Venture Hacks

Last week, Naval and a slew of angels shared their investing advice with an audience of angels-in-training at AngelConf 2010. Here’s the video (each talk is 7 minutes long):

Video: AngelConf 2010

Wade Roush at Xconomy took detailed notes on all the talks and published them here and here.
7 angel investing tips
Naval’s 7-minute talk starts at 26:00. [...]

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Paul Graham says “The future [of funding] is no fixed amount, no fixed closing date, and no lead.” In other words, the future of financing is continuous, not discrete.
This post explains how to raise a seed round with no lead, no fixed amount, and a fluid closing date. The process is called mass syndication, or a [...]

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My friends in Boston are running Angel Boot Camp (@angelbootcamp) in Cambridge, MA on June 1:
“Have you thought about angel investing but weren’t sure whether it was right for you or how to get started? Are you an entrepreneur who wants to learn more about working with angels and how angel investment [...]

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Last week, I tweeted some thoughts for first-time entrepreneurs raising money and asked Naval, Chris Dixon, and Mark Suster to chime in. Here are the results.
Me
If this is your 1st time raising money…

It takes way longer than you think.
You’ll assume you’re much further along than you really are.
It’s not about optimizing the round, it’s about [...]

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I recently got on the phone for a cross-continent conference call with Chris Dixon from Founder Collective, Mark Suster from GRP Partners, and our own Naval Ravikant. The topic was VC signaling in seed rounds — and how these signals help or hurt your ability to raise money in the next round.
The interview was inspired [...]

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Howard Greenstein from Inc. recently interviewed Naval and me for a post called 5 Questions for an Angel Investor:
Howard Greenstein: How does a start-up know when it is ready for Angel funding?
Venture Hacks: If you’ve just got an idea, check out incubators like Y Combinator and TechStars. Or you might be able to convince someone [...]

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Bill Burnham, hedge fund manager and former VC:
“Angel investors are becoming the dominant force in Consumer Internet Venture capital. The vacuum created by the withdrawal of VCs from traditional Seed and Series A opportunities in the Consumer Internet space has been filled by a motley collection of angel investors. It is angel investors, not [...]

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Naval and I recently put together a talk for AngelConf, a conference for new angel investors. The conference was organized by Y Combinator and included an great group of notable angels like Ron Conway. According to the AngelConf website,
“Investing in startups seems mysterious and difficult. How much are you supposed to invest? What [...]

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A reader asks:
“I’m an entrepreneur looking for seed investment. All I have right now is an idea and a pitch. I’m presently pitching friends and family and it has been very positive. Do you know any other idea investors I should approach?”
Larry and Sergey had a product and traction before they got their first check [...]

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Todd Vernon, the CEO of Lijit, has written a great article on raising money from angels. I especially like his taxonomy of angels:
“The Family Investor: The Family Investor is likely not really a classic Angel Investor at all but rather a supportive family member that “knows you”. Their motivation is likely out of support (sometimes [...]

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