Tag: Entrepreneurs
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The Company as the Product
Building a company that can be sold is building a different product for a different customer. Serving two masters – but they are compatible. The first master is the customer who buys your product, and…
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Build Your Company Backwards: How to Align With Angel and VC Expectations
If you can’t explain why someone will pay 10x to buy your company, you’re not ready to raise a dime. When you’re raising outside capital — especially from angels or venture funds — you’re not…
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When Your Capital Strategy Kills Your Commercial Value
How “licensing-only” businesses can get caught in the angel/venture minefield. Let’s walk through the math that every angel investor does. This company is raising money at a 15 million dollar post-money valuation. For us as…
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What Angel Investors Want to Hear vs What is Best for the Startup?
We looked at a company who had been more or less steady-state for several years but wanted an infusion of cash. They were operating in two smaller markets without fully capturing either of the two…
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Bad Behavior By Angel Groups -“Due Diligence”
Due diligence is supposed to help investors and the entrepreneurs, but many times it is a charade. I am a member of several angel investor groups, and I am intimately familiar with many more. In…
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Gullible Angel Investors and Provisional Patent Applications
Last time, we discussed the provisional patent application hoax perpetuated by patent attorneys. In this post, we look at the scam from the inventor/entrepreneur side. Many so-called inventors/entrepreneurs like to file their own provisional patent…
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How accelerators and angel groups lose their way.
Riding on the back of the entrepreneur. Ever drive by a construction site and see dozens of “supervisors” standing around, while one guy with a shovel is actually working? This is the perfect metaphor for…
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The Endless Science Project
Serving two masters, and the enablement of investors. Some startups are the Endless Science Project. They start from a “cool” technological idea and work on endless science projects. They run one science project for a…
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The Government is the Worst Customer – and the Worst Investor
The Invisible Hand versus the Regulator’s Pen. We will always invest where Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” is pushing things forward, and avoid businesses where the regulator’s pen can wipe it out. We avoid regulatory risk,…
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Pitching Investors is Not “One-and-Done”
Spend some time “riding the bus” in the Minors before getting to the Big Leagues. I have the enviable position of seeing lots of inventors who bootstrapped their companies along before they take outside investment…