Pitching Angels

Hint: It doesn’t mean we’re ready to invest as soon you find that lead

You pitch to an investor — an individual, an angel group, or a VC fund — and you’re likely to get the response: “Sounds interesting. Let...

Unlike equity investments, debt has to be repaid on a fixed schedule

For startup founders, the offer is tempting for — take a $1M loan now to get over the hump. Once sales ramp up, it’ll be easy to find venture investors.

Or a startup is in a cash crunch. The founders agree to put in extra $100K to make payroll and pay the rent. They structure it as a loan so tha...

Running out of cash is a result, not a cause, of most startup failures

Yet another startup that I invested in closed its doors last week, citing “ran out of cash” as the reason for their failure, blaming investors for not supporting the company.

They had customers. Quite a few, in fact. They had growth, but not hypergrowth. Though they started as an IoT business,...

If you’re a startup founder, find another way to protect your important secrets

When running a business was my full-time job, I signed a non-disclosure agreement nearly every day.

We had 2500 customers, mostly large enterprises. Almost every one required us to sign an NDA before telling us what they needed. I’ve signed at least a thousand NDAs.

In the e...

Avoid comparing your startup’s valuation to others if you want to keep your sanity

You’re raising $3M on a $18M valuation (or at least trying to). You’re pitching my angel group on investing in your pre-seed round. When you finish your presentation, we start the Q&A. A bunch of hands go up. The first question: what makes your startup worth $18M?

“That’s a gre...