An Open Letter to Future Billionaire Startup Entrepreneurs

***The famous VC letter was inadvertently leaked to the media, making it a public missive. We apologize for this unforeseen event.

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Dear CEO-to-be,

Congratulations on your upcoming billion-dollar business! You've worked hard for this day and we're here to pour gasoline on that fire.

You're going to be rich soon, so take a deep breath and don't get ahead of yourself. That's what I did when I was starting out, too! You'll get used to it.

I know some of you are new at this, but it's okay if your parents don't understand what you do for a living. They never will. You're not like them and that's why they don't understand you. If they haven't bought into your vision yet, it's because you haven't given them a reason to buy into it.

I know what you're thinking: "But Mr. Macaw, how do I make people like my parents see things my way?"

That's a great question and I'm glad you asked. It's called marketing, marketing is what we understand so well here at Macaw Fund, and it's what you're going to do soon if you accept our offer.

It works like this: You don't have to wait for your product to be finished before starting to advertise how great it is, and you keep doing so until people start believing you.

If it doesn't work, you're doing something wrong and you're going to have to start over. That's okay! It's all a learning process and we just want to help by writing this letter.

Let me tell you a little bit about what Macaw Fund is into, so maybe that will give you an idea of where the marketing is going to go. We're into big data, cloud computing, machine learning, and if you look at our portfolio you'll notice that almost all of the companies are related to one or more of those topics. You can think of us as a company that uses a secret code to make other companies better. It's pretty cool stuff I'll admit.

We don't invest in companies where the CEO is a student, which means you'll have to wait until after graduation to come to see me. It's nothing personal, it's just that if you're still in school, then I'm hoping your company will be acquired by someone who has more experience than you do.

I'm not saying you haven't earned it. I don't know anything about you yet, but even if your company is worth gazillions of dollars, there's no reason to hurry the process.

At Macaw Fund we aim to help our companies grow as fast as they can before an IPO. It's important that nobody knows how much you're actually making until the share price is high enough.

I'm also sure there are some things I can help you with along the way, like finding trustworthy employees (hint: don't hire anyone who asks for equity or asks how much money you make) or someone who is writing your marketing content (that's usually can be done by your interns).

We're going to be sending you some Macaw swag pretty soon, so don't worry about spending your own money on stickers and T-shirts. As a matter of fact, I think it's okay for you to keep the stuff we send you even after your company gets acquired or goes public. I personally think that "acquired" is the word of the day, don't you agree?

You'll be happy to know that all funds are pre-commitment capital. We prefer deals with empty promises over deals that fail to deliver, so you don't have to worry about getting paid unless you meet our high expectations on paper.

Please, don't bother replying to his missive if you are not making any money yet or your company's market is too small; simply forward it on to your more fortunate pals.

On a final note: If you don't want to work with us, we understand. We hope we can still be friends and keep in touch because if anything, we're going to need great people to keep this thing growing.

We'll be in touch!

Best regards,

Adam Macaw, Macaw Fund LLC

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Thank you. You can read my other Vocal stories here.