Gary Seymour is a 28 year old entrepreneur with a fool-proof business idea which is going to change the way people manage their family photos through a web 2.0 application he’s been developing on a drawing board. He’s convinced this is the best photo management application to be released on the web and once it’s launched and people try it, there is no turning back. He’ll have the market captured! Completely prepared, suited up and armed with a killer elevator pitch, he walks into the VC office and does his thing.

When the presentation is over and he’s waiting for the “ok here is the $175 million check to start your business”, he sees them whispering to each other and the gets a “mmmm we’ll let you know about it in a few weeks” from them instead. “What a bunch of losers! They are passing on a golden opportunity which would quadruple their investment in just two years!” thinks Gary as he walks out fuming.

He can clearly see his goal ahead, there is light at the end of the tunnel and he only needs to get past those investors that are there, just waiting for him to arrive.

Gary’s View As An Entrepreneur

Gary, like many of us entrepreneurs suffers from entrepreneurs tunnel vision syndrome. A condition many entrepreneurs have where they are so pumped up and convinced about their business plan they ignore the investors point of view and “know” their idea is the best one ever offered to the investors. Not quite so in reality. Investors tend to use the whole 360 degree panorama view to compare their options. One that goes beyond startups and ideas, including public stocks, market trends and more.

While Gary was convinced that he needed at least $175 million because he planes to rake in over $400 million by the end of the second year or so, the investors didn’t have a clue where he plans to spend this and how would it help achieve the target revenues. They also didn’t see how the one additional feature alone would be able to uproot Flickr, Picassa and other established players in this space.

After all, Gary doesn’t have sites like Yahoo and Google which already have a gigantic customer base which would adapt much quicker to any product they launch. Entrepreneurs have to be able to take a step back and look at their ventures from the outside like the point of view of an investor.

Investors View

Just the other day over dinner with some professional investors, we started discussing one of my own startups and I learned things about it I could never see because I’m so close to it. To some extent , I’ll admit I couldn’t see this point of view because I’m emotionally attached to what I’m trying to build and so completely immersed in it I fail to see what they could.

The advice I got however, would be invaluable in allowing me to take a few steps back, incorporate their suggestions. I know I’ll build something more valuable with these inputs I got from their viewpoints.

This is what Grow VC offers as a community even if you don’t intend to fund it using crowdfunding. Simply putting your startup in front of a community which has

• People who think as entrepreneurs

• People who think as investors

• People who think as startup experts

….gives you a 360 degree perspective on your own business which allows you to strengthen your plans and build a stronger venture. Whether you get support, praise, criticism or even nothing from the community, it’s all feedback which you can use to get an all round vision of people’s thoughts with your startup put right in the middle of it all. It’s feedback you can use to make it better!

Not only this, but because of our unique community fund concept, every subscribed members including entrepreneurs also need to start looking other ventures from the investors point of view to allocate their portion of the community fund, while wearing their “VC hat”, they should be able to find the best startups to allocated the their budget for the community fund investment. The more they look at other startup profiles the better their 360 degree will develop and at the same time they can maybe start to notice patters of missing information in other startups that are not communicating to an “investor” and also learn to improve their own profile and communication to better communicate to potential investors.

As the very simple fact is that the better we understand the roles of each others and the way we see things differently, the much better we can work together to reach those ultimate goals of our ventures.