Majority of investors associated with Entrepreneur First expect you to have a Phd or collaboration with someone who does have it. The funny thing is most of these investors had previously worked for companies that had become successful by founders that were college dropouts. Have there been many companies that have become successful by a Phd holder? It is very rare. Most innovators in past and present have been people with no-Phd, not even a masters, and in many cases were simply college dropouts. But, they still managed to build a successful business, engineer an innovative product, and gain investment. Looking back at the likes of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Dell, Paypal, Facebook, and others, would any of the investors of this generation have asked back then whether they had a Phd before they received investment? Invariably, an individual with a Phd likely will not have the mindset towards taking risks and building a product that can actually sell. And, if one needs to build an entire team around them then really the value of a Phd becomes fairly redundant. Why do investors have such double standards? And, the fact that people with ideas can sometimes struggle to find investment. Perhaps, it all boils down to risk and the gamble they have to make with a potential idea as well as their return on investment. Funnily enough, 80% of all academic research amounts to nothing and holds no real qualitative or quantitative value in terms of substance and real insights. Businesses don't make any money from publishing papers, they make money from selling a viable product. In fact, in most industry sectors, innovation in organizations, is often driven by non-Phd people with many years of practical experience who have been able to spot gaps in the market or problem areas for which there is a high customer demand for solutions. The narrow-minded attitude of investors does not pay dividends and it certainly does not help any potential individuals with a viable product that may be seeking investment. However, such is the conservative attitude of many investors today either a) one has a phd, b) one has people with phd individuals on the team no matter how practically useless/clueless/inexperienced/unprofessional/unethical they may be, or c) one has a collaboration with a large multinational. Otherwise, one might struggle to convince an investor to buy into the innovative idea. Sometimes, all it takes is an investor seeking potential to invest in the individual (likability factor) and not just the product as a sum package - for that there are better alternative avenues for investment.
Entrepreneur First
