Archive | Venture Captial

Early Stage VC Decision Making

By • February 23, 2013 • Pitching Investors, Venture Captial • Leave a comment

A friend sent this to me and I thinks it’s worth posting. Check out this interesting infographic from Anna Vital in San Francisco. She is in the process of fundraising for the Kickstarter campaign  ”Becoming an Entrepreneur” infographic book. Anna talked with Jeff Clavier (SoftTechVC), who invested in 140 companies and manages a $55 million fund, and documented the early stage investment analysis process. You can find the complete article here: http://www.vccafe.com/2013/01/18/the-early-stage-vc-decision-making-process-infographic/

A VC Infographic

 

 

Early Interview with Instagram

By • April 10, 2012 • Angel Investing, Venture Captial • 1 Comment

Here’s an early interview from Robert Scoble with Kevin Systrom when Instagram was around 300,000 users and was just a few months old.

I’ve been following Instagram and Kevin Systrom since they launched the Instagram App for Apple less than 2 years ago. I’ve used it many times, but never really fell in love with it. Many start-ups fail, but once in awhile, a company comes along at just the right time and nails it. Then all the rules about valuations just go out the window. $500M one week and a week later it’s $1B and they are being bought by Facebook. Wow. Congratulations guys.

http://cinch.fm/scobleizer/126959

 

Excitment > Hesitation = Investment $

By • February 4, 2012 • Pitching Investors, Start-ups, Venture Captial • 1 Comment

I’m not big on formulas, but here was a great quote that I read this week in an article about “desrisking buckets” by Brendan Baker. You can read the whole article here:

http://brendanbaker.tumblr.com/post/16830178199/derisking-buckets-how-to-identify-and-deal-with

“Investors fund startups when their excitement outweighs their hesitation. Hesitation comes from perceived risk. And for a startup, we can group these risks into some buckets:”

  • Team risk: can these people work together to build a huge business?
  • Technical risk: can this be built in a reasonable timeframe and with reasonable resources?
  • User risk: will people actually want to use this?
  • Revenue risk: will people actually pay for this?
  • Scale risk: will people use or pay for this in large numbers?
  • Partner risk: will any required strategic or distribution partners come on board?
  • Customer risk: will they be able to sell to important customers?
  • Funding risk: will anybody else fund this (esp seed stage, for many investors)

These are the questions I think almost every investor is asking themselves while listening to a Pitch. Make sure you address these issues when Pitching your awesome idea.

 

Venture Capital, Start-ups & Dentistry

By • January 1, 2012 • Angel Investing, Start-ups, Venture Captial • 2 Comments

It’s a New Year and I’ve decided to set up a personal website using WordPress, update my Dental Consulting website and start Blogging about the things I enjoy doing on a daily basis. I love Venture Capital, Start-ups and Dentistry, so I figured that would be the best thing for me to write about.

I’ve been a practicing dentist for 18 years and I became involved in a Venture Capital Group, Gravity Ventures II, in Indianapolis  in 2009. I’ve been “hooked” on start-ups, venture capital and innovating technology ever since. I absolutely love listening to young entrepreneurs talk about their ideas, sharing a vision of a better world with their products and hanging out with the people  in the Indianapolis start-up community.

The start-up community and Venture Capital community has an energy and excitement level that I just can’t recreate when hanging out with a group of dentists talking about patients and teeth. I guess I’m just ”an entrepreneur that happens to practice dentistry” and I have a passion for start-ups, business, strategic planing and helping others.