Ben Paik

I'm new here (again). Coming back to twitter after almost a decade

[Abby Grills @AGrillz]

The internet is the greatest dataset ever created.

Today, we're launching the Riveter Dataset Builder to make it possible for anyone to get custom, fresh data from a prompt.

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@alexberkovic Huggeeee moves!

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@albert_ @chamath @ryvnai faxxxxxxxx

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@trytrata woah, sick video. who did yall use?

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@ycombinator @thecontextco @rohil_ag @ksw_arman Congrats on the launch!!

[Blake Shao @blak3shao]

oh yeah we been cooking @jz2letters

we added some new additions to our AI creative platform to make generations more fun and organized

If you are interested in being an early user, comment 🍲

a 🧵

[Max Prilutskiy @MaxPrilutskiy]

⚡️ We've just went live on ProductHunt with @lingodotdev!

From a @Cornell AI OSS hackathon to first customers, @ycombinator, @TechCrunch, $4.2M Seed round, and @ProductHunt today!

Come see what we've been building, and support us!

(link below)

[David Park @Davidjpark96]

In the early-stages of my startup I lived with my parents and we only had one table in the living room

I would always tell my parents when I had an important VC pitch and they’d pack up their things and go to their room so I could focus on my meeting

I would be anxious as fuck and I’d be reciting my pitch deck all day and trying out the latest pseudo-science to improve my confidence

Then, without fail, ~20% of the time the VC would say that something “came up” the day of the call and ask to reschedule

I’d be heartbroken because I’d been waiting 2 weeks for this one meeting and then reply with “No worries, how about next Tuesday! :)”

After clicking send, I’d have too much shame to tell my parents that I was ghosted, so I would practice my pitch out loud to myself for 30 minutes until my parents would slowly peek their heads back in and gleefully ask how my pitch went

“Great!” I would reply and then retreat back to my room.

Unfortunately, even of the VC’s that would actually show up, only about half of them would genuinely be interested in what I was saying

Of the half that were interested, it would turn out that they weren’t even VC’s at all but scouts that were still in college

But hey, maybe if you knock it out of the park for them, perhaps these kids will forward it to their general partner (lmao)

Of the actual VC’s that showed up, many of them are blatantly switching screens or reading emails mid-pitch and when they ask a question that you clearly answered on slide 7, you have to avoid starting your answer with “As I mentioned before” and instead say “ah great question!” then gracefully run them through the same monologue one more time

Then when you’re finally done with the pitch, you wait for the VC to make their decision

Just to be clear, you as a founder are expected to:
Give up everything in your life to focus on your startup
Commit to this vision for a decade or more
Scale it to over a billion dollars (achieved by only a handful of people in the history of human civilization)

VC’s are expected to:
Show up to a meeting
Let you know if they will invest in you or not
Then follow through with investing or not

All they have to do is show up and then write an email saying that they either are investing or going to pass. It is a 30 second email.

They will rarely give you their decision. And even if they do, it can be laced with judgement or trying to shit on your startup.

Only the top tier VC’s actually give you any actionable insight into their decision process.

You might be thinking “Why are you whining, if they don’t send an email, that’s your answer”

That’s easy to say when your startup is not 2 months away from bankruptcy.

Even if there’s a 0.1% chance that maybe they’re still deliberating or they might have a few extra questions, you irrationally still shoot your shot and follow-up to ask for an update.

Ironically, the only people that regularly provides updates are the college scouts who are serendipitously roleplaying as VC’s.

These rejections feel especially weird because what does this random 19 year old non-founder know when he/she says “we just felt like the market opportunity wasn’t there” ???

After enough rejections you realize that you have no choice but to bootstrap because your family doesn’t have money, your friends are as broke as you, and it’s seemingly impossible to raise venture funding

So you build and build and build and thankfully your startup starts to get traction

And traction leads to traction and traction leads to traction; momentum is a powerful thing

Now you’re making tens of millions of dollars per year and you’re profitable (because raising money was so hard, you had to actually make a legit business!)

Then the strangest thing starts to happen, VC’s start emailing you and asking you to get on-calls with them

They start leaving voicemails on your phone when you don’t respond to them

This should be a great sign, but strangely, whenever a VC shows kindness to you (specifically ones that ignored you in the past), it doesn’t resolve the knot in your heart, it twists it further

Everyone has finite patience, finite kindness, finite hours

You find that VC’s are now happy to get on-call with you at a moments notice and stay overtime, but you wonder if that means a different founder is getting the “something came up” email and they’re sitting alone at their dining room table

The emails they send to you trying to woo you into taking a meeting is time spent not sending an email to the founder waking up at 6am everyday and refreshing their inbox praying to God for a life line.

It is just a weird feeling

I’ll end by saying that I don’t think VC’s are bad people of course, I have so much respect for the investors on my cap table as well as others that treated us with basic human decency

But just as VC’s are constantly judging you as a founder, you should be equally mercurial in your judgement of them

I totally understand if you’re an early-stage founder to have to be patient with low quality investors, but I feel like startups that are more established should call them out on their bullshit!

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@ycombinator @diffusionhq @MatthiasRuiz22 @konstipaulus Love the product and team behind it!

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

YC F24's Diffusion Studio (@diffusionhq) is Canva for video editing, enabling everyone to create professional videos using AI in minutes.

https://t.co/Xjx0kdYv7d

Congrats on the launch, @MatthiasRuiz22 and @konstipaulus!

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@ycombinator @afternoonHQ @romanzubenko 🫡🫡🫡🫡

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

YC F24's https://t.co/cKlyGeSeom (@afternoonhq) is an accounting platform designed for ecommerce & startup founders. It offers real-time financial metrics and manages your bookkeeping, sales, and year-end taxes.

https://t.co/7Pay5X5u1Z

Congrats on the launch, @romanzubenko and @BenPaikDoe!

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@fin465 @doctororigami @ycombinator 100K ARR is huge in a month!

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@Wario64 Thank you!!! I got it from Amazon after >14 hours of trying on different sites

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@spiceadams @TPAIN

[Ricky @_rickyla]

So I made a thing 😂

[Gusto @GustoHQ]

Halloween at Gusto is a spooky good time 👻 Can you guess some of our costumes? #HappyHalloween2018

[vic @victortyty]

I remember doing this in my postmates last year on 420 and it worked again just now lol

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

@ameowchow lol I need coworkers

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

Oahu. Is. Beautiful.

Leaving with battle scars, but all the sceneries and memories are well worth it!

[Ben Paik @BenPaik_]

Shoutout to @_djkitkat doe 😽