There are shifts happening in the world of seed investing. Some questions are emerging:
How do you process the current investment climate where capital is moving further and further upstream? How does an angel investor (or an entrepreneur, for that matter) mitigate the Series A gap? How do you parse Unicorn mania? As an angel investor, you could get buried under later stage liquidation preferences. How do you protect yourself?
One of my observations is that we’re in 2017 and lots of stuff has already been built. Nowadays, there aren’t so many wide-open opportunities out there. But there are many, many niche opportunities. Some of these businesses need to be built for very small amounts of capital – $1-2 Million, and sold for $10-15M. Is there appetite among angels for this type of investment? What about a notch smaller? Invest $250k-$500k and sell for $5-$10M?
Entrepreneurs who looking for such smaller amounts of capital to build their startups should have a listen to these five 30-minute podcast interviews with Angel Investors who share their different perspectives:
Ashmeet Sidana, Founder of Engineering Capital – His seed-stage venture fund focuses on infrastructure technology, and he has a lot of insights to offer. He delivers one particular piece of wisdom that is close to my heart. He says, funding is like candy. Don’t eat too much candy. Whole wheat bread and proteins are customers and revenues. That’s what you should focus on. Brilliant analogy, don’t you think?
Bryce Roberts, Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc – Bryce discusses the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explores alternatives.
Greg Besner, Founder and CEO at CultureIQ – Greg is a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor. We discuss both his journey as an entrepreneur, lessons thereof, as well as his methodology and philosophy of angel investing.
Swati Chaturvedi is Co-founder and CEO at Propel(x) – She discusses some of the key trends of the seed financing eco-system as viewed from Propel(x), an online platform where entrepreneurs are connected to angels.
T.M. Ravi, Managing Director and Co-founder of The Hive – He shares his perspective as a founder of a venture studio. Our discussion touches upon a couple of key issues: the prevalent incubator/accelerator model of 3-month classes, we agreed, is bogus; and the Future of Work: Utopia or Dystopia?
Venktesh Shukla, Founder of TiE Angels and General Partner at Monta Vista Capital – He discusses shifts happening in the world of seed investing.