The 411 On Startups (tm)

AngelList Commits to Crowdfunding – Venture Capital Dispatch – WSJ

May

2013

A site that connects startups and early stage investors, , is rolling out a long-anticipated equity crowdfunding service to its users this week, according to Chief Executive Naval Ravikant. Dubbed the service has been available to a handful of companies, by invitation only, since December 2012. Eighteen startups, including , and , raised $6.7 million ...

Tips for New Angel Investors

May

2012

Now that Facebook has gone public, there’s a lot of newly created wealth on the scene. History has shown that newly creates wealth shops the startup scene like a kid in a candy store. Over the course of the lifetime of a new angel investor, they’ll do 70% of all of the angel investments they’ll ...

Top 12 lies angels tell

May

2012

Angel investors are among the leading sources of funding for many technology firms. Knowing how these investors think and evaluate a possible investment is therefore vital for any tech start up seeking funding. With a nod to Garage Venture’s Guy Kawasaki and his Top 10 Lies of Venture Capitalists, I offer my Top 12 Lies Angels Tell. ...

Ideal first round funding terms

May

2012

My last 2 posts were about things to avoid, so I thought it might be helpful to follow up with something more positive. Having been part of or observed about 50 early stage deals, I have come to believe there is a clearly dominant set of deal terms. Here they are: – Investors get either ...

New Orleans is fast becoming paradise for investors, entrepreneurs

May

2012

Two years ago, Amith Nagarajan and his wife, Bridget, were planning to move their family from Nashville to New Orleans to be nearer to her native Ponchatoula. Nagarajan founded and still runs Aptify, a management software company, but he is also an active entrepreneur, and he and Bridget were both looking to invest in promising ...

Sowing the Seeds of a Successful Startup — Critical Questions for Every Entrepreneur

May

2012

The brilliant, unique idea: whether it serendipitously strikes in the middle of the night or emerges out of frustration over a problem you have experienced, it is a precious seedling with the potential to blossom into a thriving new business. When you are an entrepreneur, this singular idea will become the center of your universe ...

Raising Angel Money — How Angels, Entrepreneurs, and VCs Think of Each Other

May

2012

This post is part of a series of posts called “Pitching a VC” that explains how to get access to VC’s, what to say when you get there and what will happen afterward. A friend of mine who lives in Silicon Valley called me lastt week to talk about his new company. He’s been a ...

The Eight Best Questions We Got While Raising Venture Capital

May

2012

VCs are good at asking questions. They are unimplicated in your dumb decisions, unmoved by your original sense of mission and far less concerned than you that a blunder could bankrupt you. They re-imagine your business in terms of all the other businesses they’ve seen, pulling the arms off one doll and the head off ...

A Simulation of Angel Investing, Part 2

May

2012

This is a follow-up to my post A simulation of angel investing. Several readers commented on Hacker News that my first stab at a simulation was misleading because it showed negative average returns for low deal sizes, when in fact expected returns should be not only positive but constant regardless of deal size. They are ...

A Simulation of Angel Investing

May

2012

In angel investing, it’s the extreme distribution of payoffs that keeps things interesting. If anything, it resembles buying a deep out-of-the-money call option, but with nonlinearity. If you win big you might find yourself in on the ground floor of the next Google or Facebook. That’s incredibly unlikely, but still possible. More likely, you’ll end ...