January 2011
10 posts
1 tag
Start Fund: No big deal. Business as usual.
Though scarcely 24 hours old, the Yuri Milner/Y Combinator/SV Angel announcement has already been dissected, sliced, diced and beaten beyond comprehension. But there are a few salient common sense points missing from the analysis, the most basic of which is: there is a free market in angel investing, and one party has done something bold and surprising in a narrow segment of the market. Though the...
4 tags
Don't fear the enterprise
A recent question on Quora concerning Enterprise 2.0 got me thinking about the attractiveness of the enterprise as a target for investment. I’m not exactly sure what Enterprise 2.0 means, but if it connotes helping the enterprise do stuff better - communicate both internally and with customers, store, retrieve, display analyze and monetize data, etc. - while leveraging the latest in...
3 tags
Failing well
Failure sucks. Nobody wants to fail. But in the start-up world, most people are doing just that. I’m not sure I’ve read much about “how” to fail, since failure is so depressing and negative. But I’m here to tell you that there is a good way to fail and that there are steps for positively managing the aftermath. I’ve seen it done well, I’ve seen it done...
1 tag
The VC pitch: Confidence wanted
Pitching is hard and taking rejection isn’t a picnic, but being over-rehearsed isn’t the way to solve the problem. I re-framed a question on Quora titled “What are the signs of an entrepreneur who is over-prepared for meetings with investors?” I replaced “over-prepared” with “over-rehearsed” since, well, one can never be (or appear) too prepared,...
3 tags
How to identify the right mentor
When searching out a mentor, always remember: it’s not just about you. For a mentor/student relationship to achieve its full potential, the mentor needs to get something out of it as well. It could be that the student’s area of focus involved a domain with which the mentor has great interest. It could be that the student’s intelligence, energy and verve make the mentor excited to...
4 tags
Cutting a fair deal with seed stage investors
There is much talk among entrepreneurs as to what constitutes a “fair” angel deal. Specifically, how much of the company do I have to give up to get a deal done? Having both invested as an angel and been a recipient of angel financing, I never thought about it in those terms. Wearing my angel investor hat, my playbook for how I approached a potential investment was as follows:
Do I...
1 tag
How to rob a bank
This was one of those questions on Quora that caused me so sit back and ponder. But it didn’t take long before the best and easiest method of robbery popped into my mind (assuming staying out of jail is a priority): derivatives trading. Now I’m not saying that this is de-facto how derivatives traders operate; I’m simply saying that what is described below is a tried-and-true...
3 tags
What are the questions entrepreneurs should be...
I’ve been on both sides of the table, but here are the hard questions I’d ask my deal lead at a firm from which I’m considering taking venture investment: 1. Is this a core investment or something in which you have interest but would walk away from if things get difficult? 2. Does this investment fit with your firm’s thesis or primarily you own worldview? If you are...
1 tag
Why I like USV's Opportunity Fund
First, kudos to my friends at Union Square Ventures. They are great investors, great people and provide awesome support for their companies.
Their recent fund announcement was particularly interesting to me as we discuss this issue at IA Ventures all the time: how to reconcile being a seed/early stage fund focused on extreme returns, while benefiting from all the hard work we do with our...
Media creating frenzy
As a long time news reader and markets participant, there is little question that media has an impact on market sentiment which, in turn, has an impact on asset prices. I have historically thought of the media complex as being designed to report news and break stories, with an emphasis on information dissemination and analysis. Market responses are then based upon new information ferreted out and...