992 Posts Found

Sometimes venture capital can be a little intimidating. It’s hard to know where to start and whom to approach. And it can be hard to cut through the noise in order to reach investors. This application aims to help by aggregating biographical, and other basic information on many of the venture investors located in the US. A simple search can take you one step closer … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Author: Matt Winn | Subjects: Industry Specific, Venture Capital

Basil Peters offers a one-page term sheet for angel investors based on exchangeable shares. [Hat Tip to Ask the VC]

Content: Article | Author: Basil Peters | Source: AngelBlog | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Fred Wilson follows up his original venture economic post with this look at venture returns, specifically the impact on returns of management fees and carry.

Content: Article | Author: Fred Wilson | Source: A VC | Subjects: Industry Specific, Venture Capital

Angelsoft was founded in 2004 with a simple idea: to bring the power of collaboration technologies to the early-stage investment industry. Today, with 410 angel groups and VCs, 11,251 investors, and 2,100 new company applications a month, Angelsoft has become a vital ecosystem where real entrepreneurs and real investors meet and collaborate in the effort to build the best new companies of the 21st Century. … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Finance, Venture Capital

Roger Ehrenberg, the co-founder of Monitor110 offers up an analysis of the failure of that company, including what he calls the “seven deadly sins”:
1. The lack of a single, “the buck stops here” leader until too late in the game
2. No separation between the technology organization and the product organization
3. Too much PR, too early
4. Too much money
5. Not close enough to the customer
6. Slow … [ Read more ]

Content: Case Study | Author: Roger Ehrenberg | Source: Information Arbitrage | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Fred Wilson explains the basics of venture fund economics. It appears to be the first of several posts he’s planning to write on this topic. [Hat Tip to Brad Feld]

Content: Article | Author: Fred Wilson | Source: A VC | Subjects: Industry Specific, Venture Capital

It’s critical for entrepreneurs, when targeting venture capital firms, to narrow their search based on key criteria.

Content: Article | Author: Tom Taulli | Source: BusinessWeek | Subject: Entrepreneurship

There is nothing investors like more than a startup that seems like it’s going to succeed even without them. Investors like it when they can help a startup, but they don’t like startups that would die without that help.

The reason they like it when you don’t need them is not simply that they like what they can’t have, but because that quality is what … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Paul Graham | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

The average investor is a pretty bad judge of startups. It’s harder to judge startups than most other things, because great startup ideas tend to seem wrong. A good startup idea has to be not just good but novel. And to be both good and novel, an idea probably has to seem bad to most people, or someone would already be doing it and it … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Paul Graham | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Building a business is tough work, even in the best of times. Steven Brandt, an emeritus senior lecturer at the Graduate School of Business, lists ten commandments he believes have stood the test of time in helping entreprenuers launch successful firms and keep them afloat. (downloadable book)

Editor’s Note: This book was first published in 1982 and has sold more than 100,000 copies. All ten Commandments … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Steven C. Brandt | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Private equity firms manage some $1 trillion of global capital, yet because they are highly secretive, much remains unknown about their internal economics. How do PE firms organize themselves, for example, and how do they capitalize on their success? Some answers emerge from a paper by Wharton finance professor Ayako Yasuda and Yale School of Management finance professor Andrew Metrick presented at a recent … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Andrew Metrick, Ayako Yasuda | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Finance, Venture Capital

How do you know a great entrepreneur when you meet one? Great entrepreneurs would do a better job running the competition than their competitors are doing. They can tell you not only the ways in which their strategy is better than their competitors’, but also the ways in which their competitors have created the very opportunity that they are exploiting.

Content: Quotation | Author: David Hornik | Source: VentureBlog | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps says that Joseph Schumpeter was wrong: Entrepreneurship can generate stable growth.

Content: Article | Author: Glenn Hubbard | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, Entrepreneurship, People

Is it better to choose the horse or the jockey?

Content: Article | Source: The Economist | Subject: Entrepreneurship

When the time comes to negotiate a round of funding, entrepreneurs often find themselves at a disadvantage. Much of it has to do with language. There is an array of terms and issues that investors and lawyers work with regularly and understand, but that entrepreneurs deal with only once in a while. It would take many posts to cover all of them, but here is … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jay Parkhill | Source: FoundRead | Subject: Entrepreneurship

This article by an anonymous writer using the byline “Uncle Saul” lists the vast number business books failings, specifically from the point of view of entrepreneurs.

Editor’s Note: Entrepreneur or not, this is an interesting, and sadly true, read.

Content: Article | Source: socalTECH | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Miscellaneous

Todd Vernon, the CEO of Lijit , gives his thoughts on angel financing, including the types of angel investors, the size of investments, valuation, investment mechanism and liquidity. [Hat tip to Ask the VC]

Content: Article | Author: Todd Vernon | Source: false precision blog | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Search funds allow an aspiring entrepreneur to raise money to fund them while they look for a company to buy. Four experienced entrepreneurs offer firsthand view of search funds. [Video 1hr:14]

Content: Multimedia Content | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Finance

In the wake of World War II, Georges Doriot helped found the world’s first public venture capital firm, American Research and Development. Doriot (1899—1987) was also a professor at Harvard Business School for 40 years. This book excerpt from Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital (HBS Press) describes how ARD first came to “marry” investors and innovators.

Content: Article | Author: Spencer E. Ante | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: History, Venture Capital

Sophisticated VCs are used to having angel investors as early investors in your company. Your life will be made easier if you treat the angel investment as a real investment and document it legally as such.

Content: Article | Author: Brad Feld | Source: Feld Thoughts | Subject: Entrepreneurship