Is + 42% the correct answer ?

Marc Andreessen is again writing about how much money to raise as a startup, but never gives a hard answer.

Maybe we can help...years ago, Norman Augustine did a survey of all the very complex projects at Martin Marietta, an Aerospace company, and found the average complex project exceeded its original (usually detailed) estimates by an average of about 40%.....close enough to "42", the answer to everything.

He wrote this all up - along with a lot of other interesting stuff - in the very funny - but serious - book Augustine's Laws

For what its worth, in 15 odd years of managing IT projects, assignments, deals, companies etc I've found that 1.42 a very handy - and perennial - number

So, assuming these Old Farts actually knew a thing or two (after all, they did get to the moon on technology no better than a mobile phone computer), and that a complex project in an aerospace skunkworks is roughly analogous to a startup then, to answer Marc - once a startup has done all the detailed calcs of what it needs to get to the next round, the correct amount to raise is that estimate, plus another 42%

Be interesting to do a straw poll to see if Augustine's law holds for startups actually.....

Thinking about it I wonder if there is a sort of mean or background level of Murphy's Law that defines the best laid plans of mice and men gangin' oft a-gley at c 1.42 times original - maybe it can be calculated from social network theory ?

Postscript....Don Dodge has a useful post as well.....