>"This makes 250% sense, particularly for "no idea" companies."
I can't decipher the level of exaggeration. If your company has "no idea", maybe that's where the blame should lie, rather than on having too much money.
In no way do I blame the money, but it certainly made it easier to make bad decisions. A better way to put it would be that it made us make decisions that shouldn't have had to be made that early.
"no idea" doesn't literally mean we had "no idea", we had plenty of ideas. We just hadn't settled on one yet.
Sure. Hiring 8 interns, leasing a 7k/month house for starters. Ok, it's probably more relevant that I was an idiot (been a student my whole life). My initial thoughts were the following:
1. Demo Day was a unique non-linearity. Being especially good by that date would make you overvalued (now I realize that's a dumb thing to aim for, rather you should aim to be of genuine high value).
2. Spending all 170k by Demo Day would be the optimal way to achieve this outcome. It's pretty hard to spend 170k in three months with no idea, in fact it's a job in and of itself to figure out how to spend that much.
I did manage to recoup all the losses by airbnb'ng out the house and finding other yc co's for the interns, but still it was a waste of at least one month and created an aura of bad feelings that doomed the company for good.
I can't decipher the level of exaggeration. If your company has "no idea", maybe that's where the blame should lie, rather than on having too much money.