A massive welcome to Jonathan Sun, founder of Horizan VC. Jonathan is a VC who is passionate about making the ecosystem work. A breath of fresh air in what can sometimes be a very opaque industry.

Jonathan has incredible enthusiasm and doesn't waste time maintaining the status quo. If you're thinking about building a start-up, you'll definitely first want to listen to the section on pretotyping!

Three main topics and key learnings:

1. Validate ideas with pretend prototyping (pretotyping):-

1.1. Before you build an MVP, first setup a landing page and get customers to enter their credit card details. Rather get this wrong 15 times than building the wrong product.

1.2. No-code is on the rise and will democratise SaaS. If tech businesses want to differentiate, their code will need to exemplary.

1.3. Chief Product Officers may therefore become more valuable than Chief Technical Officers.

Link to Jonathan's pretotyping podcast if you want to hear more: https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/the-official-pretotyping-podcast/id1550943178

2. Problems and solutions in Seed-stage VC:-

2.1. Most founders have equity forced upon them. Equity might not be the right instrument for you.

2.2. Blitzscaling might not be good for your business. Some businesses need to build solid foundations first and some businesses are better kept smaller.

2.3. There are increasingly more alternative VC funding options. Think about the student debt model combined with a safe note.

2.4. Former operators make good VCs because they can better identify quality founders, will understand them better and importantly can advise them properly.

3. Peer-selected investment:-

3.1. Village Capital are credited with this method of reviewing start-ups where your existing portfolio companies help make the investment decision. Should more VCs do this? Seems so!

3.2. Portfolio founders can predict success in new investments with accuracy of up to 80%.

3.3. Founders understand other founders better than financiers.

3.4. As a founder, try think like an investor. It will give you an edge in fundraising.

If you're interested in Horizan's innovative funding solution that combines a future earnings agreement loan and a safe note, do reach out to Jonathan via Twitter https://twitter.com/JonathanYSun1 or on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-sun-652541131/

Next week we're launching the last podcast of 2021 with episode 1.10 which brings Season 1 to a neat close.

See you there,

Alex @thetippytopblog

#podcast #learnwithalex #askalex #investoready #vc #venturecapital #vcs #entrepreneurship #startups #thetippytop #businessadvice #seed #entrepreneurs #tech #investing #investors #pretotyping #nocode #safenote #altvc #pretendprototyping #peerselectedinvestment #creativefundinginstruments #blockchain