One of the most successful companies I’m involved with was founded by a solo founder. This company is now worth well over $1 billion.
I was fortunate to be advising this company from its start. I saw why this solo founder, “Ray”, was successful raising funding.
Being involved with Ray’s company is one of the highlights of my career. It’s the story of a solo founder who had a vision of how to change the world of high performance computing.
It’s a story about grit, hard work, and belief. It’s a story about being told, “No, you’re wrong,” over and over again, yet staying true to his vision and never giving up.
There were five reasons why Ray was successful raising funding, and I’ll review them all. The first reason was…
1. You’ll need a better idea than other founders
Let’s start at the beginning. I was introduced to Ray through our mutual friend, Aric, who asked me to meet with Ray. At the time, Ray just had an idea of how to revolutionize the world of high performance computing.
The thing that really impressed me was the elegance of the idea. It was unbelievably simple in concept, and, if successful, it would produce a 100X improvement in performance (which it did :-)).
