Posted by David S. Rose on October 23rd, 2014
Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin makes some excellent points, most of which are ones that I would have made. In particular, getting to critical mass (of entrepreneurs, angel investors, engineers, et al) is perhaps the most important thing you can do. Whether this is by City (the most useful) or pan-Australian (perhaps a bit easier), it provides a host of benefits both in terms
Posted by David S. Rose on October 19th, 2014
Original question from Quora: “My team and I are raising our first round for our crowdsourcing website at a $1mm valuation. We have an investor who is interested in purchasing 5% of the company under the condition that his stock will not be diluted at any time. We are considering a counteroffer at twice the valuation considering the anti-dilution provision.
Posted by David S. Rose on October 16th, 2014
First, it’s important to understand that the four platforms you list fall into two very distinct groups.
Kickstarter and IndieGoGo are project-based crowdfunding platforms through which anyone can contribute money, either as a donation or with the promise that they will receive a tangible ‘reward’ of some kind if the project is successful.
Gust and AngelList are equity-based platforms, used by Accredited Investors to facilitate the investment of money for an ownership interest in
Posted by David S. Rose on October 12th, 2014
Here, in a completely unsourced, purely anecdotal and totally subjective answer with numbers pulled out of the air, is my guess:
*original post can be found on Quora @ http://www.quora.com/David-S-Rose/answers *
Posted by David S. Rose on October 9th, 2014
Part of the challenge is the enormous amount of ignorance surrounding this suddenly hot topic. There are thousands of companies that “the crowd” can fund without restriction, including Apple, Google and Facebook. These are “publicly tradable companies”, and what makes them so are the extensive rules surrounding disclosure, transparency, trading and other aspects of their corporate existence.
But since there
Posted by David S. Rose on October 5th, 2014
There are many wonderful ideas, and they are not necessarily easy to come up with. So congratulations on having thought of one!
However…
“Having value” and “Being fundable” are two completely different things. What the more experienced responders here are saying is completely accurate: while a good idea is usually a necessary ingredient for the formation of a good company, it is
Posted by David S. Rose on October 2nd, 2014
No, but there are several sets of courses on angel investing that can provide a good base from which to start. The most comprehensive and best known is the Power of Angel Investing seminar series developed by the Angel Resource Institute (formerly known as the Angel Capital Education Foundation, and prior to that part of the Angel Capital Association). It
Posted by David S. Rose on September 28th, 2014
To begin with, it is important to understand some basic facts about the world of entrepreneurial finance:
There are many more entrepreneurs than there are investors, with the result that only one company out of every 400 that seeks venture funding actually receives it. As such, the competition from an entrepreneur’s standpoint is very, very tough. In order to be
Posted by David S. Rose on September 25th, 2014
There is a saying in the not-for-profit world that your board members should all fall into one or more of three categories in which they can deliver: Wealth, Work or Wisdom.
In my experience, those same qualities also apply to for-profit boards:
Wealth, as in investors who can write checks and help with fundraising in future rounds;
Work, as in
Posted by David S. Rose on September 21st, 2014
There are several good answers here. Another multi-blogger site is the Gust.com/blog, which has lots of consolidated advice and experiences from some of your favorite Quora startup bloggers, including Tim Berry, Antone Johnson, Martin Zwilling, Bob Rice, Ilana Grossman and, of course, Yours Truly.
And as long as you’re there (or if you don’t feel like reading :-), there are also many hundreds of short video talks from a large selection
