Republished June 14, 2012

This post came up in conversation at lunch today, so I decided to publish it on the new blog. I had a hard time finding it, because while I coined the term "fail money" in the body, it wasn't in the original title. And really, it had only a tenuous connection to Matt's post about shipping your first version.

In 2012, my opinions haven't really changed: we need more people to be writing $50K checks in Vancouver, so that in year 2, we can write some $500K checks.

This fail money pays for itself in the incredible amount of education that comes with it*. This levels up our entire ecosystem: from founders, to early employees, and most especially investors. If you're waiting around on the sidelines with $500K checks, where do you think those companies are going to come from?

^*So maybe I'll try calling it education money instead.