O preço da prevenção de crises

Hi Folks,

Mais um imperdível, de macro economia.

JEAN PISANI-FERRY

O preço da prevenção de crises

O valor das futuras perdas produtivas causadas pelas crises pode equivaler ao PIB mundial, ou US$ 60 tri

PASSARAM-SE dois anos desde a erupção das crises financeiras, e só agora estamos começando a compreender o quanto foi dispendioso combatê-las. Andrew Haldane, do Banco da Inglaterra, estima que o valor corrente das futuras perdas de produção causadas pelas crises pode bem equivaler a 100% do Produto Interno Bruto (PIB) mundial.
A estimativa pode parecer espantosamente alta, mas, na verdade, é relativamente conservadora, porque presume que apenas um quarto do choque inicial resultará em produção mais baixa em caráter permanente. Segundo os verdadeiros pessimistas -aqueles que acreditam que a maioria do choque, ou todo ele, exercerá impacto permanente sobre a produção-, a perda total pode ser duas ou três vezes maior.
Um ano do PIB mundial equivale a cerca de US$ 60 trilhões, ou cinco séculos de assistência oficial ao desenvolvimento, ou, para ser ainda mais concreto, a 10 bilhões de salas de aula em aldeias africanas. É claro que esse não é um custo direto para os orçamentos públicos (o custo total dos pacotes de resgates a bancos é muito menor), mas a perda de produção é o custo que importa mais ao considerarmos de que maneira reduzir a frequência de crises.
Presuma que, na ausência de medidas preventivas adequadas, uma crise com custo equivalente a um ano do PIB mundial ocorra a cada 50 anos (uma suposição bruta mas não insensata). Seria racional, nesse caso, que os cidadãos do planeta pagassem por uma apólice de seguro, desde que seu custo ficasse abaixo de 2% do PIB (100%:50).
Uma maneira simples de reduzir a frequência de crises é requerer que os bancos dependam mais de capital do que de captação, de modo a que possam incorrer em maiores prejuízos sem quebrar -uma medida que, no momento, está em consideração em todo o mundo. Graças a relatórios divulgados recentemente pelo Conselho de Estabilidade Financeira e pelo Comitê da Basileia, estamos mais informados agora sobre o impacto provável de medidas regulatórias como essa.
O primeiro relatório constata que, partindo do atual nível baixo de capitalização bancária, o aumento de um ponto percentual nos requisitos de capitalização reduziria a frequência de crises em um terço, de forma permanente, e geraria elevação de taxas de juros de cerca de 13 pontos básicos (os bancos teriam de cobrar mais porque o custo de levantar capital é maior do que o de emitir títulos de dívida). Em outras palavras, o preço de perder um ano de produção mundial a cada 75 anos (em vez de 50), levaria os bancos a elevar os custos de seus empréstimos de 4% para 4,13%.
O segundo relatório constatou que a alta de um ponto percentual nos requisitos de capitalização bancária, se introduzido gradualmente ao longo de quatro anos, reduziria o PIB em cerca de 0,2%. Se considerarmos que altas em três pontos percentuais são mencionadas frequentemente, o efeito total seria de 0,6%.
Mas há muitas incertezas. O relatório aponta, estranhamente, que elevar a meta de capitalização poderia ter efeito muito mais adverso nos EUA do que na zona do euro, a despeito de a segunda depender mais de financiamentos bancários.
Além disso, o relatório presume que a política monetária seja capaz de compensar parte do choque, o que pode não ser verdade nos países em que juros próximos de zero estão em vigor ou na zona do euro, em que o esforço pode variar entre os países mesmo que a política monetária seja uniforme. Assim, o impacto dos novos regulamentos sobre os países nos quais os bancos estejam significativamente subcapitalizados poderia facilmente ser quatro a cinco vezes superior ao número de referência, ou seja, próximo de 1% no prazo de quatro anos.
Pode parecer pouco, mas não se trata de um montante trivial, tendo em vista as perspectivas de crescimento dos países desenvolvidos, em curto prazo. Em um período de crescimento lento demais para reduzir o imenso desemprego, cada fração de ponto percentual conta.
Não resta dúvida de que vale a pena pagar em longo prazo o custo do seguro contra crises. Mas isso não significa que não devamos procurar a reforma com o melhor custo-benefício.

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JEAN PISANI-FERRY é diretor do instituto de pesquisa europeu Bruegel. Este artigo foi distribuído pelo Project Syndicate.

Tradução de PAULO MIGLIACCI

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AMANHÃ EM MERCADO:
Gustavo Cerbasi

SENTAPUA! E vamos à luta, Filhos da Pátria!

Vale quer implementar MIT no Brasil

Hi Folks,

Ai ai, espero que a folha não me processe..
Vale pretende criar "MIT" brasileiro
Inspirada no instituto dos EUA, empresa investe R$ 400 milhões em 3 centros e quer atrair "cérebros" do exterior

Diretor do ITV diz que, ao contrário dos EUA, necessidade no Brasil de institutos como o da Vale "não é muito clara"

CRISTINA GRILLO
DENISE MENCHEN
DO RIO
A Vale, segunda maior empresa de mineração do mundo -atrás só da BHP Billiton e com valor de mercado de cerca de US$ 145 bilhões-, vai investir perto de R$ 400 milhões nos próximos quatro anos para criar três centros de pesquisa tecnológica de ponta e de ensino de pós-graduação no país.
Para comandar as pesquisas e orientar os futuros alunos, ela está buscando "cérebros" em todo o mundo. Uma empresa foi escolhida para selecionar os doutores e os pós-doutores que serão contratados -50 para cada uma das unidades, estima a Vale.
"É a chance de repatriarmos "cérebros" brasileiros que, por falta de oportunidade aqui, fizeram carreira lá fora. E de trazer estrangeiros que apostem no crescimento do Brasil", explica Luiz Mel- lo, diretor do ITV (Instituto Tecnológico Vale).
O modelo inspirador é o MIT (Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts), fundado em 1865 e de onde já saíram 73 ganhadores do Prêmio Nobel -com o qual, inclusive, a Vale já fez um convênio que permitirá o intercâmbio de professores e alunos.
Cada um dos centros terá sua linha própria de pesquisa. O orçamento de implantação é de R$ 300 milhões.
O primeiro deles, em fase inicial de construção, ficará em Belém (PA). Lá a Vale quer desenvolver estudos na área de sustentabilidade. O projeto é de Paulo Mendes da Rocha, premiado em 2006 com o Pritzker, e de José Armênio de Brito Cruz.
Em Ouro Preto (MG), as pesquisas estão voltadas para a área de mineração. A empresa já tem a área onde será instalado o núcleo.
As construções ficarão a cerca de três quilômetros do centro histórico da cidade e aguardam aprovação do Iphan (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional) para serem iniciadas.
O núcleo de São José dos Campos será o último a ser implantado e é voltado para pesquisas sobre energia.

BOLSISTAS
Cada um dos núcleos poderá receber até 160 pesquisadores bolsistas, em processo de seleção pelas Fundações de Amparo à Pesquisa (FAPs) de Pará, Minas Gerais e São Paulo. As bolsas poderão ser de iniciação científica, mestrado e doutorado.
No total, serão destinados R$ 120 milhões para os bolsistas -R$ 72 milhões da Vale, R$ 48 milhões das FAPs.
A seleção tem várias fases. Consultores das fundações fazem a primeira avaliação e encaminham para a mineradora, que elabora uma espécie de lista de prioridades. A decisão final é tomada pela diretoria científica de cada uma das fundações.
"Já recebemos cerca de 70 propostas", disse Douglas Eduardo Zampieri, membro da Fapesp (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo).
"A ideia é que a Vale contribua com a produção local de conhecimento. Nosso maior desafio é a atração e a fixação de cérebros para a região", diz Maurílio Monteiro, secretário de Desenvolvimento e Tecnologia do Pará.
O objetivo da mineradora ao criar o ITV é simples -e ao mesmo tempo ambicioso. "A Vale, como empresa de mineração, tem perspectivas para os próximos 100 anos. Se temos atividade econômica com previsibilidade dessa magnitude, devemos planejar esse futuro", diz Mello.
Mello veio do meio acadêmico. Pós-doutor em neurofisiologia pela Universidade da Califórnia, era pró-reitor de graduação da Unifesp quando recebeu o convite da Vale para montar o ITV.
Sabe das dificuldades de integrar os meios acadêmico e industrial. "Há um fosso, há resistência dos dois lados. Em outros países, como os EUA, a necessidade de instituições como o ITV é muito clara. Aqui, ainda não."


SENTAPUA! E vamos à luta, Filhos da Pátria!

Excelente entevista de Maria da Conceição Tavares!

Hi Folks,

Eu juro que não sou ladrão de conteúdo, mas esta entrevista histórica eu não poderia perder. Abaixo, pra quem não tem acesso ao UOL.

"Não tem mais centro e periferia", afirma Maria da Conceição

CLAUDIA ANTUNES
DO RIO
A ascensão da China, com uma demanda por produtos primários que vai durar décadas, mudou a divisão internacional do trabalho e tornou datada a dicotomia entre industrialização e produção de commodities que marcou a trajetória brasileira desde os anos 1930.
Quem afirma é a economista Maria da Conceição Tavares, veterana expoente do desenvolvimentismo, que durante o século 20 propôs a ação do Estado para a industrialização, a fim de superar a desvantagem nas relações de troca no antigo sistema sob hegemonia econômica dos EUA --que, ao também produzirem matérias-primas, forçavam a baixa de seus preços.
"Não tem centro e periferia como antes. Há países de desenvolvimento intermediário, entre os quais estamos", afirma Conceição.
Ela deu entrevista à Folha às vésperas de ser homenageada amanhã, no Rio, no lançamento do livro "O Papel do BNDE na Industrialização do Brasil", fruto de pesquisa que coordenou para o Centro Internacional Celso Furtado de Políticas para o Desenvolvimento.
O novo cenário não quer dizer, afirma, que o país deva descuidar do parque industrial. Ela se preocupa com a avalanche de importações e defende o papel do BNDES no apoio a grandes empresas nacionais.
Petista, Conceição aposta que Dilma Rousseff mudará a orientação ortodoxa do BC, caso eleita, e diz que o tucano José Serra, colega do tempo da Cepal (Comissão Econômica para a América Latina) com quem há 40 anos escreveu um artigo marco, "Além da Estagnação", é conservador na área social. Abaixo, a íntegra da entrevista.
FOLHA - Um dos problemas recorrentes do período de industrialização abordado no livro é o déficit no balanço de pagamentos. Hoje essa preocupação surge de novo. Os riscos são os mesmos?
MARIA DA CONCEIÇÃO TAVARES - Não, naquela altura o problema era basicamente a rigidez da pauta de exportações, que não é o caso agora. A gente só tinha produtos primários e o único período em que houve aumento de preços das matérias-primas foi durante a Guerra da Coreia (1950-1953).
Além disso, o processo de substituição de importações não poupava divisas, pelo contrário, era para substituir importações por produtos internos. Ao fazer isso, ampliava o mercado interno e ampliava a demanda [por bens de capital importados para aumentar a produção]. Hoje em dia você tem uma indústria montada. O problema é o câmbio.
FOLHA - Mas há toda a preocupação com a primarização da pauta de exportações brasileiras.
CONCEIÇÃO - Isso não tem nenhum cabimento, porque a primarização da pauta de exportações de hoje não se parece nada com a de então. Ao contrário daquela época, quando havia relações de troca desfavoráveis, as relações são favoráveis. Quem demanda produtos primários é a China e a Ásia inteira, que crescem muito mais do que o resto do mundo. Naquela época, os EUA eram nossos concorrentes.
FOLHA - O candidato José Serra fala muito do risco de desindustrialização no Brasil. A sra. acha que existe esse risco?
CONCEIÇÃO - Desindustrialização houve no governo deles, do Fernando Henrique, com uma política de câmbio completamente irresponsável, uma taxa de juros alta, que começou a afrouxar a partir do segundo mandato.
O problema de agora é que, com a crise mundial, o dólar desvalorizou e todas as moedas valorizaram, exceto a moeda chinesa, que está amarrada ao dólar e controlada, com controle de capitais. O resto foi para o diabo.
Agora é um problema de valorização e isso não afeta as exportações. Isso afeta as importações, que estão disparando. A gente não sabe se estão disparando como reação apenas ao câmbio ou à recuperação da economia. Eu acho que são os dois. A indústria sofreu um abalo em 2009, e neste ano recuperou com muita força. Agora está desacelerando. Tem que estar sempre avaliando. Se você deixar entrar à galega acaba desindustrializando.
FOLHA - E o que pode ser feito?
CONCEIÇÃO - O próprio ministro da Fazenda já avisou que tem que controlar essa taxa de câmbio, não pode deixar rolar.
FOLHA - Mas o câmbio não tem relação com os juros do Banco Central, que atraem capital de fora?
CONCEIÇÃO - Tem, mas não só. Porque a valorização deu em todos os países, mesmo os que praticam taxas de juros negativas, que é o caso do Japão. É a situação particular do dólar agora que está fazendo isso.
A situação, portanto, não se parece nada com a do período entre 1950 e 1980. Não tem crise no balanço de pagamentos no sentido clássico. E muito menos dívida externa. Conseguimos passar essa crise sem problemas na dívida externa, com reservas, coisa que nunca aconteceu em nenhuma crise internacional desde o século 19. Agora, tem que ter uma política industrial mais clara, uma política cambial obviamente controlada, que não se resolva apenas com os juros.
FOLHA - Outra discussão que tem uma analogia com o período atual é a ideia de criar um mercado de capitais privado, bancos de investimentos privados que financiem investimentos de longo prazo, o que foi tentado pelo Roberto Campos no primeiro governo da ditadura.
CONCEIÇÃO - A ideia do mercado de capitais estava lá na reforma administrativa Bulhões-Campos. O problema é que ele veio com a ideia dos bancos de investimentos, que não funcionaram.
FOLHA - Mas essa discussão volta agora, não?
CONCEIÇÃO - A dos bancos de investimentos, não. O problema é que nem os bancos nem os mercados de capitais não estão financiando desenvolvimento em longo prazo.
FOLHA - E é possível que isso, que nunca aconteceu, aconteça agora?
CONCEIÇÃO - Eu não acredito muito. Porque na verdade o mercado de capitais serve basicamente em toda parte não é para financiar desenvolvimento, é para transformar patrimônio. Mas enfim, essa é uma ideia antiga, continuam a fazer esforço. O financiamento na verdade depende mais do crédito de longo prazo, e aí é que se tem que arrumar um jeito de que haja um crédito em longo prazo que não dependa apenas do BNDES e da Caixa Econômica, que carregam nas costas.
FOLHA - Como avalia às críticas feitas ao perfil dos empréstimos do BNDES, para grandes grupos?
CONCEIÇÃO - A imprensa conservadora, que nunca gostou do BNDES, vem com esse papo de que a capitalização [do banco] vai para a dívida pública, o que não é verdade. Formalmente vai para a dívida fiscal, mas na verdade não é assim em longo prazo. Porque você empresta, mas eles retornam. E o retorno do investimento é sempre positivo. O BNDES não está emprestando a ninguém com retorno negativo.
FOLHA - Mas até o Carlos Lessa [ex-presidente do BNDES] afirma que o banco deveria ser mais exigente sobre investimentos no Brasil ao fazer empréstimos a grandes empresas.
CONCEIÇÃO - Lessa nesse particular discrepa do [Luciano] Coutinho, que tem a visão do que ocorreu na Ásia, no Japão, na Coreia, do "pick the winner" [escolha o vencedor], que tem que escolher as empresas vencedoras para que elas sejam competitivas lá fora, para que elas se internacionalizem com poder de mercado. Essa é a única diferença, porque o Lessa é desenvolvimentista, o Coutinho também. Só tem desenvolvimentista agora. Liberal, só tem a charanga.
FOLHA - A Dilma e o Serra também são desenvolvimentistas.
CONCEIÇÃO - Do ponto de vista da operação fiscal, o Serra é ortodoxo, e isso é ruim. Ele quer acelerar a contração do gasto público. No fundo, ele não leva a sério as políticas de bem-estar social, a universalização da educação, da saúde, que tornaram o Orçamento mais pesado. Se cortar, não se pode fazer nada de política universal, tem que ficar só com política para pobre.
Mas não há dúvida de que o Serra também é desenvolvimentista do ponto de vista industrial. O problema dele são os programas sociais, o aumento da Previdência, do salário mínimo, todas as medidas de alcance social mais profundo que o Lula tomou. Nas políticas compensatórias, eu não creio que ele voltaria atrás, que ninguém é maluco. A universalização é que é o problema, as políticas sociais de longo alcance. O gasto com educação, saúde, Previdência.
FOLHA - No segundo governo Vargas [1951-1954], quando começa o Plano de Reaparelhamento Econômico, o ministério lembra o do primeiro governo Lula, com empresários e monetaristas no comando da política econômica. Como interpretar essa coincidência?
CONCEIÇÃO - Por sorte, depois do interregno monetarista do [Eugenio] Gudin [ministro da Fazenda de Café Filho, entre 1954 e 1955], veio o JK, que era desenvolvimentista. O [Horacio] Lafer [ministro da Fazenda de Vargas] queria fazer presidente do BNDE o Gudin, e não conseguiu, porque o Vargas não dormia de touca. O que ele fez é foi compor uma parte da diretoria do banco com pessoal que veio da Comissão Mista Brasil-Estados Unidos [1951-1953], entre os quais o Roberto Campos e o Glycon de Paiva, que ficaram como diretores, e colocou o homem dele, que era o gaúcho Ari Frederico Torres, como superintendente.
O problema é que o homem dele não entendia muito de economia, e por aí não foi. Mas havia os diretores que eram da Assessoria Econômica do Vargas. Então a assessoria do banco era composta metade de conservadores e metade de nacionalistas.
No que diz respeito a Lula, graças a Deus caiu o ministro da Fazenda [Antônio Palocci] e entrou o [Guido] Mantega, que é desenvolvimentista. O problema foi o Banco Central. O Banco Central é problema sempre, porque a estrutura do BC foi montada de tal maneira que os que não pensam da mesma maneira não têm futuro.
Um dos meninos mais brilhantes da atual Fazenda é o Nelson Barbosa [secretário de Acompanhamento Econômico]. Ele é um keynesiano um pouco ortodoxo. Ele é originariamente do BC, fez concurso e passou. O [Luiz Eduardo] Melin [chefe de gabinete da Fazenda] também é do BC. Mas eles não podem fazer nada, porque começam uma carreira e tem em cima a diretoria que é toda conservadora.
Tem é que fazer com o BC o mesmo que foi feito no BNDES pelo Vargas, uma diretoria mista, metade conservadora, para agradar os banqueiros e eles não encherem muito o saco, senão eles enchem mesmo, e outra metade para ajudar o desenvolvimento, fazer uma política monetária menos estúpida.
Quer dizer, o conservador no governo Lula foi só a política monetária. E não foi pouca porcaria, eu concordo. Briguei para burro.
FOLHA - Mas isso num governo Dilma pode mudar?
CONCEIÇÃO - Com certeza vai mudar. É só esperar e ver. Mas não é mole, porque o pessoal mais desenvolvimentista tem muito pouca prática de mercado. Tem que ter os que têm prática de mercado, porque senão você não consegue operar o banco. Houve sempre uma tensão muita grande entre a Fazenda e o BC [no segundo mandato de Lula], que nunca foi o caso na história do Brasil, em que sempre Fazenda e BC eram conservadores e Planejamento, Indústria e Comércio eram desenvolvimentistas. Mas isso não é mais assim.
FOLHA - Mas é melhor ter a tensão?
CONCEIÇÃO - Por mim não, mas, como eu estou dizendo, não tem economista progressista com domínio de BC, com exceção desses dois que eu mencionei, que foram do BC. Foram meus alunos, trabalharam comigo, conhecem teoria monetária. A esquerda tem mania de não gostar de política monetária. A única monetarista de esquerda era eu, mas é óbvio que eu não posso ser presidente do BC com 80 anos e com esse temperamento que eu tenho. Tem também o [Luiz Gonzaga] Beluzzo, o próprio Luciano Coutinho.
FOLHA - Então hoje, ao contrário da década de 90, começa a haver um predomínio do pensamento desenvolvimentista?
CONCEIÇÃO - No Brasil sim, mas não no mundo. Olha para a Europa. A Europa está num reacionarismo conservador que é uma desgraça, está pior que os EUA. Nos EUA, até os conservadores viraram keynesianos por causa da crise. Na Europa, os caras estão fiscalistas ao extremo, estão arrebentando com a Europa, tem uma tendência japonesa [de estagnação] acentuada.
FOLHA - Essa conjuntura internacional, em que a China é o grande demandante, favorece o Brasil?
CONCEIÇÃO - É favorável. Quem é hoje o grande centro manufatureiro no mundo? É a Ásia, ninguém compete em produtos manufaturados com eles, mesmo com a taxa de câmbio melhor. Então aqui tem que ter um certo controle das importações, mesmo disfarçado. Mas como, por outro lado, eles são realmente os maiores demandantes de matérias-primas, hoje, sobretudo para a América do Sul Brasil, Argentina, Chile, isso faz uma diferença cavalar.
FOLHA - E dumping [venda abaixo do valor] de produtos chineses?
CONCEIÇÃO - A China não está tendo o sucesso que está por causa de dumping, é por causa da política inteira. Se houver dumping é feito pelas multinacionais que lá estão, porque, ao contrário do Japão, a China não fez restrições a que na área exportadora entrassem as multinacionais.
Você não pode deixar de levar em conta que mudou a divisão internacional do trabalho. Paradoxalmente, não vejo muita gente mencionar isso. Houve uma mudança radical da divisão internacional do trabalho, na qual nós estamos bem colocados porque a gente exporta para todo mundo. E, em particular, no que diz respeito a matérias-primas, exportamos mais para a China do que para a Europa, por exemplo. Nunca exportamos matérias-primas para os EUA.
FOLHA - Mas a China também pode competir com os produtos industriais brasileiros em terceiros mercados.
CONCEIÇÃO - Ela pode competir com quem ela quiser. Claro que temos que nos precaver. Por que a tendência hoje entre países em desenvolvimento é de acordos bilaterais, quando sempre fomos multilateralistas? É porque o comércio multilateral está de pernas para o ar. A crise americana arrebentou com o sistema todo, com o sistema monetário, o sistema de comércio internacional.
Estamos num período de transição, no qual acho que o Brasil tem chance. Ter uma disponibilidade de recursos naturais como nós temos, que vai da água ao petróleo, não é qualquer país que tem. Isso ajuda, ao contrário de antes. Não estamos baseados no café, mas numa pauta totalmente diversificada. E a coisa do pré-sal vai ajudar.
FOLHA - Quando teve o 2º Plano Nacional de Desenvolvimento, com o Geisel (1975-1979), ele tentou dar um salto qualitativo tecnológico.
CONCEIÇÃO - Tentou, e nós começamos a exportação de manufaturas para valer.
FOLHA - Mas o Brasil ainda tem dificuldade de desenvolvimento tecnológico, por exemplo em computadores.
CONCEIÇÃO - Tem menos do que tinha na época. No Geisel, ainda estávamos começando e a área de computadores fracassou. O projeto Cobra foi um desastre. Aí só avançamos na área bancária, temos a mais desenvolvida em matéria de computação do mundo. Estamos com tecnologia avançada em aviões, em perfuração de petróleo, o que não é pouca porcaria.
FOLHA - Mas em relação à competição chinesa em informática, máquinas?
CONCEIÇÃO - O que tem que entender é que a China é um híbrido. Não pode ser considerada mais um país em desenvolvimento, mas tem uma área subdesenvolvida, com uma população gigantesca, no campo. A China ainda tem que caminhar para dentro, desenvolver o mercado interno. Mas ela tem um solo esgotado. Ao contrário da mudança de centro [capitalista] da Inglaterra, que não tinha produtos primários, para os EUA, que tinham, o que levou ao fim do modelo primário-exportador na América Latina, a China vai ter décadas ainda importando produtos primários, tanto na parte alimentar quanto na de minério e petróleo. Para nós está bom.
FOLHA - Mas quando se fala do risco de desindustrialização...
CONCEIÇÃO - É por causa das importações e do câmbio. O resto quem fala está fazendo blá-blá-blá, porque toda a indústria está aí ainda.
FOLHA - Mas um argumento é que a indústria é que dá emprego de qualidade para os jovens, e não o setor primário.
CONCEIÇÃO - Não é verdade. Os empregos de qualidade costumam ser no setor terciário, nos bancos e nos serviços de utilidade pública. Pelo lado do emprego eu não estaria preocupada. Estamos com problema de desemprego estrutural, mas devido à pobreza. Com uma política de combate à pobreza e com uma política de educação você repõe as bases de um país desenvolvido. Desta vez, acho que a maldição do [Celso] Furtado, que era desenvolvimento junto com subdesenvolvimento, pode terminar.
Na indústria, a parte de capital estrangeiro em geral não faz desenvolvimento tecnólogico, traz da matriz, o que é um problema. Mas, como a divisão internacional do trabalho está mudando, também há a tendência de adaptar produtos a cada mercado em que as empresas estão instaladas.
Quanto à indústria nacional, o Ministério de Ciência e Tecnologia e a Finep [Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos] continuam fazendo o que podem para fazer semeadura de tecnologia, sobretudo na pequena e na média empresas. O BNDES faz também para a grande empresa, até porque ninguém acredita que seja possível competir lá fora sem isso. Se não tivéssemos tido avanço tecnológico em aços especiais, claro que a Gerdau não estaria com filiais até nos EUA.
Eu tenho trabalhado na questão da internacionalização do capital, e tenho a impressão que por esse lado não estamos tão mal. O nosso problema é fechar a brecha entre o desenvolvimento e o subdesenvolvimento nosso, que é menos problema do que para a China e para a Índia.
São situações muito díspares. Não tem centro e periferia como antes. Tem países de desenvolvimento intermediário, entre os quais estamos. A Rússia sim desmantelou a indústria toda. Só exporta gás e petróleo. Isso é que é uma situação ruim. Está lá no Bric [Brasil, Rússia, Índia e China] um pouco fora de propósito.
A discussão agricultura versus indústria é datada, do pós-Segunda Guerra. Ninguém vai fazer uma opção por um outro. Precisa de agricultura familiar, de agrobusiness, da indústria de transformação.
Agora, estou de acordo que, na indústria eletroeletrônica, por causa da Zona Franca de Manaus, montamos uma fábrica de montagem e não avançou ainda. Mas vai avançar, não tem dúvida. Até porque o BNDES tem política setorial, como na farmacêutica e na química.
FOLHA - E a acusação de que o governo Lula escolhe as empresas beneficiadas?
CONCEIÇÃO - Política industrial só horizontal não vai para lugar nenhum. Tem que continuar as horizontais, mas tem que fazer as setoriais. Se não escolher setores e empresas, não avança. Não estamos num mundo de concorrência perfeita. Estamos num mundo monopolista. Se não tiver grande empresa aqui, não vamos para lugar nenhum.
FOLHA - O período do livro é caracterizado como a "modernização conservadora" do Brasil. O Brasil ainda vive esse fenômeno ou pode acertar contas nesse ponto?
CONCEIÇÃO - A parte da modernização conservadora que diz respeito ao grande capital, bancário, industrial, uma parte das construturas, vive. Grande capital é grande capital, está pouco se lixando para ideologia. É conservador no sentido de que não teve uma democratização da propriedade.
FOLHA - Não teve reforma agrária.
CONCEIÇÃO - Tem que terminar, com a pequena produção agrícola independente, e a pequena e a média empresas com tecnologia e apoio. Essa ideia do cartão BNDES, que aliás foi o Lessa que inventou, com o qual se pode pedir R$ 1 milhão para fazer uma padaria, montar uma pequena empresa. O Lessa botou o BNDES outra vez no espírito de ser um banco de desenvolvimento. No governo de Fernando Henrique, era só um banco da privataria. Só não foi ameaçado porque tem a indústria que demanda recursos.
FOLHA - A senhora está otimista, então?
CONCEIÇÃO - Pela primeira vez na história do Brasil não há uma crise da dívida externa. Em segundo lugar, voltamos a usar o BNDES, desde o começo do governo Lula, para promover o desenvolvimento. A coisa social mudou também radicalmente. Consolidou-se a inflação baixa, não precisa ter taxa de juros lá em cima para que ela caia. Está estabilizada.
Isso muda tudo, porque a inflação é uma praga para os salários. O pessoal da esquerda não levava isso em conta, o que era uma asneira. Com inflação, nenhuma política salarial resolve. Lembra que tinha indexação dos salários e a inflação corria na frente.
Estamos numa situação bem melhor do que nunca estivemos desde a década de 30. E também com estabilidade política, por mais que façam esse banzé. Se você afirmou a democracia, se está afirmando as políticas sociais, se está continuando a política industrial, eu estou otimista, pela primeira vez, para dizer a verdade, porque em geral sou pessimista. Espero não me equivocar, mas, também, se me equivocar não vou estar viva para ver.
FOLHA - E como a sra. vê a situação dos EUA?
CONCEIÇÃO - Estou com os keynesianos de lá, como o [Paul] Krugman. Acho que fizeram pouco e mal feito. Mas isso não é culpa do presidente. Ele tem um Congresso desvairadamente conservador.
Isso sim me preocupa [no Brasil]. O pessoal só presta atenção na eleição para a Presidência, mas é importante ver o Congresso. Vamos ver se dá um Senado um pouco melhor, mas de qualquer maneira a capacidade de negociação continua. Nisso o velho [economista ortodoxo Otavio Gouveia de] Bulhões [1906-1990], meu mestre antigo, tinha razão, que o Executivo é mais forte, mas para fazer reformas tem que passar pelo Congresso.
Algumas coisas, como reforma tributária e política, dependem do Congresso, e em geral os congressistas não querem mudar o status quo. São reformas que eu vejo que são importantes, e que o Congresso provalmente vai continuar no chove não molha. Vamos ver se a gente consegue.
FOLHA - Mas a reforma tributária deve reduzir a carga como proporção do PIB ou a natureza dos impostos?
CONCEIÇÃO - Como vai mudar a carga sobre o PIB, com as demandas de política pública que você precisa fazer? Não, tem que mudar a carga mal distribuída e a estrutura dos tributos, que é muito complexa, muito atrapalhada. Continua aquela briga entre os Estados sobre o ICMS [Imposto sobre Circulação de Mercadorias].
Hoje o Lula já sacou que precisa fazer aliança nos dois sentidos, com o PMDB para uns fins e com os partidos minoritários da esquerda para o outro. Acho que não está tão difícil como já esteve.
FOLHA - Mas a sra. acha que, qualquer que seja o sucessor do Lula, vai ter o jogo de cintura dele?
CONCEIÇÃO - Qualquer que seja é problema seu. Eu acho que já está decidido. Mas pode ser de novo que eu esteja otimista demais. O fato é que, com Dilma ou Serra, haverá o mesmo problema no Congresso, essas duas reformas serão difíceis. Depende de quem eles botarem para ser o negociador com o Congresso.
Evidente que a capacidade do Lula ninguém vai ter mais neste país, porque o único com capacidade semelhante foi o Vargas. Acabou mal, coitado, o que não é o caso do Lula, que negociou durante oito anos e está terminando muito bem. Isso também é uma novidade. Você já viu algum presidente que veio do povo como esse, apesar de todos os percalços e denúncias, ter conseguido isso? Além do fato de hoje o Brasil estar no cenário internacional graças a ele.
São coisas que, para mim, marcam uma mudança e uma transição. Estou convencida de que estamos numa transição e que efetivamente, ganhe quem ganhe, não vão arrebentar com o Brasil, embora eu prefira a Dilma porque conheço o caráter progressista dela e o Serra ficou mais conservador.


SENTAPUA! E vamos à luta, Filhos da Pátria!

Marc Andressen, como montar uma startup (histórico)

Hi Folks,

Há milênios, MA publicou uma série incrível de estórias sobre como viver ou não viver uma startup. Como ele já deu sumiço no blog e o conteúdo só está disponível nos arquivos da net, me dei a liberdade de "surrupia-lo" e colocar aqui.

The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup

• Jun 18, 2007
• 70 Comments

In this series of posts I will walk through some of my accumulated knowledge and experience in building high-tech startups.
My specific experience is from three companies I have co-founded: Netscape, sold to America Online in 1998 for $4.2 billion; Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), a public software company with an approximately $1 billion market cap; and now Ning, a new, private consumer Internet company.
But more generally, I've been fortunate enough to be involved in and exposed to a broad range of other startups -- maybe 40 or 50 in enough detail to know what I'm talking about -- since arriving in Silicon Valley in 1994: as a board member, as an angel investor, as an advisor, as a friend of various founders, and as a participant in various venture capital funds.
This series will focus on lessons learned from this entire cross-section of Silicon Valley startups -- so don't think that anything I am talking about is referring to one of my own companies: most likely when I talk about a scenario I have seen or something I have experienced, it is from some other startup that I am not naming but was involved with some other way than as a founder.
Finally, much of my perspective is based on Silicon Valley and the environment that we have here -- the culture, the people, the venture capital base, and so on. Some of it will travel well to other regions and countries, some probably will not. Caveat emptor.
With all that out of the way, let's start at the beginning: why not to do a startup.
Startups, even in the wake of the crash of 2000, have become imbued with a real mystique -- you read a lot about how great it is to do a startup, how much fun it is, what with the getting to invent the future, all the free meals, foosball tables, and all the rest.
Now, it is true that there are a lot of great things about doing a startup. They include, in my experience:
Most fundamentally, the opportunity to be in control of your own destiny -- you get to succeed or fail on your own, and you don't have some bozo telling you what to do. For a certain kind of personality, this alone is reason enough to do a startup.
The opportunity to create something new -- the proverbial blank sheet of paper. You have the ability -- actually, the obligation -- to imagine a product that does not yet exist and bring it into existence, without any of the constraints normally faced by larger companies.
The opportunity to have an impact on the world -- to give people a new way to communicate, a new way to share information, a new way to work together, or anything else you can think of that would make the world a better place. Think it should be easier for low-income people to borrow money? Start Prosper. Think television should be opened up to an infinite number of channels? Start Joost. Think that computers should be based on Unix and open standards and not proprietary technology? Start Sun.
The ability to create your ideal culture and work with a dream team of people you get to assemble yourself. Want your culture to be based on people who have fun every day and enjoy working together? Or, are hyper-competitive both in work and play? Or, are super-focused on creating innovative new rocket science technologies? Or, are global in perspective from day one? You get to choose, and to build your culture and team to suit.
And finally, money -- startups done right can of course be highly lucrative. This is not just an issue of personal greed -- when things go right, your team and employees will themselves do very well and will be able to support their families, send their kids to college, and realize their dreams, and that's really cool. And if you're really lucky, you as the entrepreneur can ultimately make profound philanthropic gifts that change society for the better.
However, there are many more reasons to not do a startup.
First, and most importantly, realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced.
You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again.
Over and over and over.
And I'm talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs.
There is so much uncertainty and so much risk around practically everything you are doing. Will the product ship on time? Will it be fast enough? Will it have too many bugs? Will it be easy to use? Will anyone use it? Will your competitor beat you to market? Will you get any press coverage? Will anyone invest in the company? Will that key new engineer join? Will your key user interface designer quit and go to Google? And on and on and on...
Some days things will go really well and some things will go really poorly. And the level of stress that you're under generally will magnify those transient data points into incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude.
Sound like fun?
Second, in a startup, absolutely nothing happens unless you make it happen.
This one throws both founders and employees new to startups.
In an established company -- no matter how poorly run or demoralized -- things happen. They just happen. People come in to work. Code gets written. User interfaces get designed. Servers get provisioned. Markets get analyzed. Pricing gets studied and determined. Sales calls get made. The wastebaskets get emptied. And so on.
A startup has none of the established systems, rhythms, infrastructure that any established company has.
In a startup it is very easy for the code to not get written, for the user interfaces to not get designed... for people to not come into work... and for the wastebaskets to not get emptied.
You as the founder have to put all of these systems and routines and habits in place and get everyone actually rowing -- forget even about rowing in the right direction: just rowing at all is hard enough at the start.
And until you do, absolutely nothing happens.
Unless, of course, you do it yourself.
Have fun emptying those wastebaskets.
Third, you get told no -- a lot.
Unless you've spent time in sales, you are probably not familiar with being told no a lot.
It's not so much fun.
Go watch Death of a Salesman and then Glengarry Glen Ross.
That's roughly what it's like.
You're going to get told no by potential employees, potential investors, potential customers, potential partners, reporters, analysts...
Over and over and over.
And when you do get a "yes", half the time you'll get a call two days later and it'll turn out the answer has morphed into "no".
Better start working on your fake smile.
Fourth, hiring is a huge pain in the ass.
You will be amazed how many windowshoppers you'll deal with.
A lot of people think they want to be part of a startup, but when the time comes to leave their cushy job at HP or Apple, they flinch -- and stay.
Going through the recruiting process and being seduced by a startup is heady stuff for your typical engineer or midlevel manager at a big company -- you get to participate vicariously in the thrill of a startup without actually having to join or do any of the hard work.
As a founder of a startup trying to hire your team, you'll run into this again and again.
When Jim Clark decided to start a new company in 1994, I was one of about a dozen people at various Silicon Valley companies he was talking to about joining him in what became Netscape.
I was the only one who went all the way to saying "yes" (largely because I was 22 and had no reason not to do it).
The rest flinched and didn't do it.
And this was Jim Clark, a legend in the industry who was coming off of the most successful company in Silicon Valley in 1994 -- Silicon Graphics Inc.
How easy do you think it's going to be for you?
Then, once you do get through the windowshoppers and actually hire some people, your success rate on hiring is probably not going to be higher than 50%, and that's if you're good at it.
By that I mean that half or more of the people you hire aren't going to work out. They're going to be too lazy, too slow, easily rattled, political, bipolar, or psychotic.
And then you have to either live with them, or fire them.
Which ones of those sounds like fun?
Fifth, God help you, at some point you're going to have to hire executives.
You think hiring employees is hard and risky -- wait until you start hiring for VP Engineering, VP Marketing, VP Sales, VP HR, General Counsel, and CFO.
Sixth, the hours.
There's been a lot of talk in Silicon Valley lately about work/life balance -- about how you should be able to do a startup and simultaneously live a full and fulfilling outside life.
Now, personally, I have a lot of sympathy for that point of view.
And I try hard in my companies (well, at least my last two companies) to do whatever I can to help make sure that people aren't ground down to little tiny spots on the floor by the workload and the hours.
But, it's really difficult.
The fact is that startups are incredibly intense experiences and take a lot out of people in the best of circumstances.
And just because you want people to have work/life balance, it's not so easy when you're close to running out of cash, your product hasn't shipped yet, your VC is mad at you, and your Kleiner Perkins-backed competitor in Menlo Park -- you know, the one whose employees' average age seems to be about 19 -- is kicking your butt.
Which is what it's going to be like most of the time.
And even if you can help your employees have proper work/life balance, as a founder you certainly won't.
(In case you were wondering, by the way, the hours do compound the stress.)
Seventh, it's really easy for the culture of a startup to go sideways.
This combines the first and second items above.
This is the emotional rollercoaster wreaking havoc on not just you but your whole company.
It takes time for the culture of any company to become "set" -- for the team of people who have come together for the first time to decide collectively what they're all about, what they value -- and how they look at challenge and adversity.
In the best case, you get an amazing dynamic of people really pulling together, supporting one another, and working their collective tails off in pursuit of a dream.
In the worst case, you end up with widespread, self-reinforcing bitterness, disillusionment, cynicism, bad morale, contempt for management, and depression.
And you as the founder have much less influence over this than you'll think you do.
Guess which way it usually goes.
Eighth, there are lots of X factors that can come along and whup you right upside the head, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about them.
Stock market crashes.
Terrorist attacks.
Natural disasters.
A better funded startup with a more experienced team that's been hard at work longer than you have, in stealth mode, that unexpectedly releases a product that swiftly comes to dominate your market, completely closing off your opportunity, and you had no idea they were even working on it.
At best, any given X factor might slam shut the fundraising window, cause customers to delay or cancel purchases -- or, at worst, shut down your whole company.
Russian mobsters laundering millions of dollars of dirty money through your service, resulting in the credit card companies closing you down.
You think I'm joking about that one?
OK, now here's the best part:
I haven't even talked about figuring out what product to build, building it, taking it to market, and standing out from the crowd.
All the risks in the core activities of what your company actually does are yet to come, and to be discussed in future posts in this series.
Closing metaphor:

The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 2: When the VCs say "no"

• Jun 20, 2007

This post is about what to do between when the VCs say "no" to funding your startup, and when you either change their minds or find some other path.
I'm going to assume that you've done all the basics: developed a plan and a pitch, decided that venture financing is right for you and you are right for venture financing, lined up meetings with properly qualified VCs, and made your pitch.
And the answer has come back and it's "no".
One "no" doesn't mean anything -- the VC could just be having a bad day, or she had a bad experience with another company in your category, or she had a bad experience with another company with a similar name, or she had a bad experience with another founder who kind of looks like you, or her Mercedes SLR McLaren's engine could have blown up on the freeway that morning -- it could be anything. Go meet with more VCs.
If you meet with three VCs and they all say "no", it could just be a big coincidence. Go meet with more VCs.
If you meet with five, or six, or eight VCs and they all say no, it's not a coincidence.
There is something wrong with your plan.
Or, even if there isn't, there might as well be, because you're still not getting funded.
Meeting with more VCs after a bunch have said no is probably a waste of time. Instead, retool your plan -- which is what this post is about.
But first, lay the groundwork to go back in later.
It's an old -- and true -- cliche that VCs rarely actually say "no" -- more often they say "maybe", or "not right now", or "my partners aren't sure", or "that's interesting, let me think about it".
They do that because they don't want to invest in your company given the current facts, but they want to keep the door open in case the facts change.
And that's exactly what you want -- you want to be able to go back to them with a new set of facts, and change their minds, and get to "yes".
So be sure to take "no" gracefully -- politely ask them for feedback (which they probably won't give you, at least not completely honestly -- nobody likes calling someone else's baby ugly -- believe me, I've done it), thank them for their time, and ask if you can call them again if things change.
Trust me -- they'd much rather be saying "yes" than "no" -- they need all the good investments they can get.
Second, consider the environment.
Being told "no" by VCs in 1999 is a lot different than being told "no" in 2002.
If you were told "no" in 1999, I'm sure you're a wonderful person and you have huge potential and your mother loves you very much, but your plan really was seriously flawed.
If you were told "no" in 2002, you probably actually were the next Google, but most of the VCs were hiding under their desks and they just missed it.
In my opinion, we're now in a much more rational environment than either of those extremes -- a lot of good plans are being funded, along with some bad ones, but not all the bad ones.
I'll proceed under the assumption that we're in normal times. But if things get truly euphoric or truly funereal again, the rest of this post will probably not be very helpful -- in either case.
Third, retool your plan.
This is the hard part -- changing the facts of your plan and what you are trying to do, to make your company more fundable.
To describe the dimensions that you should consider as you contemplate retooling your plan, let me introduce the onion theory of risk.
If you're an investor, you look at the risk around an investment as if it's an onion. Just like you peel an onion and remove each layer in turn, risk in a startup investment comes in layers that get peeled away -- reduced -- one by one.
Your challenge as an entrepreneur trying to raise venture capital is to keep peeling layers of risk off of your particular onion until the VCs say "yes" -- until the risk in your startup is reduced to the point where investing in your startup doesn't look terrifying and merely looks risky.
What are the layers of risk for a high-tech startup?
It depends on the startup, but here are some of the common ones:
Founder risk -- does the startup have the right founding team? A common founding team might include a great technologist, plus someone who can run the company, at least to start. Is the technologist really all that? Is the business person capable of running the company? Is the business person missing from the team altogether? Is it a business person or business people with no technologist, and therefore virtually unfundable?
Market risk -- is there a market for the product (using the term product and service interchangeably)? Will anyone want it? Will they pay for it? How much will they pay? How do we know?
Competition risk -- are there too many other startups already doing this? Is this startup sufficiently differentiated from the other startups, and also differentiated from any large incumbents?
Timing risk -- is it too early? Is it too late?
Financing risk -- after we invest in this round, how many additional rounds of financing will be required for the company to become profitable, and what will the dollar total be? How certain are we about these estimates? How do we know?
Marketing risk -- will this startup be able to cut through the noise? How much will marketing cost? Do the economics of customer acquisition -- the cost to acquire a customer, and the revenue that customer will generate -- work?
Distribution risk -- does this startup need certain distribution partners to succeed? Will it be able to get them? How? (For example, this is a common problem with mobile startups that need deals with major mobile carriers to succeed.)
Technology risk -- can the product be built? Does it involve rocket science -- or an equivalent, like artificial intelligence or natural language processing? Are there fundamental breakthroughs that need to happen? If so, how certain are we that they will happen, or that this team will be able to make them?
Product risk -- even assuming the product can in theory be built, can this team build it?
Hiring risk -- what positions does the startup need to hire for in order to execute its plan? E.g. a startup planning to build a high-scale web service will need a VP of Operations -- will the founding team be able to hire a good one?
Location risk -- where is the startup located? Can it hire the right talent in that location? And will I as the VC need to drive more than 20 minutes in my Mercedes SLR McLaren to get there?
You know, when you stack up all these layers and look at the full onion, you realize it's amazing that any venture investments ever get made.
What you need to do is take a hard-headed look at each of these risks -- and any others that are specific to your startup and its category -- and put yourself in the VC's shoes: what could this startup do to minimize or eliminate enough of these risks to make the company fundable?
Then do those things.
This isn't very much fun, since it will probably involve making significant changes to your plan, but look on the bright side: it's excellent practice for when your company ultimately goes public and has to file an S1 registration statement with the SEC, in which you have to itemize in huge detail every conceivable risk and bad thing that could ever possibly happen to you, up to and including global warming.
Some ideas on reducing risk:
Founder risk -- the tough one. If you're the technologist on a founding team with a business person, you have to consider the possibility that the VCs don't think the business person is strong enough to be the founding CEO. Or vice versa, maybe they think the technologist isn't strong enough to build the product. You may have to swap out one or more founders, and/or add one or more founders.
I put this one right up front because it can be a huge issue and the odds of someone being honest with you about it in the specific are not that high.
Market risk -- you probably need to validate the market, at a practical level. Sometimes more detailed and analytical market research will solve the problem, but more often you actually need to go get some customers to demonstrate that the market exists. Preferably, paying customers. Or at least credible prospects who will talk to VCs to validate the market hypothesis.
Competition risk -- is your differentiation really sharp enough? Rethink this one from the ground up. Lots of startups do not have strong enough differentiation out of the gate, even after they get funded. If you don't have a really solid idea as to how you're dramatically different from or advantaged over known and unknown competitors, you might not want to start a company in the first place.
Two additional points on competition risk that founders routinely screw up in VC pitches:
Never, ever say that you have no competitors. That signals naivete. Great markets draw competitors, and so if you really have no competition, you must not be in a great market. Even if you really believe you have no competitors, create a competitive landscape slide with adjacent companies in related market segments and be ready to talk crisply about how you are like and unlike those adjacent companies.
And never, ever say your market projections indicate you're going to be hugely successful if you get only 2% of your (extremely large) market. That also signals naivete. If you're going after 2% of a large market, that means the presumably larger companies that are going to take the other 98% are going to kill you. You have to have a theory for how you're going to get a significantly higher market share than 2%. (I pick 2% because that's the cliche, but if you're a VC, you've probably heard someone use it.)
Timing risk -- the only thing to do here is to make more progress, and demonstrate that you're not too early or too late. Getting customers in the bag is the most valuable thing you can do on this one.
Financing risk -- rethink very carefully how much money you will need to raise after this round of financing, and try to change the plan in plausible ways to require less money. For example, only serve Cristal at your launch party, and not Remy Martin "Black Pearl" Louis XIII cognac.
Marketing risk -- first, make sure your differentiation is super-sharp, because without that, you probably won't be able to stand out from the noise.
Then, model out your customer acquisition economics in detail and make sure that you can show how you'll get more revenue from a customer than it will cost in sales and marketing expense to acquire that customer. This is a common problem for startups pursuing the small business market, for example.
If it turns out you need a lot of money in absolute terms for marketing, look for alternate approaches -- perhaps guerilla marketing, or some form of virality.
Distribution risk -- this is a very tough one -- if your plan has distribution risk, which is to say you need a key distribution partner to make it work, personally I'd recommend shelving the plan and doing something else. Otherwise, you may need to go get the distribution deal before you can raise money, which is almost impossible.
Technology risk -- there's only one way around this, which is to build the product, or at least get it to beta, and then raise money.
Product risk -- same answer -- build it.
Hiring risk -- the best way to address this is to figure out which position/positions the VCs are worried about, and add it/them to the founding team. This will mean additional dilution for you, but it's probably the only way to solve the problem.
Location risk -- this is the one you're really not going to like. If you're not in a major center of entrepreneurialism and you're having trouble raising money, you probably need to move. There's a reason why most films get made in Los Angeles, and there's a reason most venture-backed US tech startups happen in Silicon Valley and handful of other places -- that's where the money is. You can start a company wherever you want, but you may not be able to get it funded there.
You'll notice that a lot of what you may need to do is kick the ball further down the road -- make more progress against your plan before you raise venture capital.
This obviously raises the issue of how you're supposed to do that before you've raised money.
Try to raise angel money, or bootstrap off of initial customers or consulting contracts, or work on it after hours while keeping your current job, or quit your job and live off of credit cards for a while.
Lots of entrepreneurs have done these things and succeeded -- and of course, many have failed.
Nobody said this would be easy.
The most valuable thing you can do is actually build your product. When in doubt, focus on that.
The next most valuable thing you can do is get customers -- or, for a consumer Internet service, establish a pattern of page view growth.
The whole theory of venture capital is that VCs are investing in risk -- another term for venture capital is "risk capital" -- but the reality is that VCs will only take on so much risk, and the best thing you can do to optimize your chances of raising money is to take out risk.
Peel away at the onion.
Then, once you've done that, recraft the pitch around the new facts. Go do the pitches again. And repeat as necessary.
And to end on a happy note, remember that "yes" can turn into "no" at any point up until the cash hits your company's bank account.
So keep your options open all the way to the end.

The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 3: "But I don't know any VCs!"

In my last post in this series, When the VCs say "no", I discussed what to do once you have been turned down for venture funding for the first time.
However, this presupposes you've been able to pitch VCs in the first place. What if you have a startup for which you'd like to raise venture funding, but you don't know any VCs?
I can certainly sympathize with this problem -- when I was in college working on Mosaic at the University of Illinois, the term "venture capital" might as well have been "klaatu barada nikto" for all I knew. I had never met a venture capitalist, no venture capitalist had ever talked to me, and I wouldn't have recognized one if I'd stumbled over his checkbook on the sidewalk. Without Jim Clark, I'm not at all certain I would have been able to raise money to start a company like Netscape, had it even occured to me to start a company in the first place.
The starting point for raising money from VCs when you don't know any VCs is to realize that VCs work mostly through referrals -- they hear about a promising startup or entrepreneur from someone they have worked with before, like another entrepreneur, an executive or engineer at one of the startups they have funded, or an angel investor with whom they have previously co-invested.
The reason for this is simply the math: any individual VC can only fund a few companies per year, and for every one she funds, she probably meets with 15 or 20, and there are hundreds more that would like to meet with her that she doesn't possibly have time to meet with. She has to rely on her network to help her screen the hundreds down to 15 or 20, so she can spend her time finding the right one out of the 15 or 20.
Therefore, submitting a business plan "over the transom", or unsolicited, to a venture firm is likely to amount to just as much as submitting a screenplay "over the transom" to a Hollywood talent agency -- that is, precisely nothing.
So the primary trick becomes getting yourself into a position where you're one of the 15 or 20 a particular venture capitalist is meeting with based on referrals from her network, not one of the hundreds of people who don't come recommended by anyone and whom she has no intention of meeting.
But before you think about doing that, the first order of business is to (paraphrasing for a family audience) "have your stuff together" -- create and develop your plan, your presentation, and your supporting materials so that when you do meet with a VC, you impress her right out of the gate as bringing her a fundable startup founded by someone who knows what he -- that's you -- is doing.
My recommendation is to read up on all the things you should do to put together a really effective business plan and presentation, and then pretend you have already been turned down once -- then go back to my last post and go through all the different things you should anticipate and fix before you actually do walk through the door.
One of the reason VCs only meet with startups through their networks is because too many of the hundreds of other startups that they could meet with come across as amateurish and uninformed, and therefore not fundable, when they do take meetings with them. So you have a big opportunity to cut through the noise by making a great first impression -- which requires really thinking things through ahead of time and doing all the hard work up front to really make your pitch and plan a masterpiece.
Working backwards from that, the best thing you can walk in with is a working product. Or, if you can't get to a working product without raising venture funding, then at least a beta or prototype of some form -- a web site that works but hasn't launched, or a software mockup with partial functionality, or something. And of course it's even better if you walk in with existing "traction" of some form -- customers, beta customers, some evidence of adoption by Internet users, whatever is appropriate for your particular startup.
With a working product that could be the foundation of a fundable startup, you have a much better chance of getting funded once you do get in the door. Back to my rule of thumb from the last post: when in doubt, work on the product.
Failing a working product and ideally customers or users, be sure to have as fleshed out a presentation as you possibly can -- including mockups, screenshots, market analyses, customer research such as interviews with real prospects, and the like.
Don't bother with a long detailed written business plan. Most VCs will either fund a startup based on a fleshed out Powerpoint presentation of about 20 slides, or they won't fund it at all. Corollary: any VC who requires a long detailed written business plan is probably not the right VC to be working with.
Next: qualify, qualify, qualify. Do extensive research on venture capitalists and find the ones who focus on the sector relevant to your startup. It is completely counterproductive to everyone involved for you to pitch a health care VC on a consumer Internet startup, or vice versa. Individual VCs are usually quite focused in the kinds of companies they are looking for, and identifying those VCs and screening out all the others is absolutely key.
Now, on to developing contacts:
The best way to develop contacts with VCs, in my opinion, is to work at a venture-backed startup, kick butt, get promoted, and network the whole way.
If you can't get hired by a venture-backed startup right now, work at a well-regarded large tech company that employs a lot of people like Google or Apple, gain experience, and then go to work at a venture-backed startup, kick butt, get promoted, and network the whole way.
And if you can't get hired by a well-regarded large tech company, go get a bachelor's or master's degree at a major research university from which well-regarded large tech companies regularly recruit, then work at a well-regarded large tech company that employs a lot of people like Google or Apple, gain experience, and then go to work at a venture-backed startup, kick butt, get promoted, and network the whole way.
I sound like I'm joking, but I'm completely serious -- this is the path taken by many venture-backed entrepreneurs I know.
Some alternate techniques that don't take quite as long:
If you're still in school, immediately transfer to, or plan on going to graduate school at, a large research university with well-known connections to the venture capital community, like Stanford or MIT.
Graduate students at Stanford are directly responsible for such companies as Sun, Cisco, Yahoo, and Google, so needless to say, Silicon Valley VCs are continually on the prowl on the Stanford engineering campus for the next Jerry Yang or Larry Page.
(In contrast, the University of Illinois, where I went to school, is mostly prowled by mutant cold-weather cows.)
Alternately, jump all over Y Combinator. This program, created by entrepreneur Paul Graham and his partners, funds early-stage startups in an organized program in Silicon Valley and Boston and then makes sure the good ones get in front of venture capitalists for follow-on funding. It's a great idea and a huge opportunity for the people who participate in it.
Read VC blogs -- read them all, and read them very very carefully. VCs who blog are doing entrepreneurs a huge service both in conveying highly useful information as well as frequently putting themselves out there to be contacted by entrepreneurs in various ways including email, comments, and even uploaded podcasts. Each VC is different in terms of how she wants to engage with people online, but by all means read as many VC blogs as you can and interact with as many of them as you can in appropriate ways.
See the list of VC bloggers on my home page, as well as on the home pages of various of those bloggers.
At the very least you will start to get a really good sense of which VCs who blog are interested in which kinds of companies.
At best, a VC blogger may encourage her readers to communicate with her in various ways, including soliciting email pitches in certain startup categories of interest to her.
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures has even gone so far as to encourage entrepreneurs to record and upload audio pitches for new ventures so he can listen to them on his IPod. I don't know if he's still doing that, but it's worth reading his blog and finding out.
Along those lines, some VCs are aggressive early adopters of new forms of communication and interaction -- current examples being Facebook and Twitter. Observationally, when a VC is exploring a new communiation medium like Facebook or Twitter, she can be more interested in interacting with various people over that new medium than she might otherwise be. So, when such a new thing comes out -- like, hint hint, Facebook or Twitter -- jump all over it, see which VCs are using it, and interact with them that way -- sensibly, of course.
More generally, it's a good idea for entrepreneurs who are looking for funding to blog -- about their startup, about interesting things going on, about their point of view. This puts an entrepreneur in the flow of conversation, which can lead to interaction with VCs through the normal medium of blogging. And, when a VC does decide to take a look at you and your company, she can read your blog to get a sense of who you are and how you think. It's another great opportunity to put forward a fantastic first impression.
Finally, if you are a programmer, I highly encourage you, if you have time, to create or contribute to a meaningful open source project. The open source movement is an amazing opportunity for programmers all over the world to not only build useful software that lots of people can use, but also build their own reputations completely apart from whatever day jobs they happen to have. Being able to email a VC and say, "I'm the creator of open source program X which has 50,000 users worldwide, and I want to tell you about my new startup" is a lot more effective than your normal pitch.
If you engage in a set of these techniques over time, you should be able to interact with at least a few VCs in ways that they find useful and that might lead to further conversations about funding, or even introductions to other VCs.
I'm personally hoping that the next Google comes out of a VC being sent an email pitch after the entrepreneur read that VC's blog. Then every VC on the planet will suddenly start blogging, overnight.
If none of those ideas work for you:
Your alternatives in reverse (declining) order of preference for funding are, in my view: angel funding, bootstrapping via consulting contracts or early customers, keeping your day job and working on your startup in your spare time, and credit card debt.
Angel funding -- funding from individuals who like to invest small amounts of money in early-stage startups, often before VCs come in -- can be a great way to go since good angels know good VCs and will be eager to introduce you to them so that your company goes on to be successful for the angel as well as for you.
This of course begs the question of how to raise angel money, which is another topic altogether!
I am not encouraging the other three alternatives -- bootstrapping, working on it part time, or credit card debt. Each has serious problems. But, it is easy to name highly successful entrepreneurs who have followed each of those paths, so they are worth noting.
Closing link:
Finally, be sure to read this page on Sequoia Capital's web site.
Sequoia is one of the very best venture firms in the world, and has funded many companies that you have heard of including Oracle, Apple, Yahoo, and Google.
On that page, Sequoia does entrepreneurs everywhere a huge service by first listing the criteria that they look for in a startup, then the recommended structure for your pitch presentation, and then finally actually asks for pitches "over the transom".
I have not done a thorough review of other VC web sites to see who else is being this open, but for Sequoia to be offering this to the world at large is a huge opportunity for the right startup. Don't let it pass by.
[Editorial note: This will be the last VC-related post in this series for a while. From now on I plan to focus much more on how to make a startup successful.]

The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters

This post is all about the only thing that matters for a new startup.
But first, some theory:
If you look at a broad cross-section of startups -- say, 30 or 40 or more; enough to screen out the pure flukes and look for patterns -- two obvious facts will jump out at you.
First obvious fact: there is an incredibly wide divergence of success -- some of those startups are insanely successful, some highly successful, many somewhat successful, and quite a few of course outright fail.
Second obvious fact: there is an incredibly wide divergence of caliber and quality for the three core elements of each startup -- team, product, and market.
At any given startup, the team will range from outstanding to remarkably flawed; the product will range from a masterpiece of engineering to barely functional; and the market will range from booming to comatose.
And so you start to wonder -- what correlates the most to success -- team, product, or market? Or, more bluntly, what causes success? And, for those of us who are students of startup failure -- what's most dangerous: a bad team, a weak product, or a poor market?
Let's start by defining terms.
The caliber of a startup team can be defined as the suitability of the CEO, senior staff, engineers, and other key staff relative to the opportunity in front of them.
You look at a startup and ask, will this team be able to optimally execute against their opportunity? I focus on effectiveness as opposed to experience, since the history of the tech industry is full of highly successful startups that were staffed primarily by people who had never "done it before".
The quality of a startup's product can be defined as how impressive the product is to one customer or user who actually uses it: How easy is the product to use? How feature rich is it? How fast is it? How extensible is it? How polished is it? How many (or rather, how few) bugs does it have?
The size of a startup's market is the the number, and growth rate, of those customers or users for that product.
(Let's assume for this discussion that you can make money at scale -- that the cost of acquiring a customer isn't higher than the revenue that customer will generate.)

Some people have been objecting to my classification as follows: "How great can a product be if nobody wants it?" In other words, isn't the quality of a product defined by how appealing it is to lots of customers? No. Product quality and market size are completely different.
Here's the classic scenario: the world's best software application for an operating system nobody runs. Just ask any software developer targeting the market for BeOS, Amiga, OS/2, or NeXT applications what the difference is between great product and big market.

So:
If you ask entrepreneurs or VCs which of team, product, or market is most important, many will say team. This is the obvious answer, in part because in the beginning of a startup, you know a lot more about the team than you do the product, which hasn't been built yet, or the market, which hasn't been explored yet.
Plus, we've all been raised on slogans like "people are our most important asset" -- at least in the US, pro-people sentiments permeate our culture, ranging from high school self-esteem programs to the Declaration of Independence's inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- so the answer that team is the most important feels right.
And who wants to take the position that people don't matter?
On the other hand, if you ask engineers, many will say product. This is a product business, startups invent products, customers buy and use the products. Apple and Google are the best companies in the industry today because they build the best products. Without the product there is no company. Just try having a great team and no product, or a great market and no product. What's wrong with you? Now let me get back to work on the product.
Personally, I'll take the third position -- I'll assert that market is the most important factor in a startup's success or failure.
Why?
In a great market -- a market with lots of real potential customers -- the market pulls product out of the startup.
The market needs to be fulfilled and the market will be fulfilled, by the first viable product that comes along.
The product doesn't need to be great; it just has to basically work. And, the market doesn't care how good the team is, as long as the team can produce that viable product.
In short, customers are knocking down your door to get the product; the main goal is to actually answer the phone and respond to all the emails from people who want to buy.
And when you have a great market, the team is remarkably easy to upgrade on the fly.
This is the story of search keyword advertising, and Internet auctions, and TCP/IP routers.
Conversely, in a terrible market, you can have the best product in the world and an absolutely killer team, and it doesn't matter -- you're going to fail.
You'll break your pick for years trying to find customers who don't exist for your marvelous product, and your wonderful team will eventually get demoralized and quit, and your startup will die.
This is the story of videoconferencing, and workflow software, and micropayments.
In honor of Andy Rachleff, formerly of Benchmark Capital, who crystallized this formulation for me, let me present Rachleff's Law of Startup Success:
The #1 company-killer is lack of market.
Andy puts it this way:

• When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins.
• When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.
• When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.

You can obviously screw up a great market -- and that has been done, and not infrequently -- but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most.
And neither a stellar team nor a fantastic product will redeem a bad market.
OK, so what?
Well, first question: Since team is the thing you have the most control over at the start, and everyone wants to have a great team, what does a great team actually get you?
Hopefully a great team gets you at least an OK product, and ideally a great product.
However, I can name you a bunch of examples of great teams that totally screwed up their products. Great products are really, really hard to build.
Hopefully a great team also gets you a great market -- but I can also name you lots of examples of great teams that executed brilliantly against terrible markets and failed. Markets that don't exist don't care how smart you are.
In my experience, the most frequent case of great team paired with bad product and/or terrible market is the second- or third-time entrepreneur whose first company was a huge success. People get cocky, and slip up. There is one high-profile, highly successful software entrepreneur right now who is burning through something like $80 million in venture funding in his latest startup and has practically nothing to show for it except for some great press clippings and a couple of beta customers -- because there is virtually no market for what he is building.
Conversely, I can name you any number of weak teams whose startups were highly successful due to explosively large markets for what they were doing.
Finally, to quote Tim Shephard: "A great team is a team that will always beat a mediocre team, given the same market and product."
Second question: Can't great products sometimes create huge new markets?
Absolutely.
This is a best case scenario, though.
VMWare is the most recent company to have done it -- VMWare's product was so profoundly transformative out of the gate that it catalyzed a whole new movement toward operating system virtualization, which turns out to be a monster market.
And of course, in this scenario, it also doesn't really matter how good your team is, as long as the team is good enough to develop the product to the baseline level of quality the market requires and get it fundamentally to market.
Understand I'm not saying that you should shoot low in terms of quality of team, or that VMWare's team was not incredibly strong -- it was, and is. I'm saying, bring a product as transformative as VMWare's to market and you're going to succeed, full stop.
Short of that, I wouldn't count on your product creating a new market from scratch.
Third question: as a startup founder, what should I do about all this?
Let's introduce Rachleff's Corollary of Startup Success:
The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.
Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.
You can always feel when product/market fit isn't happening. The customers aren't quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn't spreading, usage isn't growing that fast, press reviews are kind of "blah", the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.
And you can always feel product/market fit when it's happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it -- or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You're hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they've heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment bankers are staking out your house. You could eat free for a year at Buck's.
Lots of startups fail before product/market fit ever happens.
My contention, in fact, is that they fail because they never get to product/market fit.
Carried a step further, I believe that the life of any startup can be divided into two parts: before product/market fit (call this "BPMF") and after product/market fit ("APMF").
When you are BPMF, focus obsessively on getting to product/market fit.
Do whatever is required to get to product/market fit. Including changing out people, rewriting your product, moving into a different market, telling customers no when you don't want to, telling customers yes when you don't want to, raising that fourth round of highly dilutive venture capital -- whatever is required.
When you get right down to it, you can ignore almost everything else.
I'm not suggesting that you do ignore everything else -- just that judging from what I've seen in successful startups, you can.
Whenever you see a successful startup, you see one that has reached product/market fit -- and usually along the way screwed up all kinds of other things, from channel model to pipeline development strategy to marketing plan to press relations to compensation policies to the CEO sleeping with the venture capitalist. And the startup is still successful.
Conversely, you see a surprising number of really well-run startups that have all aspects of operations completely buttoned down, HR policies in place, great sales model, thoroughly thought-through marketing plan, great interview processes, outstanding catered food, 30" monitors for all the programmers, top tier VCs on the board -- heading straight off a cliff due to not ever finding product/market fit.
Ironically, once a startup is successful, and you ask the founders what made it successful, they will usually cite all kinds of things that had nothing to do with it. People are terrible at understanding causation. But in almost every case, the cause was actually product/market fit.
Because, really, what else could it possibly be?
[Editorial note: this post obviously raises way more questions than it answers. How exactly do you go about getting to product/market fit if you don't hit it right out of the gate? How do you evaluate markets for size and quality, especially before they're fully formed? What actually makes a product "fit" a market? What role does timing play? How do you know when to change strategy and go after a different market or build a different product? When do you need to change out some or all of your team? And why can't you count on on a great team to build the right product and find the right market? All these topics will be discussed in future posts in this series.]

The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 5: The Moby Dick theory of big companies

"There she blows," was sung out from the mast-head. "Where away?" demanded the captain.
"Three points off the lee bow, sir."
"Raise up your wheel. Steady!" "Steady, sir."
"Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?"
"Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she breaches!"
"Sing out! sing out every time!"
"Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there -- there -- THAR she blows -- bowes -- bo-o-os!"
"How far off?"
"Two miles and a half."
"Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands."
-- J. Ross Browne's Etchings of a Whaling Cruize, 1846

There are times in the life of a startup when you have to deal with big companies.
Maybe you're looking for a partnership or distribution deal. Perhaps you want an investment. Sometimes you want a marketing or sales alliance. From time to time you need a big company's permission to do something. Or maybe a big company has approached you and says it wants to buy your startup.
The most important thing you need to know going into any discussion or interaction with a big company is that you're Captain Ahab, and the big company is Moby Dick.

"Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a most monstrous size. ... This came towards us, open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam." -- Tooke's Lucian, "The True History"

When Captain Ahab went in search of the great white whale Moby Dick, he had absolutely no idea whether he would find Moby Dick, whether Moby Dick would allow himself to be found, whether Moby Dick would try to immediately capsize the ship or instead play cat and mouse, or whether Moby Dick was off mating with his giant whale girlfriend.
What happened was entirely up to Moby Dick.
And Captain Ahab would never be able explain to himself or anyone else why Moby Dick would do whatever it was he'd do.
You're Captain Ahab, and the big company is Moby Dick.

"Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one leg." "What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?"
"Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat! -- ah, ah!"
-- Moby Dick

Here's why:
The behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from the outside.
I always laugh when someone says, "Microsoft is going to do X", or "Google is going to do Y", or "Yahoo is going to do Z".
Odds are, nobody inside Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo knows what Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo is going to do in any given circumstance on any given issue.
Sure, maybe the CEO knows, if the issue is really big, but you're probably not dealing at the CEO level, and so that doesn't matter.
The inside of any big company is a very, very complex system consisting of many thousands of people, of whom at least hundreds and probably thousands are executives who think they have some level of decision-making authority.
On any given issue, many people inside the company are going to get some kind of vote on what happens -- maybe 8 people, maybe 10, 15, 20, sometimes many more.
When I was at IBM in the early 90's, they had a formal decision making process called "concurrence" -- on any given issue, a written list of the 50 or so executives from all over the company who would be affected by the decision in any way, no matter how minor, would be assembled, and any one of those executives could "nonconcur" and veto the decision. That's an extreme case, but even a non-extreme version of this process -- and all big companies have one; they have to -- is mind-bendingly complex to try to understand, even from the inside, let alone the outside.

"... and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain." -- Ulloa's South America

You can count on there being a whole host of impinging forces that will affect the dynamic of decision-making on any issue at a big company.
The consensus building process, trade-offs, quids pro quo, politics, rivalries, arguments, mentorships, revenge for past wrongs, turf-building, engineering groups, product managers, product marketers, sales, corporate marketing, finance, HR, legal, channels, business development, the strategy team, the international divisions, investors, Wall Street analysts, industry analysts, good press, bad press, press articles being written that you don't know about, customers, prospects, lost sales, prospects on the fence, partners, this quarter's sales numbers, this quarter's margins, the bond rating, the planning meeting that happened last week, the planning meeting that got cancelled this week, bonus programs, people joining the company, people leaving the company, people getting fired by the company, people getting promoted, people getting sidelined, people getting demoted, who's sleeping with whom, which dinner party the CEO went to last night, the guy who prepares the Powerpoint presentation for the staff meeting accidentally putting your startup's name in too small a font to be read from the back of the conference room...
You can't possibly even identify all the factors that will come to bear on a big company's decision, much less try to understand them, much less try to influence them very much at all.

"The larger whales, whalers seldom venture to attack. They stand in so great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent their too near approach." -- Uno Von Troil's Letters on Banks's and Solander's Voyage to Iceland In 1772

Back to Moby Dick.
Moby Dick might stalk you for three months, then jump out of the water and raise a huge ruckus, then vanish for six months, then come back and beach your whole boat, or alternately give you the clear shot you need to harpoon his giant butt.
And you're never going to know why.
A big company might study you for three months, then approach you and tell you they want to invest in you or partner with you or buy you, then vanish for six months, then come out with a directly competitive product that kills you, or alternately acquire you and make you and your whole team rich.
And you're never going to know why.
The upside of dealing with a big company is that there's potentially a ton of whale meat in it for you.
Sorry, mixing my metaphors. The right deal with the right big company can have a huge impact on a startup's success.

"And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster's mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch." -- Holland's Plutarch's Morals

The downside of dealing with a big company is that he can capsize you -- maybe by stepping on you in one way or another and killing you, but more likely by wrapping you up in a bad partnership that ends up holding you back, or just making you waste a huge amount of time in meetings and get distracted from your core mission.
So what to do?
First, don't do startups that require deals with big companies to make them successful.
The risk of never getting those deals is way too high, no matter how hard you are willing to work at it.
And even if you get the deals, they probably won't work out the way you hoped.

"'Stern all!' exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat, threatening it with instant destruction; -- 'Stern all, for your lives!'" -- Wharton the Whale Killer

Second, never assume that a deal with a big company is closed until the ink hits the paper and/or the cash hits the company bank account.
There is always something that can cause a deal that looks like it's closed, to suddenly get blown to smithereens -- or vanish without a trace.

At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh. "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab after allowing a little space for the light to spread.
"See nothing, sir."
-- Moby Dick

Third, be extremely patient.
Big companies play "hurry up and wait" all the time. In the last few years I've dealt with one big East Coast technology company in particular that has played "hurry up and wait" with me at least four separate times -- including a mandatory immediate cross-country flight just to have dinner with the #2 executive -- and has never followed through on anything.
If you want a deal with a big company, it is probably going to take a lot longer to put together than you think.

"My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?" I answered, "we have been stove by a whale." -- "Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket, Which Was Attacked and Finally Destroyed by a Large Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean" by Owen Chace of Nantucket, First Mate of Said Vessel, New York, 1821

Fourth, beware bad deals.
I am thinking of one high-profile Internet startup in San Francisco right now that is extremely promising, has great technology and a unique offering, that did two big deals early with high-profile big company partners, and has become completely hamstrung in its ability to execute on its core business as a result.
Fifth, never, ever assume a big company will do the obvious thing.
What is obvious to you -- or any outsider -- is probably not obvious on the inside, once all the other factors that are involved are taken into account.
Sixth, be aware that big companies care a lot more about what other big companies are doing than what any startup is doing.
Hell, big companies often care a lot more about what other big companies are doing than they care about what their customers are doing.
Moby Dick cared a lot more about what the other giant white whales were doing than those annoying little people in that flimsy boat.

"The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of his tail." -- A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks

Seventh, if doing deals with big companies is going to be a key part of your strategy, be sure to hire a real pro who has done it before.
Only the best and most experienced whalers had a chance at taking down Moby Dick.
This is why senior sales and business development people get paid a lot of money. They're worth it.

"Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!" -- Moby Dick

Eighth, don't get obsessed.
Don't turn into Captain Ahab.
By all means, talk to big companies about all kinds of things, but always be ready to have the conversation just drop and to return to your core business.
Rare is the startup where a deal with a big company leads to success, or lack thereof leads to huge failure.
(However, see also Microsoft and Digital Research circa 1981. Talk about a huge whale.)
Closing thought:

Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time, the whale lay quiescent. "...Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!"
The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves; -- ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone.
-- Moby Dick

SENTAPUA! E vamos à luta, Filhos da Pátria!