Posted by David S. Rose on May 8th, 2014
The venture capital fund itself makes money…
…by investing early in a startup company’s life, when success is not at all assured. In exchange for investing capital to help the company grow, the fund receives an ownership interest in the company. Because in the early days a company will not be worth very much, the fund’s ownership interest will be
Posted by David S. Rose on May 1st, 2014
The biggest change is the one that ALL serious angel investors eventually arrive at: no matter how smart or experienced you are, there are simply too many exogenous factors affecting outcomes for you to be able to pick only winners.
Posted by David S. Rose on October 20th, 2013
The two possible approaches mentioned in the question are very, very different from each other.
Investing in public technology stocks in the stock market (such as Google, Apple, and many smaller companies) is something that anyone can do, can be started with a very small amount of money, can be experimented with before committing (by establishing a ‘shadow portfolio’), can be easily unwound, and
Posted by David S. Rose on October 10th, 2013
There are very, very few “professional” angel investors (as opposed to venture capitalists, who are, by definition, professionals.)
That said, many active angel investors were themselves entrepreneurs, which is where they made their initial money that they can now invest.
Posted by David S. Rose on August 18th, 2013
The market for startup financing is a very lopsided one. For every VC pitch meeting that results in an investment, there are 399 others that typically conclude with the dreaded words, “Thanks for coming in, we’ll get back to you if we’re interested.” Given those odds, delivering a successful pitch means that virtually everything needs to come together in perfect
Posted by David S. Rose on June 27th, 2013
It’s true, but…
Starting a company is NOT at all easy, and unfortunately there simply is no way to really learn about it other than by doing it. No book, school, mentoring, or even apprenticeship can substitute for hands-on experience. When you consider that doctors spend a minimum of two years in pre-med, four years in med school, one year in internship,
Posted by David S. Rose on April 16th, 2013
Today, more than one third of the United States population falls into a financial demographic known as the “mass affluent”. Unlike the headline-grabbing ultra-rich, the mass affluent are people with assets between $100,000 and $1 million, or annual incomes over $75,000. Historically, the 33 million American households in this category have invested for their future in one of three ways:
