I'd agree that the fascination with VC money is not helpful. There are certainly verticals where you can only survive with outside investments (biotech comes to mind) or where scaling quickly is important, but no amount of money will save you if you don't have product-market fit.
That's not venture capital, that's a bit of boost at the front, and most of it not in money. They didn't say they self-financed all of it, just that they did not take on any venture capital.
Looks like Spektrum was basically acting as an incubator that spent some money on them. Your criticism might be valid depending on whether the incubator got some ownership rights (in which case it was acting as VC, albeit on a small scale) or not (in which case it was just an angel investor).
One guy, no VC, patience, problem identified, for solution, crucial secret sauce found and scalable, production quality code written, alpha test in progress, meager burn rate, no users or revenue yet.
Problem? One where the first good solution should be a "must have" for nearly everyone on the Internet.
Solution? An excellent solution now with a high technological barrier to entry and later with some strong network effects.
Solution appears to the users as just a simple Web site that looks good on everything with a Web browser up to date as of maybe 10 years ago and from just 24,000 programming language statements.
Platform? Microsoft's .NET Framework 4.0 with ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Visual Basic .NET, and a little use of C via platform invoke.
Potential? If people like the solution, then in line to be the first company worth $1T.
If your work product has a real barrier to entry and strong value like you say, I wish you'd stop coming here to 1) play coy / not describe the product, 2) flog dissatisfaction with VC behavior, 3) throw out outrageous $1T numbers, and finally 4) rile people up with arguments about VB.NET.
Look, it's nice that you got some use out of Microsoft's frankly very irritating old developer tools. But all we're doing here is reorganizing bits, any language will do that job, although it is harder to enlist others in helping if you have settled on awkward means to get there. At some point you will have to "put up or shut up" about the thing you believe you're building.
Good luck. You may be a math genius, but you don't have a marketing or venture-formation bone in your body. (I do applaud you're choice not to take on VC money, though...)
[+] [-] onion2k|8 years ago|reply
It sounds like Snipcart are doing something very similar to Moltin (https://moltin.com), which is a YC company.
[+] [-] tehwebguy|8 years ago|reply
I should have put more work into my YC app + video!
[+] [-] zer0livemagic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anovikov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 5_minutes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wordpressdev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a_imho|8 years ago|reply
They invested temporary resources (design, frontend) and a full-time salary (mine) into Snipcart, our developer-first e-commerce platform.
[+] [-] jacquesm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toyg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ojr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sylos|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gggdvnkhmbgjvbn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graycat|8 years ago|reply
One guy, no VC, patience, problem identified, for solution, crucial secret sauce found and scalable, production quality code written, alpha test in progress, meager burn rate, no users or revenue yet.
Problem? One where the first good solution should be a "must have" for nearly everyone on the Internet.
Solution? An excellent solution now with a high technological barrier to entry and later with some strong network effects.
Solution appears to the users as just a simple Web site that looks good on everything with a Web browser up to date as of maybe 10 years ago and from just 24,000 programming language statements.
Platform? Microsoft's .NET Framework 4.0 with ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Visual Basic .NET, and a little use of C via platform invoke.
Potential? If people like the solution, then in line to be the first company worth $1T.
[+] [-] sk5t|8 years ago|reply
Look, it's nice that you got some use out of Microsoft's frankly very irritating old developer tools. But all we're doing here is reorganizing bits, any language will do that job, although it is harder to enlist others in helping if you have settled on awkward means to get there. At some point you will have to "put up or shut up" about the thing you believe you're building.
[+] [-] ci5er|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calgaryeng|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radicalbyte|8 years ago|reply