Pitching Angels

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...

Execution beats ideas when it comes to building a startup

If I had a nickel for every great idea…

As head of pre-screening for an angel group, I get pitched a lot of great ideas. Wonderful ideas. Fantastic research topics. Brilliant PhD studies. And most are, unfortunately, bad investments. Even the ones that might become great startups someday are not viable inv...

With the right investor, the odds are 25%. With the wrong investors, the odds are exactly 0%.

Too many people in the startup community tell founders that finding investors is a numbers game. No surprise, most of the loudest voices extolling the need to spam hundreds of investors are selling lists of investor contacts or databases to track investor outreach.

Still...