> But the cool kids don't beg. The cool kids — the ones who really know what they're doing and have the best chances of succeeding — decide who they allow to invest in their companies. The company I was an early employee of (that ended up being a "unicorn") was not a cool kid, and we certainly were begging people to invest both at the angel stage and (especially) the series A stage. And those people got a really real…
How is it that a $10k check even gets a startup to take your call? That pays like one engineer for a month, if that. (Genuinely curious)
10k pays for ten months of an engineer in Turkey and many developing countries.
Good point. I've only spent a limited amount of time in startup space but it seems this intention is usually considered more as a possible path rather than an intention. It's a common accusation but seems outlandish and unnecessary to me. If anyone thinks this is wrong, please say so. I'm interested.
Isn't that basically one of two possible paths for a startup? It seems like these days, most people aim for an "exit", ie. either an IPO or acquisition by one of the big companies. You don't often see people talking as if their endgame is to keep running and growing their company indefinitely. All of the focus seems to be on getting to the next series of funding. The survivability metric used is not income over burn…
You can keep running and growing your company indefinitely after an IPO, the liquidity provided just helps you grow faster by also leveraging the business' equity.
the article-writer OP claimed "There is a small cadre of people who actually have what it takes to successfully build an NBT [next big thing], and experienced investors are pretty good at recognizing them." which is hilariously and demonstrably wrong. we already have one person chime in with a counterexample (the person you replied to) and that is a very common experience. No, experienced investors are not pretty goo…
Benchmark Capital has a pretty small number of bets, and a pretty high hit rate, from my perspective. They certainly seem better at picking than most. Though I'd say a lot of that is of course positive selection - the best founders self-select to Benchmark/Sequoia/A16Z, and to Greylock/Accel.
>Benchmark Capital has a pretty small number of bets, and a pretty high hit rate, from my perspective. They certainly seem better at picking than most.
Of course some investors have better results than others. That would happen if they were all choosing to invest or not at random.
Thank you to the author for sharing your experience and insights. Some tips for being a better angel investor and reducing risk:
1) I can't stress this enough - learn the ABC's of private investments. I have seen a ridiculous number of angel investors as well as founders who don't understand the fundamentals of private equity investments and returns - even people who have been working at a startup for several years.
2) Limiting yourself to meeting with and investing in startups an industry in which you've worked, so that you understand their industry, better evaluate them and add value
3) Limiting yourself to meeting with and investing in startups in industries in which you or close colleagues and friends have worked so that you can consult with them regarding the potential investments
4) Joining an angel group, such as Band of Angels, so that you have a group of fellow angels to learn from and discuss investments with
5) Meeting with successful serial entrepreneurs who make angel investments to ask what they look for
6) If you have not founded a company or worked at an early stage startup, learn Lean Startup methodologies
7) Make sure you understand how a startup achieves product-market fit
8) Put together a list of good people and companies who can help startups you invest in, with everything from operations to tech to growth
There's much more, but this is a start.
Anyone who defends Uber's behavior is shouted down. Are Uber's actions an example of necessary assholish behavior? In particular their Hell application for tracking Lyfts, which required using Lyft's APIs? The problem with this vague advice is it leaves it to the reader to interpret what is and isn't ok. And readers are notoriously bad at this.
> Are Uber's actions an example of necessary assholish behavior? No, I don't think so. But I have a conflict of interest here because in 2008 I made my own attempt at starting an Uber-like thing (I called it iCab). It failed before launch because we were unable to get any of the local cab companies to work with us. The idea of using black cars never occurred to us, so Travis gets props for that. I think he's gone way…
I would argue that you were simply too early to market, now that Uber succeeded there are a ton of cab hailing apps trying to keep cabs relevant.
Benchmark Capital has a pretty small number of bets, and a pretty high hit rate, from my perspective. They certainly seem better at picking than most. Though I'd say a lot of that is of course positive selection - the best founders self-select to Benchmark/Sequoia/A16Z, and to Greylock/Accel.
They could be awful at recognizing them and only invest when founders show up with a box pooping out bars of gold already, and not at any point before then, since they're so awful at recognizing them. so you can have a 100% success rate (investing only in founders that show up with a box already pooping bars of gold) while having a 0% ability to identify successful founders. a high hit rate does not mean you can eval…
> investing only in founders that show up with a box already pooping bars of gold
will get you a 100% success rate at getting conned, btw.
> Are Uber's actions an example of necessary assholish behavior? No, I don't think so. But I have a conflict of interest here because in 2008 I made my own attempt at starting an Uber-like thing (I called it iCab). It failed before launch because we were unable to get any of the local cab companies to work with us. The idea of using black cars never occurred to us, so Travis gets props for that. I think he's gone way…
I would argue that you were simply too early to market, now that Uber succeeded there are a ton of cab hailing apps trying to keep cabs relevant.
iCab started almost a year after Uber (it was called Ubercab back then). And there were half a dozen other also-rans that started about the same time.
I would argue that you were simply too early to market, now that Uber succeeded there are a ton of cab hailing apps trying to keep cabs relevant.
iCab started almost a year after Uber (it was called Ubercab back then). And there were half a dozen other also-rans that started about the same time.
You seem to be contradicting yourself then if you say "iCab started almost a year after Uber" when you wrote above that: " But I have a conflict of interest here because in 2008 I made my own attempt at starting an Uber-like thing (I called it iCab).