Research and Development 2.0
A few weeks ago I started reading Richard Florida's game-changing (profound? or controversial?) book, The Rise of the Creative Class.
A few weeks ago I started reading Richard Florida's game-changing (profound? or controversial?) book, The Rise of the Creative Class.
I've been a long-time follower of Dan Rua, and I've even had the pleasure of meeting the guy. His business, Inflexion, is venture capital - they invest in biotech and technology startup companies. It's a great thing for the state of Florida to have funding like that available locally.
However, for smaller, "early stage" companies, venture funding is not really the way to go. There are phases to these things... and that's not Dan's business.
So says Dan Rua in his recent post on Florida Venture Blog:
Demonstrating customer interest jumps an entrepreneur ahead of all the idea-on-a-napkin entrepreneurs who just assume customers will flock to their big idea. However, when institutional investors ask questions about the size of the opportunity, including market size and scalability, referring to current customer interest really doesn't address the question.