Les 12 commandements d’un Business Angel. L’idée m’est venue un matin, comme souvent, et je me suis dit que je tenais un bon sujet de billet. Une fois mes premières idées couchées sur l’écran, j’ai challengé quelques confrères comme Olivier Fannius , Jeremie Berrebi ou Stéphane Fantuz. Et voici la V1. Les 12 commandements d’un Business Angel Dans les projets que tu comprends tu investiras.Le business plan, comme un enfant et le Père Noël, tu ne croiras pas.
Cette liste n’étant pas exhaustive, elle est destinée à être triturée, modifiée, améliorée, commentée, vilipendée… A vos commentaires, amis business angels et startuppers ! Angéliquement. Patrick WordPress: J’aime chargement… Business Angel, business plan, pacte d'actionnaires, startup. Business Devils : les mauvaises pratiques qu’on peut rencontrer. Allez, je m’y jette… voilà un article qui me travaille depuis pas mal de temps, et qu’il me semble très important de sortir, ne serait-ce que pour lancer un peu le débat. Plus on parle, et moins on met de langue de bois, mieux c’est, hein Les Business Angels ont depuis pas mal de temps plutôt bonne presse, et force est de reconnaître qu’ils ont un vrai bel impact sur la naissance et la croissance de tout un tas de jeunes boites, avec plusieurs centaines de projets financés chaque année (ce que j’estime à environ 1000 startups financées par an, dont une petite moitié par les réseaux de BA).
De l’argent, de l’écoute, de l’expérience, du réseau, du temps, des conseils… contre quelques parts de l’entreprise en amorçage et parfois en prenant au passage une petite réduction fiscale… C’est le deal et il semble plutôt intéressant au vu du nombre toujours plus grands de candidats à la fameuse levée de fonds. Tout semble parfait dans le meilleur des mondes… Pêché d’orgueil. Do You Really Even Need VC? I recently spoke on a panel in Santa Monica organized by my friend Jason Nazar, CEO of DocStoc, titled Startups Uncensored, Pitching Venture Capitalists. There were about 200 people in the audience. Jason started by asking the audience how many of them were start-ups – 90% of the hands went up.
He then asked for a show of hands of people who had already raised a round of Venture Capital – no hands. I guess you’re thinking, “duh, that’s why they came to the panel discussion.” He next asked me specifically how many of these companies were likely to get VC funding (thanks, Jason) and I responded, “less than 5%,” to which I heard a big gasp. I responded that I thought this was a good thing – not something nasty. I contend that the vast majority of companies should never raise venture capital. I repeat this advice on a very frequent basis to most entrepreneurs I meet and I find it usually surprises people. ”You’re a VC – aren’t you supposed to want to give us money?” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6a. 6b. 1. Is Color’s Team Worth $41M, Even if Its Idea Isn’t?: Tech News and Analysis «
What I *Would Have* Said at TechCrunch Disrupt. What do you get when you combine 7 panelist plus one moderator on to a stage for 30 minutes to talk about a serious topic? Answer: Not much. And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. It’s a shame. There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. I said almost nothing in the 30 minutes. My friend Ethan Anderson put it best to me after the panel, “You probably shouldn’t have been up there. If given a chance here’s what I would have talked about: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. ** One small note: many VCs who got into the industry in 2001 or later have never seen a “carry” check. 8. What I wanted to say, but Michael cut me off (hey, it’s his show!)
And finally, one non VC topic. 9. “Hogging minutes – The other annoying thing on panels is the “over talker” or the person who always has to answer the question first (the way that annoying kid did back when you were in elementary and high school). What Entrepreneurs Should do about Price Fixing. OMG. This is super funny. I wrote the post below after work. I had to race to meet my wife for dinner & a movie (we have “date night” once / week) and went to see Town (which was awesome). I figured I needed time to spell check and edit before publishing so I would hit publish when I got home.
Wow! I returned to my house, flipped on my Mac and see AngelGate, The Sequel. It makes my post even more poignant. We all know about AngelGate by now. As a funny coincidence I happend to have written about the topic of collusion 3 weeks prior to the fateful dinner. “Um, let’s not be naive here and not think that a “form of collusion” doesn’t happen on virtually any financing round. To be crystal clear – I think AngelList is awesome and I have NEVER heard Nivi or Naval ever reveal or discuss pricing information. What do you think of management? This also happens with VCs. I’ll give you an example of information flow at its worst.
How did VCs respond? So what is an entrepreneur to do? My advice: The Arrogant VC: Why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs, Part 2 - Guest Author · January 2nd, 2010 Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is by Fred Destin, one of Atlas’ general partners. If you like it, check out Fred’s blog and tweets @fdestin. – Nivi In Part 1 of The Arrogant VC, I discussed 4 reasons why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs: Poor first impressionsGetting strung along or left at the altarGetting a raw dealGreat (but misguided) Expectations This post contains 4 more reasons why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs. 5. “While VCs are always happy to dish out advice, this feels disingenuous from people who have never actually built a company or had a knockout success as an investor. VC’s are often ex-lawyers or bankers and some have a tendency to feel safe with “experienced suits” that sometimes do nothing but drive the burn rate up and compound cash-flows problems.
Some VC’s are not that shy about it. 6. The going really gets tough when entrepreneurs lose their original sponsor. 7. 8. Conclusion. The Arrogant VC: Why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs - Venture. Guest Author · December 27th, 2009 Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month.
This post is by Fred Destin, one of Atlas’ general partners. If you like it, check out Fred’s blog and tweets @fdestin. I’ve also generated an MP3 version of this post. Let me know if it’s useful. – Nivi Below is the summary of all the answers I received to my recent post, “Tell me why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs”. There is a shorter and easier to stomach version on Xconomy if you prefer, here.
The VC-Entrepeneur relationship seems damaged. As with all articles of this kind, it is plagued by generalizations and simplifications. Clearly as VC’s our job is not be loved but to contribute in building great business and return money to our shareholders. A common answer I got was “sour grapes”. Poor first impressions The absence of feedback loop is a common theme with entrepreneurs griping about “dozens of unanswered calls and mails, from people they met. Getting a raw deal. Valuing early stage companies | Startable - Healy Jones' & Prasa.
Since this is my first post as a former venture capitalist I thought it might be interesting to answer a one of the more… opaque issues in venture financing. Two of the most frequent questions I got as a VC from entrepreneurs were “how much is my company worth” and “how do venture capitalists value my company?” The truth is that the answer has nothing to do with DCF’s or other business school theories, but instead is based around what the VC thinks/needs to return to their fund from that particular investment. The following is a bit of an over simplification, but is as close to a “rule” as I could gleam from my time in venture capital. Series A valuations Series A* valuations are usually based on percentages – as in, how much of the company does the venture capital fund want to own. Getting a higher valuation Strange as it sounds, this does imply that the more you raise the higher the valuation. Have a name-brand management team. The rational Does this make sense? Reid Hoffman: My Rule of Three for Investing.
The guest post below was written by Reid Hoffman, CEO and Founder of LinkedIn. Reid, who's been a prolific writer lately, is a strong advocate of entrepreneurism and the startup mentality. See his recent Washington Post article Let Our Start-Ups Bail Us Out, and the guest post he wrote here on TechCrunch, Stimulus 2.0: It? S The Startups, Stupid. Reid has recently appeared on Charlie Rose, and we had a chance to sit down with him earlier this year for a video interview as well. Reid is an investor in over 60 web ventures including Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, FunnyOrDie, Ning, Last.fm, Six Apart and Technorati.
He is also a member of the nominating committee of our upcoming TechFellow Awards with Founders Fund. TechCrunch and Founders Fund announced the first annual TechFellow Awards last week. As a serial investor, I? 1. In real estate the wisdom says ? 2. The Internet space is crowded. 3. This may be the most important of the three. With these three elements in place ? Since I? A VC: Lead Investors, Dipshit Companies, and Funding Every Entrepreneur. Sounds like a great conversation yesterday at Y Combinator's AngelConf in Silicon Valley. Anthony Ha of Venturebeat had a couple posts on it that I just read, one on Paul Graham's comments, and another on Ron Conway and Mike Arrington's comments. I would have enjoyed being part of that discussion so I'll join in now. I second Ron Conway's hope that "any entrepreneur that has “the guts” to start a company gets funded.
" That is my kind of thinking. We need more entrepreneurship, not less. Mike Arrington expressed the contrary opinion, apparently held by many VCs (not me), that this mini explosion in angel investing is creating a bunch of "dipshit companies. " Paul Graham rightly points out that that there is a "larger trend where founders have more power than investors. " This may just be me being defensive and protective of my chosen role. Roger Ehrenberg had a great post on this yesterday. MoneyBall for Startups: Invest BEFORE Product/Market Fit, Double-Down AFTER. My apologies... this is a long piece (~2500 words). Not for the faint of heart. If you want the short story, read the abstract below & 3 core assertions, then cut to the conclusions at the bottom. Abstract: VC funds are getting smaller (good), & angel investors are growing (also good), but both need to get smarter & innovate.
Startup costs have come down dramatically in the last 5-10 years, and online distribution via Search, Social, Mobile platforms (aka Google, Facebook, Apple) have become mainstream consumer marketing channels. What does this mean? Let's start with 2 intial observations about the current market for investors, and for startups. Assertion #1: Most consumer internet investors (angels, seed funds, big VCs) have no clue what the fuck they're doing.
Recently some very smart folks have been talking about the relative [upside/downside] of being a [small/big] investor in tech, and specifically the changes & challenges going on in venture capital in the last decade. Fuck.