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The Latest Global Moonshot

The Latest Global Moonshot

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As more cities and states ease up on lockdown restrictions, and the emergency-use only Covid vaccines are becoming more readily available, the concept of requiring vaccine passports for travel, attending events and who knows what all else is getting a lot of press – a cause for concern, whether you’ve been vaccinated or not. According to the Cleveland Clinic: Already Had COVID? Vaccine Provides No Added Benefit. In fact, according to the study, “Of all infections during the study period, 99.3% occurred in participants who were not infected previously and remained unvaccinated. In contrast, 0.7% of infections occurred in participants who were not previously infected but were currently vaccinated. Significantly, not one of the 1,359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study.”

 

We’re hearing more and more about events where proof of vaccination is required.  What about the deaths and serious injuries resulting from the vaccines themselves? Again, they were approved for emergency use only, as they did not go through the usual rigorous testing. Yet Reports Indicate Vaccines Causing More Injuries, Deaths Than Natural COVID-19 Infections. This is not about conspiracy theories. It’s a heads up to you, entrepreneurs and important to pay attention to everything: every coin has two sides. Read More...

Think Small

Think Small

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Companies are easy to start, right? People do it all the time. Seeing it through to it becoming a thriving business and/or having a successful exit, well, that’s quite a different story. Stated another way, we had a professor in a fiction writing class in college who started the semester with: “I met a fellow at a party and asked, ‘So, what do you do?’ To which he replied, ‘I write the beginnings of novels.’”

Which, for the record, doesn’t make you a novelist. You’ve got to see it through to that last page. And publish!

Igor Jablokov, who is a founder rather than investor, spoke at one of our investor breakfasts a while back, and it’s amazing what you can learn from someone who has been there, done that – and who has had a successful exit. Igor had a company, and as he was building, he would go to various conferences and expos to network, and to see what he might learn. At one conference, he spoke to a group who had had a very successful exit and he asked how it had happened. Read More...

The Earthquake in Chile: A Parable for a Green World

The Earthquake in Chile: A Parable for a Green World

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The reference is to a novel by Heinrich von Kleist, where nothing happens the way one would expect, and all things are not what they seem.

Jenny Fielding, Managing Director of Techstars New York City Accelerator, which recently selected its latest batch of cohorts, penned a piece (New World, New Focus. How Application Trends at Techstars NYC Point to a Changing World) about the shift in focus of the entrepreneurs, given the current climate. And always important for founders to look to what the problems are, find the white space, and take it from there.

Speaking of climate, much attention has been given in the past few years to climate change. As always, important to look around, see what the problems are and find the white space. Glaringly obvious this past week were the events in Texas, when a devastating cold snap caused the windmills to freeze and the power grid to fail. Read More...

Build Back Different

Build Back Different

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We’ve mentioned Clubhouse before and attention must be paid: it proved to be a game-changer – big time – the likes of which we haven’t seen in a while. Clubhouse has taken social media into a different direction. While Twitter and even Facebook have been something of town squares, CH is not that: it’s the corner pub or sort of unconference  or coffee klatch, where people can wander in and out of ‘rooms,’ at will, and participate, or simply listen and learn.

Although, CH members, take note: Clubhouse Users’ Raw Audio May Be Exposed to Chinese Partner.

So, what’s next? Well, the Twitter and Facebook knock offs, of course. Considering that both platforms are losing users and revenue (Twitter reports $1.14B net loss for 2020 – and that was before CH hit the zeitgeist in a significant way, and Facebook has been hemorrhaging users in its most valuable markets for some time now, what to speak of the face that Apple Privacy Change May Cost Facebook, Google $25 Billion Over Next 12 Months), they still believe that they will forever hold sway as the Masters of the Universe, so why innovate when you can appropriate? Read More...

Meet the New Club. Not the Same as the Old Club

Meet the New Club. Not the Same as the Old Club

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It isn’t often that a newco launches that fairly quickly captures unicorn-level attention the way that Clubhouse has. The audio-only social network, which has amassed 2M+ users and $100M in funding in just under a year after launch, seems to have raised the bar by lowering the barrier to participation, meaning, that in most rooms, anyone can raise their hand and, in most cases (depending on the moderator), participate in the discussion. It’s still in beta, so it’s currently iPhone only and invitation only: patience.

“If you could plug into a live conversation about a topic, you’re passionate about, on demand, anywhere in the world, and have an opportunity to not only listen to some of the smartest people on the subject, but also participate with them, would you?” asked Brian Solis in Forbes (The Latest Silicon Valley Unicorn, Clubhouse Raises $100 Million And Also Raises Attention To The Importance Of Audio-Based Social Networking). “…it represents an unquenchable thirst for meaningful community and engagement, especially in light of the chaos and devastation that played out in the forms of disinformation, political theater, and divisiveness across other social networks.” Read More...

Investors in the Hot Seat

Investors in the Hot Seat

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Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

We work with and/or coach entrepreneurs all the time, and recently realized that many founders have no idea how the VC model works, meaning how and why VCs deploy funds – and make decisions – the way they do. So we’re going to shift the perspective to help you to better understand the process.

You go to investors because you need capital in order to get your company to the next level. Time to think about VC firms as companies as well, because they are. Some of them are large companies, re have a bigger war chest of funds to deploy, but truth be told, the majority are more akin to SMBs. Where does the money come from for the funds? Family offices, high net worth individuals, strategics (eg companies/corporations aligned with the investment vertical or thesis of the fund) or institutional investors (pension funds, university endowment funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc), and the funds manage their investments. The fund’s investors invest in specific funds for various reasons: the expertise of the team, the fund’s track record, their spidey sense, alignment of focus, etc.

Like the VCs who invest in your company, those LPs expect a return on their investments. If the fund fails to do that, well, they’re going to have a harder time attracting investors themselves when they go to raise their next fund, or to put it into startup terms, their Series A, B, whatever. Read More...

Is It Time to Shoot the Messenger?

Is It Time to Shoot the Messenger?

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Image by Jan Alexander from Pixabay

Calm down, we’re talking about delivering your message via online video. It seems that everyone is doing a videocast these days and given that one has one’s choice of either Facebook Live, LinkedInLive, YouTube, Periscope, DLive, Twitch, et al and out in beta, mmhmm, there is certainly no shortage of platforms. Or people who feel that they need to say something, whether or not they necessarily have something to say.

Careers have been launched via these platforms: look at PewDie Pie, the gamer/comedian who started out by playing videos of games, threw in some comedy and became one of the most viewed channels on YouTube. Or Harry Stebbings, who was a mere 20 years old when he launched his Twenty Minute VC, featuring, yes 20-minute interviews with investors, keeping them short, snappy and getting right to the point. Twenty minutes. That’s all it took. In fact, the now 24-year-old Stebbings recently launched his own micro VC fund (20VC).

“Podcasts are becoming big business — in part because of how well they can attract and keep audiences at a time when so many other media formats are finding it hard to pin down that elusive metric of engagement,” says Techcrunch. Read More...

Inside Investor Baseball: Here’s the Pitch

Inside Investor Baseball: Here’s the Pitch

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Image by Сергей Ремизов from Pixabay

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...