A rationale for Revenue Based Investing by David Bangs, guest contributor and impact Angel investor For many years I have been doing carefully considered angel investments in companies I find interesting. Some of the invested companies have failed while others are thriving. However, none of these companies have been sold or gone public, producing the desired return on investment. I am not alone...
You have an impactful startup. You are looking for help, and looking for investors. Where do you find the people, programs, and funds to help? The team at Fledge, the “conscious company” accelerator, has published a list of incubators, accelerators, competitions, funds, and crowdfunding sites. This Google Doc is viewable by anyone, and is periodically updated. If you have a impact...
When I set out to write The Next Step: Guiding you from idea to startup, I imagined someday I’d go back to provide more details on each of the topics covered within that book. Many diversions later, I’ve finally started fulfilling that vision. Today, The Next Step: A guide to startup sales and marketing is now available, here on this site, as well as on paper and Kindle via Amazon...
(UPDATE 3/8: Seattle Times story ) (UPDATE 3/7: IT PASSED! A big thank you to everyone who helped move the Senate, and a huge thank you to Representative Cyrus Habib, who made this bill happen, and to startup attorney Joe Wallin, who inspired it into being.) (UPDATE 3/7: The bill is on the Senate’s “Order for Consideration”, which should see a vote within the next hour. You...
Do startups need lawyers? Absolutely, but not as much as many first-time entrepreneurs think. Lawyers play two important roles for startups. Rules and Risks. 1- Rules. Incorporating your company, taking money from investors, and hiring employees all require compliance with a complex set of laws, codes, and regulations. The key responsibility of a business’ lawyer is to ensure the company...
You have an amazing idea. The most amazing idea of your life. An idea that will change the world. With great reluctance [mistake #1: reluctance] you tell a few trusted friends, all of whom say something between “maybe” and “nice idea”. You take all that as feedback that you are on the right track [mistake #2: happy ears]. You dip your toe into market research, and...
Most people follow a century-old paradigm of philanthropy, popularized by Andrew Carnegie back at the turn of the 20th Century. Simply put, maximize the return of investments, and give a portion of those earning to charity. In Carnegie’s case, those investments provided him so much wealth, that despite giving away an equivalent of $5 billion in his two decades as philanthropist, enough of his...
Continuing the discussion of early-stage investing, a common thought circling around the venture capital community is that their the traditional investment model is broken. In “Investing without Zombies”, I focused on the odd choice of optimizing the system for the least likely case. But there is a second flaw in that system as well. Exits. Traditional equity investments are worthless until a...
