Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
I enjoyed reading a recent Fortune article that provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the judges at a Rice University startup competition. It didn’t hurt that my old friend Robert Winter was prominently mentioned! http://bit.ly/UffMcc However, I think it’s hard for a reporter to truly understand the dynamics of a judging team. I’ve been a competition … Continue reading What’s It Like To Judge A Pitch Competition
One of the tempting illusions about angel or VC investing is that you can relax once you’ve made the investment. After all, if you’ve picked the right startup, isn’t that 90% of the battle? Alas, this is just an illusion. In fact, once you’ve made an investment, it’s critical that you demonstrate your value to … Continue reading Why You Have To Be A Value-Added Investor
It seems like it’s unfashionable these days for investors to worry about startup valuations. In my opinion, that kind of thinking is likely to lead to disaster for both investors and startups. Far too many people make the mistake of focusing on relative valuation. “This deal is a bargain in comparison to the other deals … Continue reading The reasonable startup valuation formula
I am a well-known valuation hawk. That is, I have often gone on the record as saying that investors should care about the valuation they pay when they invest in startups, and that valuations are too high. This doesn’t make me popular in many circles, but I care more about speaking what I think is … Continue reading Valuation is the universal lever for mitigating startup investment risk
Jason Lemkin, the co-founder of EchoSign, has written a thoughtful piece about seed investing. In it, he calculates that if you do 30 seed investments at $25K each (roughly the lower bound for a diversified portfolio), you’d need $750K in capital. (Even this is an underestimate, since it leaves out the need for follow-on investments) … Continue reading Why DIY seed investing is like taking a job as a court reporter
By now the rituals of Demo Day are familiar. The opportunities are great both for startups to tell their story, and for investors to see a lot of deals in a very short time. So why wouldn’t the reverse be true? Introducing the Valley’s first Reverse Demo Day, where the investors sell themselves to entrepreneurs. … Continue reading Reverse Demo Day (Thursday, February 23)
By now the rituals of Demo Day are familiar. The opportunities are great both for startups to tell their story, and for investors to see a lot of deals in a very short time. So why wouldn’t the reverse be true? Introducing the Valley’s first Reverse Demo Day, where the investors sell themselves to entrepreneurs. … Continue reading Reverse Demo Day (Thursday, September 29)
Each year, NBA scouts devote their time to finding flaws in players. Landry Fields lacks athleticism. DeJuan Blair is too short. And each year, those scouts misfire badly, as players like Fields and Blair end up thriving in the NBA. The scouts fail because they’re too focused on what players can’t do, rather than understanding … Continue reading Angel Investing Is Like The NBA Draft
There’s been a predictable furor over the brewing feud between super angels and VCs, especially with folks like Mike Arrington fueling the fire by quoting a VC as saying, “An entire generation of entrepreneurs are building dipshit companies and hoping that they sell to Google for $25 million.” While I’m sympathetic to both sides (I … Continue reading VCs, Dipshit Companies, And Super Angels
The investing socialsphere has been all a-Twitter ever since Kedrosky predicted an upcoming super-seed crash. The result has been a series of opinion pieces, both for and against, that tackle various aspects of the issue–whether super angels are a fad, if there is a seed bubble (I’m on record as saying that there is), what … Continue reading Will Angel Crash And VC Have Its Revenge?