March 2009[ (This essay is derived from a talk at AngelConf.) When we sold our startup in 1998 I thought one day I'd do some angel investing. Seven years later I still hadn't started. I put it off because it seemed mysterious and complicated.
Naval and I recently put together a talk for AngelConf, a conference for new angel investors. The conference was organized by Y Combinator and included a great group of notable angels like Ron Conway. According to the AngelConf website, "Investing in startups seems mysterious and difficult. How much are you supposed to invest?
The following is based on my personal experience angel investing. YMMV. The biggest misconceptions about angel investing are: 1. Angels should be in Silicon Valley to do angel investing well . Unless you have strong, direct access to Mark Andreessen, Ron Conway, Paul Graham, etc., it doesn't matter that much where you invest from.
Bernard Moon, Co-founded 4 startups, raised over $50 million in capital: Strategic Reasons: 1. The market simply isn't there. The startup could be way too ea...
We recently mapped Appmakr's seed round, to reveal the network path they took to raise $1M from 14 top investors. See it at http://brendanbaker.co/anatomy.pdf (map) or http://slidesha.re/k8ytrZ (slideshow). Check out AppMakr at http://appmakr.com. They rock. - Appmakr dealt with 170+ actors, including VCs, angels, seed funds, middlemen, corporates and even an angel group.
In the largest study on angel investing, Robert Wiltbank found that angel investors averaged annual returns of 27% and identified 3 concrete things that can help boost any investor’s performance.
Editor's note: Andy Rachleff is President and CEO of Wealthfront, an SEC-registered online financial advisor. He serves as a member of the board of trustees and vice chairman of the endowment investment committee for University of Pennsylvania and as a member of the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses on technology entrepreneurship.
Answer 1 of 26: Key attributes: - know where they can help and where they cannot: where they cannot, to stay out of your hair (investors and board members ca...
I have an angel investor friend-let's call this friend "Alex." Alex has great deal flow and works hard to pick the best opportunities for investment. Alex has been frustrated over the past several years, however, because she doesn't seem to be making any money.
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Deal Flow
Making good investments in the startup world is all about getting access to the best, highest quality deals
This article was co-authored by Nathaniel Cotanch, Head Analyst at Onevest, an online investment platform that connects startups with investors. The current startup ecosystem is one to be optimistic about, overall. Different industries are being disrupted, launching a startup is cheaper than ever before, and there are many organizations and programs [...]
When I was new at Venture Capital I was trying to figure out the business. It was a fun period for me because everything was new and I was curious. What kind of deals should I be doing? What stage? What price? With which other investors? Should I focus on geographies or industries?
ED ZIMMERMAN: VCs crave early access to great deals and great founders -- proprietary access. Founders, of course, benefit from getting to know VCs. Connect the two and you're now viewed by each as a source. Connect the two pieces of this puzzle repeatedly and you're an important source of deal flow.
It's not everyday that investors get to buy a winning lottery ticket. But, that's exactly what happened when Sequoia Capital invested in WhatsApp in 2011 at a $8M valuation. WhatsApp turned out to be one of the largest VC-backed M&A in history (it was acquired by Facebook at a $19 billion valuation).
Wise entrepreneurs and investors use multiple methodologies to establish the appropriate pre-money valuation for pre-revenue startup companies, because no single method is particularly effective at this early stage. Valuation at the time of investment, of course, is critical in determining the percentage of ownership that investors purchase from entrepreneurs in a round of investment.
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 common stock or 1x non-participating preferred stock.
In addition to being simpler and clearer, we intend the safe to remain fair to both investors and founders.During its development the safe was positively reviewed by many of the top startup investors. We believe it's a positive evolution of the convertible note and hope the startup community finds it an easier way to accomplish the same goals.
As angel investment increases and the cost of starting a company decreases, money has become a relative commodity when it comes to raising funding. The Center for Venture Research reports that both dollar and total number of angel investments were up for a second year in 2012, a trend likely to continue with the passage of the JOBS Act opening the private market to individuals and the advent of crowdfunding.
The ideal angel investor would spend a great deal of his/her time working on behalf of the company in support of the CEO, in every way other than being a full-time employee. In addition to doing the kinds of things that anyone (employee, friend, parent, founder, etc.)
I sold my startup for $25.5 million on Monday just after 2:23 p.m. Pacific Time. Selling the company, Perfect Audience, to Marin Software took six months of writing carefully worded emails, meeting secretly in cafés, and pacing around the streets of San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood after dark. In the end,...
When a saleable company fails to sell, it's often the seller's psychology that kills the transaction. Most of the time, the seller doesn't even know that they were the reason their company failed to sell. This talk describes the seller psychologies that can kill exits.
Answer 1 of 16: This view is (hopefully!) from an investor's perspective, and treats 'traction' as different from internal management metrics. What is it? I'...
Marc Andreessen posted a tweetstorm last week and he talked about how to think about seed financings and how they lead into Series A and Series B rounds. Feature request for Twitter: Please make it possible to permalink to and embed a tweetstorm. You can call this the @pmarca feature.
Investing has always been in my blood. So when I finally got tired of being kicked in the balls by day trading risky penny stocks, it only seemed fitting that I ended up as an angel investor. Unlike the roller coaster ride that day trading offered, I enjoyed the high risk but slightly less volatile world of angel investing.
