We were recently approached by a potential new client, who wanted feedback on his pitch deck, a rewrite and assistance with reaching out to the appropriate investors.
We liked him and his product and decided to take him on as a client.
An investor friend called us a few days later, and asked what we were working on, meaning was there anything in our pipeline that might be of interest to him and his fund. We gave him the broad strokes on the software that our new client had built, and which already had some traction in the market, knowing full well that it was in his sweet spot.Read More...
Feld also offers a free Venture Deals course that “demystifies venture capital deals and startup financing to give both first-time and experienced entrepreneurs a definitive guide to secure funding.” Sign up and make sure that you’re notified as to when the next session is starting, which will most likely be Fall.Read More...
Everything You Need to Know About the Investor Dog Whistle
Basic to every startup/newco is having a pitch deck. An executive summaries as well, and while you know this, we wonder if we have pitch decks all wrong. Or if you believe that there’s a set order of slides to which you must strictly adhere.
Wrong.
Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures’ somewhat unofficial mantra is ‘Always Be Selling’ and truth be told, no matter what your official title is in your startup/newco, you’re doing sales. Especially in a lean company: unless you’re in a completely non-public facing role, you’re a salesperson for your company, which brings us to your investor presentation, your deck and everything in between.Read More...
Ok, so you’ve done your pitch deck – revised it ad infinitum, based on the feedback you’ve gotten from everyone you know and his or her fourth cousin twice removed. Now you’ve secured a few investor meetings, via Zoom. Where’s that investor pitch meeting template when you need one?
Brian Cohen spoke at our virtual investor breakfast recently and imparted some pearls of advice to help you with that one, some of which we’ll share with you today, with a few additions of our own, along with points other investor friends and previous Investor breakfast speakers of ours have made in the pas.
First, meetings these days are done via Zoom. Show your face. At least at the outset of the meeting. Not a photo, nyour initials, not your LinkedIn photo, which is no doubt a selfie and doesn’t look all that great anyway – the real you – and the other team members who may also be on the call. Why? Investor(s) want to get to know you and yours, and much is conveyed via your visage and facial expressions. Do you smile? At least occasionally? Investors – and Brian referred primarily to angels – after all, he was Chairman of the New York Angels for a decade before co-founding New York Venture Partner – and has invested in literally hundreds of companies over the years – have to like you. This is a partnership and a potentially a long one, so they want to see you – if only on a video call. For now, at least.Read More...
Flying Cars Are Coming. The Next Installment of Those 140 Characters Is Here…
As you know, we’ve been wondering about who those 140 characters are who Peter Thiel may well have been referring to when he said, “We were promised flying cars. Instead we got 140 characters.”
Since we’ve personally been in the industry since the early days of Web 1.0 in New York and spent a considerable amount of time in Silicon Valley as well, we’ve decided to take it upon ourselves to attempt to identify some of those characters, many of whom we’ve met and/or have gotten to know. Over the years, we’ve seen people and companies come and go. Some were bad timing. Many were simply bad ideas. Some were acquired for unbelievable amounts of money, only to disappear forever, leaving the then suddenly wealthy founders looking like geniuses. Tech is a constantly shifting landscape and people and companies come and go and fortunes made and lost at Internet speed.
Here are our picks for the next 40 of the 140, with some anecdotes and insights on the developing industry and its rising stars and investors, in no particular order. Without further ado, we’re letting this baby fly. Onward and forward.Read More...
What’s the #1 Criteria for Success in the Startup World?
When he spoke at our investor breakfast a couple of months back, New York Angels chairman Brian Cohen said that Bill Gross, founder of idealab, a startup studio and arguably the prototype for tech accelerators, asked what was the one criteria that mattered most in a successful exit of a company. Was it the amount of money they raised? Or was it smart leaders that mattered. After all the research that he had done at idealabs, Gross concluded that it was timing that was the #1 criteria for success. Timing, meaning when you went to market – think Six Degrees, the first social network in the Web 1.0 days, v Facebook.
