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Since our project’s heading ever so near a public unveiling, I’m making this my inaugural article relating to our startup experiences. Although some details will emerge, don’t expect our whole story to come out until the timing’s right, but I hope that you can find a few of these tidbits valuable if you’re going through a startup process yourself.

Some of the most important feedback you’ll receive on your business plan will come from potential investors. The unfortunate thing is that investor feedback, at least at the VC level, can be harsh and is usually comprised of a “no” without much explanation or detail on the “why”. Take a look at Guy’s list of the top 10 lies by Venture Capitalists to understand where I’m coming from, but as a side note also take a look at his list of top 10 lies by Entrepreneurs to understand what to avoid on your side. In both of these articles however, one of the key’s highlighted to acquiring a favorable response from a VC is to ensure you clearly articulate your differentiation in the marketplace.

For us in particular, the User Generated Content monetization market is rife with success stories and failures over the last few years. One thing I don’t think anyone has done well enough is cornered the market on UGC consumer experiences even though a few startups have already been repositioning or sold due to competition in their particular choice of approach. Personally I see a lot of depth in what a consumer experience is or could be, and I break it down in a number of ways. The most important of which is drawing a line between whether it’s about a service or a product. In my mind the former relates more to a particular business or provider, and the latter relates more to the particular purchase where that distinction can end up with very different results.

Two real life examples I can use to highlight this is the difference in approach between yelp.com and epinions.com. One focuses on service providers in geographic locales, while the other focuses on the product itself, yet they are both services we feel we have little in common with. If we aren’t similar to either of them then where do we fit since there’s little perceived real-estate in between? That answer is one we’re working on attempting to articulate in word since we know there’s an unexplored gap between the two that we hope to leverage. Although reviews have traditionally been relegated to the periphery of user content generation with little emotional investment on the part of the reviewer, we feel that has more to do with the platform and the process than their actual interest level.

What this all means is that we have a significant challenge in clearly articulating our differentiation on paper without examples of our ideas in action, and if no one has really done it yet how do we articulate it effectively, especially if a VC is mired in what already exists today? Almost everyone we have had the pleasure of carefully sharing our plans with has provided extremely positive feedback. Someone I highly respect in the 2.0 space even went so far as to say “I think you have a winner here’, which for us meant the world, but I have yet to look at our executive summary and find myself 100% satisfied with the clarity of our message, then again as a typical perfectionist I probably never will.

The biggest thing I can share is that no matter how perfect or flawed your business plan, you are going to have to find the VC that has the square hole to your square peg, so don’t obsess over the details at the sacrifice of the product. Just make sure you explore multiple investment sources that make sense strategically and get help if your writing skills don’t meet the requirement. If your vision is realistic as well as profitable you should find the capital to help make it a reality in no time if you're persistent. No matter what keep at it, in my last startup during the bubble I was turned down by more than 10 VC’s before we were considered final four out of over 1500 business plans by the 11th, so timing and fit mean everything.

If I could ensure you take anything away from this article, it’s that the keys are making sure you understand your vertical well, have passion for what you’re doing and as someone who I highly respect attributed to his personal success… be persistent no matter what.