David Pierce has written an excellent post-mortem recording the last days of a hardware startup called Doppler Labs. The post carefully details all the challenges in launching a consumer product, and Doppler Labs co-founder Noah Kraft provides a colorful summary of the experience:
“I need to find a industry or product I’m passionate about.” I often hear this from entrepreneurs and it frequently means wanting to start a business in a consumer space that they love—music or gaming, for example. It’s an understandable impulse. If you’re going to start a business that will consume your life for years, why not make it something you’re interested in?
One of the questions a VC gets most often is “what are you interested in?” Many investors have developed “themes” that become a shorthand used to discuss the types of deals they like
