Category: Education

  • Hardware Workshop: May 2-3

    Step 1. Start a hardware company.
    Step 2. ?
    Step 3. Profit.

    If it were only that easy. You can ask  PebbleInteraXonThalmic, Bionym, PUSH Strength, Kiwi WearablesClearPath Robotics among others about the challenges of designing, testing, manufacturing and distributing a hardware-based company. There are a lot of subtle , unexpected complexity in moving from bits to atoms. And one of the best ways to learn about complexity is from operators made mistakes and found a way to do it.

    There is a Toronto based event happening called the Hardware Workshop happening May 2-3, 2014. The event is hosted by Marc Barros (Moment) and organized locally by Katherine Hague (Shoplocket) and Zak Homuth (Upverter). It features an amazing set of people with real world experience in all aspects of building hardware-based businesses, including:

    It looks like a great workshop at an amazing price. Looks like the workshop costs are covering the out-of-pocket expense of the organizers for food to allow participants to focus on the content and learning opportunity. (Seriously, do the math $75 * 75 = $5,625 barely covers the catering costs).

    “What makes this workshop unique is the quality of the content, the deep operational experience of the teachers, and the long term connections you will make. Hand curated, each teacher covers a unique topic that falls within the startup’s life cycle from an idea to reaching market fit.”

    If you’re interested in learning about building a hardware startup and about the mistakes that others have made (so you can avoid them). This should be a fun 2 days. Apply to attend.

    [Disclosure: I am an investor in Upverter. ]

  • Make stuff

    Maker Faire

    I’m really looking forward to Maker Faire Toronto. It is happening Saturday and Sunday, September 21-22, 2013 at the Wychwood Barns. This is an amazing opportunity to celebrate the Maker Movement. I’m excited to see the inventions, the creativity, the resourcefulness of people to solve problems, to inspire. To be proud of the things they’ve built.

    “That is, no matter what the thing is you’re building, it’s deeply gratifying and incredibly educational to perform the act of creating something, anything.” — Christopher O’Brien

    I am really excited about the opportunity to bring my kids. I’m excited to teach them about entrepreneurship. But even more importantly, I’m excited to provide them access to learn and to explore technology. My friends Tara Brown and Sean Bonner opened LA Makerspace focused on providing a kid-friendly space. My kids have asked me about building robots, making candy and taking apart their toys.  The eldest is now 6 years old, and her problem solving skills and attention are developing where this will be a transformational experience.

    “We are making the tools for passion. When I look around, I don’t see any apathy here.” — Nolan Bushnell

    Much of the DIY culture emerged out of the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley. And while not directly responsible for the success of many of the companies that emerged, it seeded a culture and the connections between folks that started Apple Computer, Osbourne Computer and others. This is the ground floor, the Mechatronics department at UWaterloo accepted their first class in 2003.  Bufferbox was started in 2011 and sold to Google in 2012. This is a very interesting space if you look at the emergence of other area startups like InteraXon, Thalmic LabsUpverterMatterform, Bionym and others. 

    Bring your kids. These are very interesting times indeed.

  • A Perspective on Investor/Mentor Whiplash

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    The other day Fred Wilson posted an opinion and some tips on Investor/Mentor Whiplash. He took the position that that is a big problem for accelerators as well as early stage and seed environments. Brad Feld took this as a bit of a misunderstanding on accelerators, he insists that TechStars creates an environment where early stage companies can learn to manage the whiplash. Brad Feld states:

    I disagree with Fred. It’s not a big problem. It’s the essence of one of things an accelerator program is trying to teach the entrepreneurs going through it. Specifically, building muscle around processing data and feedback, and making your own decisions.

    On the surface this seems correct. A problem (one of many) new founders face is the overwhelming barrage of mentorship (good and bad) and information mixed with the inability to filter. An accelerator should be able to provide the environment where a strong group of peers with some guidance can help to build the “muscle around processing data and feedback.” In the last 6 years I have noticed that is a common problem founders face and their ability to manage it is important to their success. It wasn’t until I experienced the whiplash myself a 2nd and 3rd time that I fully appreciated the damage it can do even if you are prepared for it.

    Generally what I tell early stage founders:

    • Only talk to customers once you have something to show them — but that shouldn’t take you a long time, don’t go heads down for months. Asking people what they want and not focusing on something specific they can touch/feel is a path to busy work and infinite sadness.
    • Avoid the mentor parties/socialization. Find two (or three) good people with opposing views and bounce specific data off them but only when you have done something that requires fresh eyes to advise you how to interpret the results.
    • Focus on what isn’t working when getting feedback from mentors. Founders need to be positive but you need to focus on the bad things when talking to your close mentors that have been through it already. If they can’t help you with the tough stuff why are you spending a lot of time with them?
    • Don’t expect a direct answer. Experienced mentors know you are the best person to run your company, not them, and they have developed a way of not telling you what or how to do things but instead challenge you to figure it out in a positive way.

    Whiplash from mentors doesn’t just happen in startups, it happens everywhere people are giving you advice or have something to gain by influencing the decisions you are about to make or the opinion you develop on something.

    Being prepared and learning to manage the whiplash isn’t just the essence of accelerator programs, it is the essence of education that culminates in the top level you can achieve to filter information – a phd program. At the phd level the filter muscle is almost too strong but that is a topic of a whole other blog post.

    The scary thing for entrepreneurs is that accelerator programs are too often run by people that don’t know how to effectively educate people and/or they have something to gain financially by the decisions founders make.

    I think this *is* a big problem in accelerators. I wonder if the ability to teach that skill to founders (or select founders that already have that skill) is the difference between a successful accelerator (which is really only TechStars and YC) and one that isn’t (pretty much everyone else)?

    [Editor’s note: This post was originally posted on Jesse Rodgers’ Who You Calling a Jesse blog on July 31, 2013.]

  • It’s not like it’s rocket science

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    Toronto Space Apps Challenge, April 19-21, 2013

    Oh wait, it is!

    NASA and the European Space Agency are hosting a hackathon in 75 cities around the world. It includes Canadian events in Toronto and Winnipeg.

    “The International Space Apps Challenge is a technology development event during which citizens from around the world work together to solve challenges relevant to improving life on Earth and life in space.”

    The Toronto event is focusing on 24 of the challenges provided by NASA (the full list of challenges is 50 large). The challenges provide a diverse set of skills and participation. Skills include software, hardware, strategy, and design. There are a number of challenges that include the interpretation of economic data and others that involve air traffic control.

    With the amazing photos that Commander Hadfield is publishing on Twitter. Hopefully there is a renewed interest in the Canadian space industry. (We did build the Canadarm…) And the commericalization of space exploration with the X PRIZE and SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. It’s an amazing chance to participate in a grassroots exploration of space technologies and data.

    List of Challenges in Toronto Space Apps Challenge

    ESA 3D Printing Contest
    Create an open source 3D model of space hardware that can be generated by a 3D printer.
    My Space Cal
    Combine the past and future time schedules of satellites into a common calendar that the world can easily access.
    Wish You Were Here
    Develop a compelling representation of weather on Mars.
    Tour of the Moon
    Enable humans worldwide to take an interactive tour of the Moon.
    The Blue Marble
    Rethink space-based Earth imagery and make it more accessible to a broad audience of space enthusiasts.
    Solar Flare
    Visualize invisible (to the human eye) phenomena that can affect so many vital terrestrial activities.
    Seeing Water From Space
    Create a visualization of Chile water resources, showing how they have changed over time relative to changes in climate.
    SCISTARTER Citizen Science
    Help humans understand and analyze microbial communities and compare with microbes on the International Space Station.
    Renewable Energy Explorer
    Create an app that integrates wind, solar, and geothermal energy data to show where combining them would have the greatest potential.
    Incentives Tied to Utility Rates
    Help consumers find relevant incentives, tax rebates, and savings for their energy efficiency and renewable energy efforts.
    Earth Day Challenge
    Explore the history of Earth Day using environmental data since 1970.
    Aligning the Stars
    Match and align the stars in Aurora imagery taken by Astronauts on the International Space Station.
    “Catch a Meteor” Tracker
    Create an app that would allow observers of a meteor shower to trace the location, color and size of the shooting star.
    Database of Near Earth Objects
    Create a platform to enables citizen astronomers to register, submit findings, and help rank the findings of other citizen astronomers.
    CubeSats for Asteroid Exploration
    Create a CubeSat design for a mission to astroids near Earth.
    Deployable Greenhouse
    Develop a deployable greenhouse that could be used on a space mission to the Moon or Mars.
    Hitch a Ride to Mars
    Design a CubeSat for an upcoming Mars mission.
    My Virtual Mentor
    Expand the online presence for the NASA GIRLS program to mobile and/or tablet platforms.
    “No Delays” Air Traffic Management
    Create a visualization that increases understanding of the problems of our current air traffic control system.
    Space Station Benefits to Humanity
    Develop a tool to improve the understanding of the incredible benefits that International Space Station is delivering back to Earth.
    Spot the Station
    Extend the functionality of the Spot the Station site that allows you to share your sightings of the International Space Station with others.
    Syncing NASA’s Open Source Projects
    Create an application that mirrors changes to NASA’s github presence.
    NASA’s Impact on the Economy
    Share the story of NASA’s economic impact in a new and compelling way.
    Adopt-a-Spacecraft: Voyager 1
    Humanize the Voyager mission through the creation of a data visualization, app, or even a physical object.

    It’s an amazing time to be interested in space exploration. Plan on exploring at the ROM on April 19-21, 2013.

  • If You Have More Than Three Priorities, You Have No Priorities

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    One of my favorite sayings (with apologies to Jim Collins, author of From Good to Great) is: “If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities.” I literally use this to run my business life – every year, my team and I agree on three high-level strategic priorities for the business. Each of my direct reports then come up with three priorities that ladder up to those business goals, each of their reports define their three goals, and then the teams work together to define three aligned performance goals for each quarter (this approach is also known as “cascading strategy“). I love this approach because it’s simple and  because by focusing on just three things, we’re able to move some pretty big rocks in the right direction.

    Fine, great – but how can this help you prioritize? By taking the same approach, Every. Single. Day. First thing every morning, ask yourself the question: what are the three things you MUST do today? I write them down, and I prefer it when they are specifically aligned to our annual strategic goals (for example, are my three “to do’s” helping me generate revenue, increase awareness of SMG, or growing our capabilities in a specific area?). Then I do those three things, no matter what, no matter how long it takes to cross them off the list – ensuring that I don’t let the urgent get in the way of the important.

    I’m really interested in time management and effective prioritization (“working smarter vs. longer“) – I’d love to hear about your tactics in the comments; I’m also planning to explore other systems and approaches in upcoming posts. Let me know what you’d like to hear about!

  • Firing People

    I hate firing people. It’s the worst part of my job. Even after all these years I still spend days or even weeks agonizing over a decision to let someone go. I feel absurd complaining about this, given that of course it’s a hundred times worse for the person being fired than it is for me. Still, I hate firing people.

    My first firing at Top Hat was our VP Sales. He was employee number two, he joined right after we raised our angel round. In retrospect it was doomed from the start, and it was entirely my fault. I had no idea what I was doing when it came to building a sales organization and brought him into a role that didn’t make sense (read about the lessons learned in building a sales team). It took me 6 months before I finally pulled the trigger. In the end, it was undoubtedly the right decision and set the company back on track. But at the time it was an extremely tough call. It was admitting failure – to myself and to our investors – that this first major hire was a mistake. I felt  ashamed about it for months and kept convincing and re-convincing myself that we could still make it work.

    As a general rule once you’ve lost faith in an employee, things rarely get better. You can sometimes fix a skill-level problem by giving someone time to grow, but you can never fix a personality problem. If you’ve identified that someone isn’t a fit you need to move on it quickly and decisively. The longer you wait the worse it will be for both parties.

    Firing is an essential part of running a successful company.

    In a narrow way, it’s actually more important than hiring. You could, in theory, use a shit-against-the-wall style hiring strategy and as long as you filter out the bad apples quickly enough you’ll be able to build up a functional team over time. Of course that’s probably not the best approach.

    The reality is that even the most effective interviewers are rarely more than 70% or 80% accurate. The average interviewer is quite a bit worse than that and isn’t much better than chance – often even worse, because the naive approach just selects people who are great in interviews, which disproportionately selects for bullshitters. However, even if you’re some kind of super-human talent screening machine with a 95% success rate, that 5% will accumulate and degrade the culture until you’re surrounded by bozos.

    The Best Firing Process is a Better Hiring Process

    Of course the best “firing process” is not to have to fire people, which can only be done through effective hiring. That being said, not having an effective firing process is like not having an immune system – the first cold will eventually kill you.

    It’s fairly common knowledge these days that A players only like to work with other A players. A slightly more subtle observation is that someone’s status as an A player isn’t fixed. Bringing a weak player onto a team has a tendency to poison the culture and downgrade the rest of the team (especially if that weak player has a shitty attitude.) This bad apple syndrome has been observed to happen fairly reliably in studies on organizational dynamics.

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    The Bad Apple Syndrome

    We’ve experience this at Top Hat a couple of times. One of the most instructive was with our inside sales team. Early on when we were in a pinch to fill the team we lowered our standards and brought on a few people that we should have passed on. The results were disastrous. The quality of the team degraded and eventually hurt not only the inside team but also other parts of the company that came into contact with it. It took nearly a year of solid effort to rebuild the team. For a time it seemed hopeless. No matter what changes we put in place, no matter how much talent we threw at the team, the cancer of negativity and poor morale just wouldn’t go away. The most profound mistake we made in the process of trying to fix the team was to keep those who were performing well but had a negative attitude.

    There was a pattern we observed a few times: we’d put a new person into the team, their performance would be great and they’d be super enthusiastic. Then like clockwork after a week or two their numbers would slowly drop, and they’d become engrossed in the culture of negativity and gossip. It was only after the cleared out the ringleaders who were perpetuating the negativity (who happened to have decent performance numbers!) and put in strong positive management that things finally began to change. The most amazing thing is that many of the people who were B or even C players when the team was dominated by negativity shot up to solid A player status. The overall output of the team per person went up by nearly 300%. In addition it seems as though life was trying to setup a lab experiment for us to prove just how much things had improved – we had a person who had left the company a few months prior re-join the team. His feedback was that he was blow away, he couldn’t believe it was the same team.

    Lessons Learned

    The first lesson we learned was that no matter how strapped for manpower you are, no matter how much it seems like the world will end if you don’t fill a position, compromising on the quality of talent will surely be more damaging. Second, we learned that in fixing a damaged team the key is to identify the cultural sources of the underlying problem and focus on those. Finally, we learned to use a divide and conquer approach – we would pull all the top talent into a separate team while rehabilitating the broken remaining team separately – it really helped prevent the “negativity cancer” from spreading while we were fixing things. These are simple things in retrospect, but it took a while to pull it off.

    One of the most revealing questions I tend to ask when interviewing potential managers is whether they’ve ever had to make the decision to fire someone. The answer and subsequent discussion usually tells you two things: first, it tells you if the person has ever had to deal with the most difficult problems in management, second it tells you if they know how to handle those problems through the process they followed. Assuming the person has ever had to hire and manage a team of a decent size for any length of time, it’s almost certain they’ve made hiring mistakes, and their answer tells you that they know how to detect and correct these mistakes. If the person simply walked into a mature team, or has had HR handle all the hiring/firing decisions for them, then they’ve been living on easy street.

    The process of firing someone is always somewhat unique to each situation. That being said there are some basic principles that you should always follow:

    1. Give people plenty of notice and regular feedback. Give people several chances to improve. The actual firing should never be a surprise – if it is then you almost certainly did something wrong in setting expectations. Depending on the role the whole process should take 1-2 months (longer for senior roles.)
    2. Try to be generous with severance and leave the person in a good spot to find their next employment. I know it’s not always possible in a startup, but do what you can. It’s the decent thing to do.
    3. Take time to reassure the rest of the team and explain (with discretion) the process that was followed and why the decision was made. Letting someone go is always a huge morale hit (even if the person wasn’t well liked, it still scares people.) You need to make people understand that their job is not in danger.

    Firing someone is always a brutal experience. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or is a psychopath. That being said, it’s unfortunately a necessary evil and understanding when and why it needs to be done is essential to the success of any business.

  • Jump into Bin 38: Founder Books

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    Anyone remember the Bin 38 debacle? Well this is not anywhere near as interesting. Daniel Debow and a group of startup CEOs had dinner last week. They each shared their must read books for founders. Daniel shared the list on Facebook.

    1. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days
    2. The Art Of The Start
    3. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk
    4. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers

    5. Guanxi (The Art of Relationships): Microsoft, China, and Bill Gates’s Plan to Win the Road Ahead
    6. ZAG: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands
    7. The Difference Between God And Larry Ellison: *God Doesn’t Think He’s Larry Ellison
    8. Who: The A Method for Hiring
    9. Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
    10. The Sciences of the Artificial
    11. I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59
    12. SPIN Selling
    13. How to Win Friends and Influence People
    14. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business
    15. The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
    16. Predictably Irrational Revised And Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
    17. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
    18. Crossing The Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers
    19. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs
    20. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
    21. The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Startups that Win
    22. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
    23. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

    What books do you think are essential for startup founders to read?

    Comments on Hacker News

  • The gale of Creative Destruction at University of Toronto

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    University’s play a role in startup communities. Brad Feld’s Boulder Thesis (and I bring it up because he is coming to Toronto on October 30th) says that the people that attend and work at the university are the most important contribution to the startup community a university can make. The institutional components (labs, programs, and technology transfer offices) are less important according to Feld and when they are done wrong they are more damaging than helpful to startups.

    In Toronto you have a number of schools to feed the community; Ryerson, George Brown, York, OCAD, Sheridan, and of course the University of Toronto.

    The University of Toronto is the top ranked school in Canada and around the top 20 mark globally according to various rankings. As one of the oldest institutes of higher learning in Canada where some of the proudest scientific discoveries in the country’s history have been made (Insulin, stem cells, etc) there is a lot to talk about in terms of research. It is 21st globally in engineering and computer science yet it feels like it is hardly part of the conversation with regards to the startup community in Canada. That should be ok, they are a feeder to the community as Brad Feld defines it. I disagree with it being ok. I believe if there is a lack on entrepreneurial activity on campus that campus likely does not feed the community anywhere close to its potential.

    Beyond those that would feed the community there are many potential leaders on the campus from faculty (many have founded companies and had exits) to students that are confined by the silos that naturally occur in large institutions. Outsiders might point to MaRS as the main effort related to the university, it’s not, although it certainly has helped. There are a load of new programs that are working on building entrepreneurial culture on campus. The following is a non-comprehensive list:

    • Hatchery – The Entrepreneurship Hatchery is a hothouse for the best ideas of entrepreneurial undergraduate engineers.
    • UofT Hackers – a community of University of Toronto students who build great products.
    • Techno – “the flagship event of the IOS’s entrepreneurship education program, which also includes year-round programming for physical sciences and engineering students, faculty, and alumni at the University of Toronto.” This program has some amazing science focused companies.
    • Techna – “to shorten the time interval from technology discovery and development to application of such technologies for the benefit of patients and the health care system, and to facilitate the convergence of basic investigation, technology development and translational research”
    • UTEST – recently announcing it’s first cohort, UTEST “provides nascent software companies with start-up funding, work space, mentoring and business strategy support.”
    • Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman – Is focused on helping people build massively scalable companies. Folks like Nigel Stokes, Dan Debow, Dan Shimmerman, Tomi Poutanen, Dennis Bennie, Nick Koudas.

    All of these programs represent a positive focus on entrepreneurship and commercialization that is gaining momentum. The last one, Creative Destruction Lab, is particularly interesting (disclaimer, I am involved there) because it is located in the Rotman School of Management and is being designed to build a bridge across the silos as well as into the Toronto startup community. It also hosted a DemoCamp event at Rotman for the University community that attracted over 300 people (two thirds engineers) and 44 people applied to present in September. More are being planned and applications to be part of the lab program itself are open to all UofT students and Alumni until October 14th.

    As the entrepreneurial momentum builds on the University of Toronto campus I believe it will fill one of the gaps that currently exists in Toronto’s startup community by both educating students that feed the community and attracting faculty (and their spouses) from abroad that could be globally connected leaders in the community.

     

  • Brokers, Smokers and Midnight Tokers

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    In the past couple of days, I have seen a few emails from what could be best called funding brokers. They “facilitate” deals between early stage companies and potential investors. All for a consulting fee, usually for a percentage of the amount of funding raised. They have connections to high net worth angel investors and relationships with venture capitalists. Typically the fees and the engagement are model on investment banking particularly as related to later stage M&A deals.

    It’s not a surprise. It’s a well established model. The Lehman model (we all know how well Lehman Brothers worked out for the rest of us) is 5% on the first $1MM raised, 4% on the second $1MM, 3% on the third $1MM, and 1% for capital above $4MM. It changes with equity versus debt financing, reducing to a 0.5-2% fee on debt rounds.

    And particularly in later stage deals and M&A it is probably more accepted (acceptable?). In the transaction there are 3 potential parties:

    • Startup
    • Funder
    • Broker/Finder

    Typically the person contracting the broker pays the fees. This means that it’s either the VC paying the fee, but if you are the startup it means that you’re paying the fee. And that fee is either increasing your dilution or decreasing the amount of the round. You can look at it as just paying fees like you pay your accountant or lawyer.But why, oh, why are you willing to give up chunks of your company this early to do things you are capable of doing yourself.

    What does a VC think about brokers/finders?

    Jason Mendelson published his take on “finders” back in 2007:

    “Most venture firms don’t like the idea of brokers being involved and most venture financing documents have a clause that the company warrants that there are no brokers involved. Remember, the company’s money that is paying the broker is, in fact, the VC’s money that they invest in you.”

    Jason continues “good VCs have plenty of proprietary deal flow, so they aren’t relying on brokers to show them deals”. If you can’t get in front the right investors, you are probably doing it wrong. There are a very limited set of high tech, emerging business model, high potential growth investors in Canada. Need a ‘show me the money’ list? There are other ways to raise your profile as a startup and get in front of investors. Andy Yang wrote a great piece about getting the most out of AngelList as a startup. If these channels aren’t working for you, you might want to go back and ask yourself is it the funders or is it me? What do I need to do to make my company more attractive to potential investors? Customer development? Product development? Etc.

    How do you spell MBA?

    We love to heckle MBAs, mostly because we’re all jealous that we don’t have one. But is it a requirement to raise funding.

    “On the other hand, skills i bet won’t be important as much in the future:

    • having (only) a big rolodex or (offline) network
    • having a traditional MBA or investment banking background

    Both of these are still important, but will become commoditized and marginalized by the availability of such information from online systems for social networks & reputation, and by the relentless advance of access to capital from a variety of channels.” – Dave McClure

    No one is arguing that brokers shouldn’t get paid. The model is relevant. People work hard to build trust, reputation, networks and knowledge. With later stage deals the relationship, private placements, increased valuations, connections with CEOs and funders, it makes sense. But as Dave McClure rightly points out the value of the specific skills are changing. Particularly at the very earliest stage.

    There is a great discussion on OnStartups about the finder’s fees. You can see the tension between entrepreneurs and investment bankers.

    Social Anti-Proof

    I don’t like finder’s fees for early investment rounds. Whether you call that seed and series A, I don’t know. I just don’t like seeing that capital taken out of the hands of the entrepreneur from operations. So just don’t do it.

    As the company matures, the existing investment banking model doesn’t feel wrong. Many of the relationships, matchmaking, guidance feels like something you pay for, only after the deal closes. I feel like really early stage companies that have hired a broker must be broken, i.e., there must be something fundamentally wrong with the  team, the market, the advisors, etc. if they are unable that might explain why they are having difficulty raising an early round.

    So it’s very wrong early. Ok later.

  • How to get the most out of AngelList: As a VC and as an Entrepreneur

    I love AngelList.  I truly believe it is disrupting the way early stage deals are being discovered and funded.

    When I was with BlackBerry Partners Fund (now Relay Ventures), I used AngelList to virtually meet and screen tons of companies.  I set up Super Fridays for myself, filling my mornings and/or afternoons with back-to-back 30 minute calls with 10-12 companies.  I really recommend this to any young VC looking for both dealflow and honing their game.  The velocity and juxtaposition of all these entrepreneurs, pitches, and companies really taught me how to evaluate deals along the VC spectrum:

    • (NO) polite and immediate no thank you
    • (NOT YET) check back with traction
    • (NOT SURE) send me your pitch deck so I can another set of eyes on this
    • (POTENTIALLY) let me bring this up at the next Monday partner meeting and see if someone bites
    • (YES) holy moly let me get John Albright right now

    All told, I probably screened 150-200 companies every three months on AngelList alone.  Ultimately, after all those Super Fridays, the firm funded two great companies: PubNub and ClearFit.

    Now as I sit somewhat on the other side, running Extreme Startups, I am spending time trying to get VCs to view our companies’ AngelList profiles.  To help figure out what companies should be doing on AngelList to help maximize their exposure, we at Extreme Startups recently had a session with Ash Fontana from AngelList to get his advixe.  Ash shared some best practices that I’d like to share with our community.  His advice included a lot of great tips and some common sense details that time-crunched entrepreneurs might glance over.

    Company Profiles

    1. Fill it out completely.  All the sections and tabs.  Comprehensive profiles are definitely the best so that there is both pertinent and substantive information.  One good tip is for the Founder Bios – include university info as well as some investors search for key schools.
    2. Be open / generous with information.  Specifically for the Fundraising tab, the Deal Terms should be filled out.  You don’t need to put valuation, but some indication helps investors looking for certain price ranges or structures (convertible note vs. equity).
    3. Use graphics – slides, screenshots, graphs, and videos to make a static page pop.

    Key tips to stand out

    • State the most original thing or function your product and company does.
    • Information about the market size is key.
    • Name something extraordinary about your company or founders.
    • State the hardest problem you solve.

    How do you get featured?

    For those lucky four startups on the feature page on the front page of AngelList, what is the process to get there?  It’s curated by Ash, who uses a number of different tools to track interest and traction.  Note that there are now over 80,000 startups on AngelList, with ~100 getting added every day.  Only five get featured per week – so only top 0.5% have the chance to be featured.  We are lucky to have our alumnus Granify on the feature page!  ShopLocketSimplyUs, and Verelo all have great profiles as well (shameless plug).

    So what should you do after your profile is up?

    1. Be active.  It’s a social network.  Start and engage in conversations.  Follow interesting companies, entrepreneurs, and investors.  Comment on people’s status updates.  Refer interesting deals to other people.
    2. Be proactive.  Reach out to investors and advisors.  Ask for referrals and recommendations!
    3. Match your offline activity to your online profile.  Add an advisor or investor?  Make sure you AL profile reflects that.  Have your network post and share your traction and successes online!

    Other AngelList resources recently launched

    • AngelList Docs is in beta, but only for US incorporated companies for now.  It’s a great resource to close your deal online, industry standard docs and no legal fees.
    • AngelListTalent recently launched and helps startups recruit, and talent identify great jobs.  It uses a double opt-in structure, so you only get shown the jobs of the companies you follow.  It’s a great resource for recruiting.

    Hacking AngelList articles

    Lastly, Ash mentioned he loved and supported the hacking AngelList posts.  Somewhat analogous to the black art of gaming the iTunes stores, there are ways to succeed on AngelList outside of what is included in this post.  I just googled and found a couple of hits.  There are the most useful imho.

    Final thoughts

    I really hope more Canadian companies use and publish on AngelList, Gust, and others.  It’s a great way to get your profile out to Canadian, US, and international investors.  Not to mention its a great way to help entire cities and regions get noticed for great deal flow.  Maybe some young VC down south will start arranging their own Canadian Super Fridays…

    Please follow me on AngelList! (and Twitter).