  • Nik Nicholas

    Have to love the internet, they just don’t have many of these talks in London. Great to be able to see this.

  • http://www.commun.it SharelOmer

    Hi Andrew,

    Thank you for sharing this great presentation…
    over the years we learned so much from you and from @VentureHacks:twitter  (@nivi:twitter  & @naval:twitter  ) :) and its a great summary of good practices :)

    Please keep on sharing such quality content, it really makes a difference.

    10x,
    Sharel

  • http://twitter.com/addoway Fredrick Nijm

    Love it – one thing exceptional

  • http://twitter.com/BiddRocket Brian Ley

    Great post Andrew :-)

  • Anonymous

    Simply excellent content for pre-funded startups. Thank you Andrew for posting this.

  • http://twitter.com/jeffeffendi Jeff Effendi

    Bit late to this, but I guess better late than never. This is incredibly useful for someone like me; I’m located in Perth, Australia and it seems that the web startup scene is rather quiet, so this is right up my alley. Appreciate Nick Frost sharing it on my Facebook.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002568116515 David Adewumi

    Andrew, thanks for meeting with us a couple weeks ago. It seems for young founders, traction would be the most realistic quality in which to be exceptional. To have an exceptional pitch/presentation at this stage for young founders I think would be met with “Awesome! Now show me the exceptional traction.” Thanks for sharing this post!

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