Search is Changing: Bing’s Klout Experts Program
I have to say: I am thoroughly excited that Search just became interesting again.
Startups and Domain Names: Three Factors to Consider
A good domain name can catch attention, biasing people to prefer your company over competitors, and making it easy to reach the website if and when they decide to use it. A bad domain name can sink you. Like a storefront and location in the offline world, your domain name is the very first vehicle by which potential investors/customers/employees evaluate your company before they even engage.
High Returns On A Small Fund Challenge Low Returns On A Big Fund
Let’s say you decide to invest in a VC fund. Congratulations: you’re now supporting the least unpopular part of the investing industry. That said, how do you avoid suffering the poor median returns the industry is known for? Assuming you have a large amount of capital to invest, the relatively easy decision is to invest in one of the brand-name, multi-billion dollar VCs. However, the conventional wisdom is that small VC funds have ...
A Closer Look At The Quality Of Angel Returns Data
Every major study conducted to date has placed angel investors’ IRR between 18 and 38 percent, as summarized by my Partner John Frankel and Professor Robert Wiltbank in prior Techcrunch articles. The bad news: the data on angel returns has historically been difficult to obtain, analyze, verify, and therefore rely upon.
How Institutional Limited Partners Can Avoid Limited Returns
Having spoken with many limited partners, it is clear that there is a lack of access to the research out there that compares return generation from different venture classes and, in particular, compares angel returns with those of venture funds. I finally have had the time to collate the research we have found, and am happy to share it. This post is quite technical, but the bottom line is simple: angel-stage funds outperform.
Disruptive Companies in Asset Management
We recently hosted an idea dinner on "Disruptive Companies in the Asset Management Industry." The most attractive industries to disrupt are highly profitable ones, and asset management is traditionally a highly profitable industry. IMHO, the most successful disrupters in this area to date have been Vanguard (who popularized index funds) ...
Raising Capital for Venture Capital Funds and Bumblebees
Fundraising is not just limited to companies. Venture Capital firms have to do this as well. It is an interesting process and you get to meet fascinating people. Potential limited partners (or LP’s as we call them) come to the table with a set of beliefs that are, well, sometimes ...
Raising Money? Easy? Investing? Easy? - Why Not?
A few days ago Dave McClure posed this: This was the consummation of a heated debate on Twitter regarding a blog posting by Niki Scevak entitled Angel Index Funding Bullshit. Niki argues that Ron Conway and Dave McClure by investing in a large number of startups leads to them being ...
The Internet of People
Since the mass adoption of services such as LinkedIn and Facebook people have increasingly come online using their real names. There has been a shift from representing yourself as angrybear101@aol.com to using your actual identity. This phenomenon is culturally more important. I like to refer to it as the Internet ...
