Posted by Jess Joss on December 7th, 2015
Canada has not tapped its female angel investor potential – yet.
The female angel investor conversation has been discussed inside and out. From TechCrunch, BetaKit to the Financial Post, there have been more than a few arguments made about the lack of female representation in Canada’s early-stage investment community and the benefits of tapping into this financial resource.
For example,
Posted by David S. Rose on July 31st, 2014
No, because it is almost certainly against the law or regulations wherever you’re located (in the US it would be called General Solicitation).
Posted by David S. Rose on May 15th, 2014
All investments by angels (and everyone else) in a company are made according to detailed legal documents that specify everything about the relationship among the various parties, the terms of the value exchange and the various rights and responsibilities of everyone involved. The paperwork can range from 5-10 pages for a pretty straightforward convertible note, up to 120 pages or
Posted by David S. Rose on March 27th, 2014
As Ryan Lackey noted, having a lot of money is essentially irrelevant in this context of how to become a venture capitalist, because that is not the way venture capital works.
Posted by David S. Rose on March 16th, 2014
It’s not great…but it IS part of the business.
If you are an angel investor, the only way to do it is to take things very seriously. If you take angel investing seriously, you should aim to develop a portfolio of at least 30-40 investments over 5-10 years of active investing. If you invest in 40 startups, 20 of them (absolute minimum!)
Posted by David S. Rose on March 6th, 2014
The best way for a VC to mitigate conflicts between portfolio companies is to avoid investing in direct competitors in the first place! While this can be a bit difficult for seed funds with very large portfolios and limited direct day-to-day involvement, most larger funds are careful to avoid directly competitive investments. The reason for this is simple: why have
Posted by David S. Rose on February 20th, 2014
There are two separate and distinct sets of things that you need to look at when evaluating an offer.
The first, and most important, has to do with who the investment is from. It is impossible to over-emphasize the value of “smart money” and “good money” over “dumb money” and “evil money”. You should do at least as much diligence on your potential investor
Posted by David S. Rose on January 23rd, 2014
This is obviously a softball question that I’ve been Asked to Answer, as I’m the Founder/CEO of Gust. The answer, of course, is Gust—because that’s exactly the purpose behind the platform!
Gust is the infrastructure that underlies much of the professional world of early stage finance. It is used by hundreds of thousands of companies in 195 countries to organize all of
Posted by David S. Rose on December 15th, 2013
While there are differences in the startup communities on the two coasts, and while there are definite differences in the investment communities, I’ve found much less of a difference in the types of companies being started.
Posted by David S. Rose on November 10th, 2013
Interestingly, the large majority of venture capitalists are very friendly. It’s for the same reason that as a group, orthodontists tend almost universally to be more friendly than surgeons.
[“Whaaaa?!?”! I hear you ask. Think about it for a bit, and particularly if you’ve had personal experiences with either/both groups.]
The latter profession sees you by referral from another doctor,
