zlacker

>>shscs9+(OP)
This is intersting.

Occasionally in YC founder circles a new founder will raise a bunch of money and then ask something like "What's the best way to invest all the money our company just raised?"

The responses are always along the lines of "Your startup is already risky. Don't innovate in areas of your business where the status quo is known to work. Innovate your product + technology, don't be innovative with your company's finances, HR, etc"

That advice always stuck with me. It just makes a lot of sense to do things in the most boring way possible, except where it matters (your competitive advantage <-- that's where you innovate, that's where you set yourself apart)

Running a startup is distracting enough. Doing things non-standard just adds to the list of distractions that you don't need as a founder.

>>cj+ul
Then again, to play devils advocate, doing all the other stuff in a new way might also help your company break out of the cycle that typically impacts startups. It may be that the other things you do apart from your product are what make it successful.

>>polish+Bz
Figuring out a better way to ~~invest~~ speculate with your company's balance sheet is seriously unlikely to improve the trajectory of your company.

>>dannyw+a21
I mean if you have a significant chunk of free cash sitting around there's almost no reason not to put a portion of it in 3-6 month Treasuries or something.

The return won't be much but it's better than letting the cash sit idle and evaporate due to inflation

>>stackg+p61
Uh, that's not "better".

If you have a huge chunk of change sitting around, you've raised too much or too early, and you've successfully diluted yourself for zero reason.

If you actually had a reason to raise a lot of money, you'd do with the money what you promised the investors (who gave you the money) you would.

I've raised before. I raised what I needed. Not a penny more because I didn't need the money.

>>NickC2+Or1
I too have raised before.

I'm not saying raising and then buying T-Bills is better than just raising less.

I'm saying if you find yourself with excess cash, you can't just un-raise. In that scenario, then short term T Bills are strictly better than cash.

>>stackg+7t1
The question is why you'd use money you raised for anything but the reason you raised it. You've probably raised a shit ton more than I have, but hear me out - when one raises, there's generally a timeline of fund deployment from the startup's UoF, right? That's how it was done in my case - we tell the investor what we need, why we need it, and when we need it, etc. And then if the investor agrees to invest, it's not just a lump sum sitting in the bank - a good amount of that money gets deployed to help the startup fulfill its mission.

I get that if you're running super lean and you've raised enough to run lean for a while and use cash when you need to, but at the same time why raise more than you have need for?

>>NickC2+AA1
I've seen VC's who care a lot about understanding how their companies are going to spend the money. And other VC's who don't even ask the question, or accept generalities like "hiring, scaling" with equally loose timelines.

The latter group most commonly in the bay area.

>>cj+NL1
>And other VC's who don't even ask the question, or accept generalities like "hiring, scaling" with equally loose timelines.

Which is crazy to me.

You write a check for a lot of money, and don't care how/when/where the money is spent? Or you accept bullshit vague answers?

That's not due diligence, that's deliberate ignorance.