Adventures of Andrew Lee

The factors that affect acceptance into LaunchBox Digital - an early stage investment firm who invested in our company JamLegend - are very much the same factors that affect acceptance onto a college basketball team.  They are all measurements of potential with the purpose of assuring that when the game starts, the right player is on the court.

This post is the first in a two-part post about LaunchBox Digital.

Before I go further, ask yourself if LaunchBox is right for you. If you’re Lebron James, just go straight to the NBA. If you’re Mark Zuckerberg, drop out of college and start Facebook without any other funding. It depends on your risk tolerance and your what you think is your likelihood of success. This will be the first decision of many as your startup grows and evolves, so choose wisely, but don’t make the decision affect the work you do afterwards.

If you’ve chosen to do it (as those who have e-mailed me to write this post have), then I think the following high-level ideas should drive your application and should help in determining how to strengthen your application. These are the factors that I personally think LaunchBox is looking for to help determine your success:

1. Team- at this stage, creating a product and having co-founders that can execute is most important. You want a team that has the ability or can easily acquire the ability to create and launch. We had previously started Fantasy Congress while in college and made money with a couple other games and that was a positive on our part.
2. Idea and Target Market- These two relate because your idea needs to pass a common sense test (someone besides your family and friends should want to use this product) and since everyone knows the idea will evolve, your market should be sufficiently large so that you can pivot and repurpose a lot of the work you’ve already done.
3. Product progress- The closer you are to a star basketball player, the more likely you’ll get chosen for the team. So in startups, the closer you are to a prototype, working site, or working business, the more likely you’ll be desirable candidate. So, right after applying- start building your product and start being a business. Oddly, the further along you are, the less likely you would need to go to LaunchBox.

You may be wondering… what if I don’t have a prototype or no progress?

Say a coach is choosing between two individuals who run just as fast, one with good form and one with bad form. The one the coach wants is the one with bad form because if the coach can train that person to have good form, they’ll be even better than the other runner– you job is to show how you are the startup equivalent of Rocky.

In the end, don’t take it personally. LaunchBox,YCombinator, Techstars, etc. are all looking for a potential business. The hard truth is that these factors are not about admission, but about your ability to win. That’s what LaunchBox or any college basketball team is looking for.