The reason so many of the startups we funded left Boston was that we flew them out to Silicon Valley to demo to investors there. If you don't introduce the startups you fund to investors from other towns, then of course more of them will end up staying wherever they were. But you're not exactly doing them a favor in that case.
I'm one of the Shotput partners. I'm not sure if the implication here is that we specifically didn't intro our companies to investors from outside of the southeast. If so, that is entirely not the case. Myself and other partners continue to work with our companies to make valuable introductions for them - both in terms of clients as well as investors.
But I'll assume you were speaking in general terms in which case, I think all of the partners at Shotput would wholeheartedly agree.
I didn't mean that you didn't introduce your companies to investors from other places, just that without the mechanism of a demo day you couldn't introduce them, in person, to hundreds of such investors.
Totally get you and you're totally right. I wish things like demo day existed when I was funding my company. Would have saved me from talking to 200+ investors over a 10 month time span.
It will be interesting to see if the ones that stay in Atlanta can get funded as well as the ones that are getting SV intros (a Shotput Ventures partner lives in SF and 2 Shotput companies moved West). It's early, we will need to do an update in 90 days.
You were dead on in your comment that Y Combinator style seed funding is not regional:
I am not personally involved with Shotput Ventures, but I know that the people involved are fairly connected and I am sure would introduce startups to anyone who would provide funding including valley investors. Not to mention they are financially motivated to do everything they can to maximize the probability of a successful exit and their returns upon such an exit.
Sure, they may not be as connected to SV investors as YC is.
If email introductions worked as well as demos followed by in-person conversations, neither we nor any of the ycomorphs would have Demo Days in the first place.
You couldn't physically make that many email intros. We had 24 startups demoing to 210 investors. We couldn't make 5040 intros.
This is true, not to mention a demo is obviously much more effective than an email introduction.
I am not disputing the fact that YC's physical presence in the valley and your connections give you a big advantage with investors in the valley.
I am only pointing out that there is no reason Shotput would not introduce their startups to those valley investors they can. I am sure they would invite all the valley investors they know to attend demo day in person and flying their startups out to meet investors in the valley or anywhere else also sounds like a great suggestion. I'd love it if I was in that batch.
