investorsI am in my 20s and want to work part time on an idea. I want to know if investors are interested in investing in part time entrepreneurs?
Investors notoriously invest in people much more than in projects. That is, their assessment of whether a team is committed and able to deliver often trumps their assessment of whether the project has good merit. They’ll often pass on entrepreneurs they don’t find credible regardless of their projects’ merits.
As a part-time entrepreneur, you’re basically sending the message to your would-be investors that you won’t be fully committed to what you’re hoping they’ll fund.
Not saying it’s impossible. But you’re certainly not sending the right signals.
This is an excellent question to ask, and the answer is undoubtedly yes. Investors and venture capitalists in general are often quite reasonable people, and we do understand not everyone can put themselves behind an idea full time, no matter how great the idea is, without taking care about their basic human necessities first.
This comes in part from understanding Maslows hierarchy of needs. It is extremely beneficial for investors to know that all basic and most psychological needs of a a founder/founders/team are satisfied in order for them to be able to focus on what they are doing instead of, for example, figuring out whether or not there will be some food on the table at the end of the day.
I wholeheartedly disagree with other answers stating that you would be indicating lack of commitment. Commitment is not derived from how much time you spend on a venture, it is derived from how consistently you dedicate resources available to you to the venture you are doing - time, effort, expertise etc.
Quitting your day job or university without reasonable chance of success and some financial reserves to support yourself will not indicate commitment, it will indicate you are careless and not to be trusted with anything, not to mention worth investing in.
Consider these two hypothetical scenarios - there are two persons having come up with The Next Big Thing. First of them just took out a loan and is now full time committed to The Thing, but has a cash runway of perhaps couple of months and that’s about it. Second one spent last 2 years working on The Idea, slowly building and adjusting the idea to the actual market, has paying customers accumulated organically over time and is now comfortable leaving day job in favor of Next Big Thing, which is already generating some revenue. In which of these two persons would you personally invest in? For me, the answer is clear.
It depends how you define ‘part time’. If you mean ‘do they invest in someone who is building multiple businesses’ then as a general rule, no they wouldn’t. If however, you are working part time in order to live then that is a very different story. There is an understanding that people have to earn money to live but an investor wants to see that someone backs their product/is personally invested in it enough to take a risk. I have seen entrepreneurs get investment when they are 100% committed to their business but have to work other jobs to pay the bills and I have also seen entrepreneurs who have been building multiple businesses at the same time get thrown out of investors’ offices.
Venture capitalist would invest in anything if you have a good business. I’m sure they would be happy to fund a causal project by Mark Zuckerberg.
Forget full-time or part-time, but focus on your products. As long as you can prove your business, people would invest in you. Nobody cares about your working hours.
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