Yesterday I was attending a conference here in San Francisco. This was my second conference here and was a good one. I like to meet different people to promote my new startup product, Nimbb.
So at this conference, when was the time to socialize with others and do some networking, I wanted to talk at a few investors. This time, I had in hand my Archos 9 PC tablet. Why? Because I could actually show Nimbb (a video recording technology using Flash) to potential customers/investors.
Doing live demo is always great. I noticed that using my laptop in front of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. With the tablet, it was even easier.
So I meet this investor which do early stage startup (something I'm currently in). I pretty much forced the guy to look at my demo of Nimbb. Or actually, he was quite interested. Either way, he asked me "What do you need?" So I explain a few things I'm looking for in an investor. Then, he asks me "How much do you need?"
I was actually thinking quite fast and I first thought about saying a number between $200k to $250k. I decided to answer saying "$300,000". To my surprise, his answer right away was "$300,000, this is nothing. We have some people coming to us saying like 8 millions."
Of course, I wouldn't expect this reaction from all the investors here in the Bay. But I had two thoughts after meeting this investor.
1) There is still a lot of money here. For a one-man startup like mine, $300k is a lot. But from their view, this is nothing.
2) Maybe I'm actually not asking enough. I feel like that most startups that get media coverage on TechCrunch receive at least $1M in investment. So what is wrong with being successful with as little investment as possible?
By the way, $300k investment in Montreal would be considered an awesome load of money :)