Zebra’s may fix what Unicorns break, but that hasn’t stopped the investing world from their focus on hunting unicorns. Maybe a little in the impact investing space, but there the world of young companies is split into “startups” and “SMEs” with the latter still looked upon as potential unicorns and the latter often derided as unworthy of investment. Rather than...
Last month I wrote: There are funds that waste the time of startups never actually writing checks. I won’t call them out publicly by name, but one prominent institutional lender just wasted 10 months of time of one my fledglings, and I’m sure they are sitting around as upset with us as we are of them. I thought that was the end of the story. 10 months of conversations and due diligence, two...
I found the following infographic on Twitter, and this should help the hundreds of thousands of first time entrepreneurs better understand how their 100% turns into what looks like a tiny 17.6% and yet is how some of them will someday end up millionaires. 100% of an idea is worth $050% of an idea-stage company is still worth $037% of a fundable company is worth something. Not much, but not $0.31%...
Neither the political nor business news is covering what may be the pivotal story of the 21st Century. The fundamental change in behavior of the Federal Reserve Bank since the Panic of 2007. That sounds like a dry topic, and I assure you it is. The driest and most dismal corner of economics, itself known as the “dismal science“. But nonetheless something that may change the course of...
I’m ready for the pandemic to be over… just like you are… just like we all are. I survived this disease fifteen months ago. I’m ready to get back to normal life. So clearly is everyone else, but if there is one lesson to learn from this pandemic, it is that very few people understand when the right timing is for removing lockdowns, taking off masks, and calling the...
The flipside to “unfundable” companies are funds that waste the time of startups never actually writing checks. I won’t call them out publicly by name, but one prominent institutional lender just wasted 10 months of time of one my fledglings, and I’m sure they are sitting around as upset with us as we are of them. First and foremost, investors, if it takes you more than...
This week I taught The Realities of Funding to the entrepreneurs at The Land Accelerator. It’s a depressing topic, as it continues to be true that there are orders of magnitude more good startups than funders. In that talk the word “unfundable” takes a prominent role. This is a word that venture capitalists and many Angels use to describe the 99% of startups that they pass over...
Creating an investor pitch is one of those tasks that seems simple, but isn’t. I wrote a book on the topic years ago, providing slide-by-slide guidance, and that helps first time entrepreneurs, but not enough to create great pitch decks. So… I’ve launched a Patreon to take this one step further, to provide one-on-one, slide-by-slide coaching for anyone who would like the help. I...
I do a lot of teaching and the latest topic for me is teaching early-stage/Angel investing. As part of that we talk a lot about “norms”, as most of system for investing in startups is wrapped around norms more than logic. I’ll go into why that is some other time. What struck me a few moments ago was an LLC Agreement I was reviewing for an investment. Normally the reasons listed...
One of my lessons in The Angel Accelerator is called “Seeing the Future” and the main theme is the fact that entrepreneurs need to be able to predict what is needed by customers a year or two or three from now. Along the way we talk about how almost no one predicted the pandemic in 2007-2009 when the financial markets nearly collapsed, we talk about flying cars and self-driving cars...
