04.30.07

Inside the mind of investors and angels

Posted in Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks at 12:51 pm by Peter Kay

I’m a big fan of Paul Graham and had the pleasure to meet him personally when I spoke @ MIT about one of my inventions (PDF).

If you’re pondering starting up a tech company and are looking for money, I suggest you read his essay, “The Hacker’s Guide to Investors“.

In classic Graham style, he’s talking to you, the geek. Good stuff. Read it.

Paul covers these points:

1. The investors are what make a startup hub.
2. Angel investors are the most critical.
3. Angels don’t like publicity.
4. Most investors, especially VCs, are not like founders.
5. Most investors are momentum investors.
6. Most investors are looking for big hits.
7. VCs want to invest large amounts.
8. Valuations are fiction.
9. Investors look for founders like the current stars.
10. The contribution of investors tends to be underestimated.
11. VCs are afraid of looking bad.
12. Being turned down by investors doesn’t mean much.
13. Investors are emotional.
14. The negotiation never stops till the closing.
15. Investors like to co-invest.
16. Investors collude.
17. Large-scale investors care about their portfolio, not any individual company.
18. Investors have different risk profiles from founders.
19. Investors vary greatly.
20. Investors don’t realize how much it costs to raise money from them.
21. Investors don’t like to say no.
22. You need investors.
23. Investors like it when you don’t need them.

10.22.06

Marketing Tips

Posted in Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks at 1:29 am by Peter Kay

Guy Kawasaki’s blog excerpted a few points from ” Geek Marketing 101“, which I think offers from very straight and simple (i.e. elegant) marketing points and they are:

  1. Marketing is not a department.
  2. Marketing is a conversation, but most people don’t speak geek.
  3. Simplicity does not negate complexity.
  4. Think what, not how?
  5. Think will, not can.
  6. Only you RTFM.
  7. Technical Support is marketing.
  8. You’re not marketing to people who hate marketing.
  9. You’re not marketing to people who hate technology products.
  10. Marketing demystifies.

10.17.06

Got Startup? Don’t make these mistakes

Posted in Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks at 9:30 am by Peter Kay

I had the pleasure and honor of hanging w/ Paul Graham a few years ago and love what he writes. Here’s his “18 Mistakes That Kill Startups” :

  1. Single Founder
  2. Bad Location
  3. Marginal Niche
  4. Derivative Idea
  5. Obstinacy
  6. Hiring Bad Programmers
  7. Choosing the Wrong Platform
  8. Slowness in Launching
  9. Launching Too Early
  10. Having No Specific User in Mind
  11. Raising Too Little Money
  12. Spending Too Much
  13. Raising Too Much Money
  14. Poor Investor Management
  15. Sacrificing Users to (Supposed) Profit
  16. Not Wanting to Get Your Hands Dirty
  17. Fights Between Founders
  18. A Half-Hearted Effort

IP Licensing Conference in Hawaii

Posted in Presentations, Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks at 8:59 am by Peter Kay

Interested in learning more about successful IP models?

Attend the 2nd Annual Hawaii Intellectual Property Licensing Conference

  • Co-sponsors: High Technology Development Corp., and Intellectual Property & Technology Section of HSBA
  • Date: Friday, October 20, 2006, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm
  • Place: Ala Moana Hotel, Hibiscus Ballroom, 2nd Floor
  • Online registration at: www.iplicensingconference.com
  • Contact: Patty Low, (808) 947-3101 or promotions@pacificnews.net

This year’s IPL Conference, “Turning New Technologies & Creative Ideas Into Profits”, will focus on practical business models, marketing methods, and licensing resources to assist Hawaii entrepreneurs, business professionals, and investors with selling or licensing technology inventions and creative ideas successfully. Visiting guest speakers include Richard C. Levy, a marketing tour de force who has licensed some 125 inventions generating over a billion dollars in revenues, and Henk B. Rogers, President and CEO of Blue Planet Software, Inc., who has made a huge success with IP licensing in Hawaii.

Hat Tip to Leighton Chong for driving this conference. Yours truly will also be speaking there.

10.16.06

Setting up for a good acquisition

Posted in Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks, Posts I've read at 2:38 pm by Peter Kay

“Preparing for a Successful M&A Exit”

Google’s $1.6 billion acquisition of YouTube sprang to life during breakfast at Denny’s just a few short weeks ago - or so the story goes. For this and many other reasons, the YouTube deal is really the exception rather than the rule of M&A today.

There is an old saying: a product well bought is half sold. The most successful software acquisitions are those which are carefully crafted well in advance. Understanding today’s M&A landscape and the new standards involved will help emerging companies ensure a strong exit.

Key points are:

  • Start Early
  • Be Prepared
  • Say “No”
  • Be Patient
  • Know the Buyer Landscape
  • Value Realistically
  • Go Early
  • Look Big
  • Be Ready for Audits
  • Know Your Buyer
  • Meet Deep

10.03.06

How to write an exec summ

Posted in Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks at 11:52 pm by Peter Kay

Guy Kawasaki has some pretty good pointers on how to write an exec summ:

“The Art of the Executive Summary“

08.14.06

Quick thought on Executive Summaries

Posted in Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks at 2:54 pm by Peter Kay

Many Exec Summs I read are either too long or too wordy. Here’s some bullets/thoughts to keep in mind when writing yours:

  • Its purpose is to give the investor enough to see if they are interested.
  • It’s not to give in-depth info, that’s what the pitch/slides/businessPlan is for.
  • In many ways, you want to give enough to get them interested, enough for them to say “hey, lets look more into this”.
  • Investors are pretty smart and they can go through something really quickly and know whether they are interested or not.
  • The ES’ purpose is to state the plan in a quick and easy-to-digest way so they don’t have to think or move around it to get what they need to know.
  • LESS is ALWAYS better. Why? Because it forces you to only keep what’s absolutely necessary, allowing the reader/investor to cut through the fat and get to the meat in the quickest way.

08.04.06

How much of your own money have you invested?

Posted in Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks at 7:20 pm by Peter Kay

I remember one presentation made by a CEO who had claimed to take several companies public beforehand, yet here he was pitching to raise a relatively small amount of money that someone with his alleged previous success would have easily been able to self-fund. When the investors asked him why he didn’t just fund his own venture, his answer was, “My wife won’t let me”. I’m sure he was telling the truth (my wife won’t let me invest in all the deals I want to either), but he definitely lost a lot of points with some of the investors in the audience.

This simple question (How much of your own money have you put in the venture) is an obvious one that you should be prepared to answer. In addition to looking for the direct answer, investors are also trying to subliminally find out:

How successful have you been on your previous ventures?
If you have presented a history of previous successes, you must have money in the bank, right? If you don’t have money in the bank, then you either didn’t make as much money as your success claimed, or you spent it all on something else.

How confident are you in your current venture?
An obvious point, but extremely important nonetheless. If you’re raising $X and asking investors to pony up their money, surely you have already stepped up to the plate. If you don’t have money in the bank, did you mortgage the house to raise capital? Hock the car?

If you haven’t invested any of your own money, don’t skirt the question and exceed expectations by proactively addressing the subliminal questions. Some investors will disqualify you right away regardless, but if you have an honest and compelling story that answers both the direct and subliminal questions, you may be able to come out of it alive.

07.11.06

I’m not the only one that thinks Google is for search only

Posted in Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks at 2:26 am by Peter Kay

A while back I wrote that Google is trying to do too much and hardly succeeding at anything other than search.

Its nice to see someone else agreeing with me. Read Don Dodge’s “Google a one trick pony?”

Listen to a live pitch to real VCs

Posted in Entrepreneur Tips and Tricks at 2:14 am by Peter Kay

Here’s a cool post “Gnomedex 6: Should TagJag be funded ?” from Jeff Clavier that talks about how Chris Pirillo had the creative idea to do a live pitch to VCs about his company TagJag. I suggest you read it as the basic advice is excellent, pointing out many mistakes that entrepreneurs make. Also, listen to the mp3 file of the presentation.

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