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Jas P

Why startups shouldn't have to pay to pitch angel investors | The Jason Calacanis Weblog - 0 views

calacanis.wordpress.com/...o-pay-to-pitch-angel-investors

startup funding leanstartupyeg

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • My Latest War: Angels charging startups to pitch ================= Recently, I was made aware of a group of angel investors that were charging startups to pitch them.
  • Yes, you heard that correctly: the rich people (angels) are charging the poor people (startup entrepreneurs desperate for cash to fuel their dreams) to hear their pitch. No, I’m not kidding. This is actually happening — and it’s widespread.
  • None of them have ever charged me a dime for doing so. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE RICH!
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It’s low-class, inappropriate and predatory for a rich person to ask an entrepreneur to PAY THEM for 15 minutes of their time. Seriously, what is the cost to the party hearing the pitch? If you answered “nothing” or “the cost of two cups of coffee” you win the prize! Even if you rent a hotel room and put out breakfast for your fellow angel investors that’s like $20 a person. You mean to tell me that a room full of rich investors can’t afford to pay for their own God-damned $20 in bad coffee, stale pastry and stained ballroom rugs? Really?
  • To be clear, I am making this a class war because it is one: cash-poor startups are bringing RICH angel investors an opportunity to become EVEN MORE RICH. As such, the rich folks should pick up the non-existent to minimal costs.
  • Why startups fall for “angel group” payola =========== Now, you ask: why would any self-respecting entrepreneur pay thousands of dollars to rich people just for the opportunity to pitch? Well, the truth is that the more mature — or flat out better — startups would never pay to present. The best ideas by the best entrepreneurs get socialized instantly. As an new angel investor myself, one who has only done two investments of $25,000 and $50,000, I can tell you that I already get flooded with pitches. I can’t even imagine the volume of pitches real angel investors like Matt Coffin, Sandy Climan, Sky Dayton, Tony Hsieh and Ron Conway get inundated with.
  • c) you are actually a good person who has just never thought about how smarmy it is to charge a startup for your time?
Jas P

[Companies with 8 figures of revenue] are worth many multiples of 8 figures to a... | H... - 0 views

news.ycombinator.com/item

pricing funding startup financial

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Let's say that you've built up, from essentially nothing, enough of a presence in your industry that you're selling $10 million a year of SaaS. That's only 10k accounts at a blended average of $100 a month -- far less if, like many SaaS companies, you make a significant whack of your money on custom enterprise deals that are not on the pricing page.
  • Now consider this company from the perspective of a Fortune 500 like, say, Intuit:1) They have software which exists.2) Their software creates clear value for customers. They have 10,000 people signing their praises and case studies up the wazoo. We know people will pay $100 a month for it -- we have copious, audited financial statements that prove that.
  • 3) Oh yeah, we're a Fortune 500 company. Launching a new product costs us $250 million and we could fail to produce something that both achieves technical success and produces any value for anyone anywhere. Assuming we do, selling to our built-in base of hundreds of thousands of customers is what we do best.Intuit can totally justify spending, say, $300 million to buy $20 million a year of revenue and the opportunity to 20x that by selling it to everyone who has ever heard of Quickbooks. Or mid 8 figures for something which has, say, a million a year in revenue.
Jas P

The value of short term thinking by Ilya Lichtenstein - 0 views

influencehacks.com/e-value-of-short-term-thinking

funding vc

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • In technology, long term thinking is impossible, because everything changes so fast, and the pace of change is quickening. The rules are changing too fast. Nobody knows when a sudden shift in technology will open up new markets and business models.
  • All we can do as entrepreneurs is take it step by step, and adapt quickly when we sense the market shifting.
  • The best companies are not built on a single, infallible grand vision. They’re built piece by piece, making one user or customer at a time, getting to the next milestone and waiting for the next major opportunity to reveal itself.
Jas P

Paul Graham's Checklist, Would You Make The Cut? [Video] | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...t-would-you-make-the-cut-video

vc funding

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Jas P on 18 Mar 13
     
    founder traits
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