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Venture Hacks

• If you’ve run out of ideas, buy gold 8 July, 2010, 8:20 am
  Angel investor Thomas McInerney: “Take a look at all the innovation happening today — Tesla has produced a beautiful 100% electric car. The cost of mapping the human genome has gone from $3 billion ten years ago to thousands today. Moore’s Law continues unabated and the rate of innovation in smart phones is staggering. The computer has moved from the desktop to the pocket, this trend alone reminds me of the World Wide Web in 1994. Social networking is in its infancy, and Twitter and Facebook are growing explosively. IP traffic is growing so fast that it has stunned the pioneering people who helped create it. “Ray Kurzweil maps out an optimistic view of the future with a tremendous amount of data supporting his main thesis — that the rate of innovation is increasing on a geometric scale. This means that innovation is happening faster every day. So yes, there are macro-level concerns about the economy, but there is also a staggering amount of data that supports the case for being an optimist. The data supports the fact that we’ll see more innovation in the next ten years than we’ve seen in the last one hundred years. “If you are an investor or entrepreneur, this is the best time in history to make a fortune and create a better world… So if you’ve run out of ideas, buy gold. But I argue this is the best time to find innovators and invest in the future. Fortune favors the bold.” [Emphasis added.] Read the full post. You can reach Thomas via AngelList.
• A conflict of interests 6 July, 2010, 10:53 pm
  If you’re a passionate entrepreneur, you can often see the vast potential for your product. In your head, the possibilities of the future branch out, with infinite forks and potential. When pitching to investors, you’ve learned to define your market as broadly as possible while remaining credible. So, it’s not surprising that you’re disappointed when investors don’t disclose a conflict, and you steer clear of investors who might already have an investment in the same space — dating, social gaming, compliance, security, etc. If you’re an experienced investor, you’ve seen it all. How every startup thinks they can take over the world, but usually has to struggle to accomplish even its one core product or task. How three copycat business plans will arrive in the same week, and how each one thinks they’re unique and protectable. How domain knowledge and therefore your ability to help a startup accrue by having multiple investments in the same space. Both points of view are pretty extreme, and the truths about conflicts of interest are highly contextual. Here’s how to think about it. 1. The idea Firstly, the idea — it’s no big deal. If it’s any good, someone has had it before and someone will have it again. If you’re still convinced it’s that good, go file a patent first, and then go talk about it. Keep in mind that investors outside of big tech (cleantech, biotech…) automatically have a bias against “patented” ideas, and most brilliance seems obvious in hindsight. Ask an investor to sign an NDA, and you’ve just filtered out all but the most desperate investors. 2. The space Secondly, the space — it’s tricky, but you have to define it as realistically narrow. There was a time when having an investment in ”web” might have been considered a conflict for another “web” company. There was a time when the term “portal” was a competitive category. Unless it’s head-on competition, Foursquare v. Gowalla, Disqus v. IntenseDebate, Google v. Bing, it’s really, honestly, not competitive. If there’s room for multiple equal-sized players in the space, it’s not as competitive as you might think. Also, theories about where you might zig or zag don’t count — just compare on what you’re doing at this moment. 3. Angels vs. VCs Thirdly, the type of investor matters — active angels have a lot more deals than active VCs and are more likely to have an investment in an adjacent space. This is not a big problem — angels invest in syndicates and usually only provide help in a contextual, on-demand way. Because VCs are likely to be on your board, have more money into the company, and have more control and information rights, it makes more sense to pay attention to conflicts VCs might have (Disclosure: I consider myself to be an angel investor). 4. Conflict checks Fourthly, just ask the VC to disclose potential conflicts up front, but don’t be too broad-minded about what constitutes a conflict. Lastly, beware the “entrepreneur check.” This is where the VC tells you that they like your company, want to do due-diligence, and then just have to check with the entrepreneur in one of their investments about whether this investment would be competitive or not. Since entrepreneurs tend to have an overly-broad view of what’s competitive, this check usually fails. Even in the rare case that it doesn’t, it’s used as an excuse by the investor to pass. Therefore, always insist that they run the “entrepreneur check” early in the process, before you’ve invested too much into this investor. Your own biggest competition Our flawed patent system aside, ideas do not have the merit that we were all raised believing. You do have to pick the right space, but after that, execution is everything. Here’s a quick confirmation test — go back to your classmates and pick out the smartest ones, and then the hardest working ones. Now look at who is successful. A certain base level of intellect and idea-formation capability is required, but beyond that are strongly diminishing or even negative returns. Consequently, the best entrepreneurs display a lot of chutzpah. They aren’t fazed by the competition, nor do they see shadows in every corner. They are their own biggest competition.
• This fortnight in Twitter 2 July, 2010, 8:04 am
  Highlights from the @venturehacks Twitter feed from this fortnight. The most retweeted tweets. “The toughest and most important decisions in technology companies are always about product strategy.” – @bhorowitz, http://vh.co/a3DO7h “With our stock buyback… we were signaling that we didn’t see much of a future in our business.” – @fredwilson, http://vh.co/9udDmm You have acquisition interest—now what? http://vh.co/98Yy4n by @davidcohen. The negotiation principle is “reciprocal displays of commitment”. “You can explain your business in mind numbing detail or you can inspire an investor and let them imagine.” – @fredwilson, http://vh.co/bLdDQm “Whenever you see a company being built for an exit, you will see short term decision making.” – @BostonVC, http://vh.co/btEkaA P.S. Instead of showing our avatar next to each tweet, I’ve picked images that are related to the tweet. P.P.S. It’s easy to find your most popular tweets on the Your Tweets, Retweeted page.
• Where we office 1 July, 2010, 8:07 am
  We’re spending the next few months officing at Kicklabs at 250 Brannan (info@kicklabs.com) and the new SOMAcentral building at 153 Townsend (ken@somacentral.com). These spaces are good for startups, service providers, lawyers, VCs, and folks in the south bay who want an auxiliary office space in the city. Leases are short, rent is affordable, and they’re perfect for small teams under 5 people. Kicklabs (top) is a big fun open space. SOMAcentral (bottom) is the opposite: private offices with doors that close and great views. We’re using both. If you’re looking for office space in San Francisco with Zipcar-like simplicity, check them out and tell them we sent you. Please add your office space suggestions in the comments — keep them restricted to places with leases under 6 months that are good for small teams (~ 5 people). At the end of the day, the reason to get an office is simple. It is so you can bring people into your office and say, this is where I office.
• A tale of 3 financings 28 June, 2010, 12:34 pm
  When startups raise money with AngelList, we encourage them to share their fundraising story. Here are 3 stories from BlockChalk, MightyMeeting, and Postling. I’ve excerpted the nice things they wrote about AngelList, but you should click through and read their whole posts — each startup tells their unique funding story from start to finish. BlockChalk: “AngelList [is] a service that sends pre-screened startup pitches to angel investors who sign up to receive them. We wrote up a version of our pitch that matched AngelList’s requested format (an exercise that in itself was very useful) and submitted it. They sent it out to the list and within a day we had received ten quality angel inquiries. In just a few days, we had our first new commitment — Tom McInerney. “After Battery Ventures signed on to lead our round, Nivi and Naval sent BlockChalk out to AngelList once again. With this new added social proof, the response was even stronger than the first time around. We literally received dozens of new angel inquiries and things began to rapidly come together. In the span of a few days we had a commitment from the legendarily awesome Mitch Kapor. We also met Josh Stylman who signed on and also introduced us to Chris Dixon and Eric Paley of Founder Collective (who themselves signed on). “AngelList is a remarkable experiment that is redefining the way entrepreneurs connect with angels. It’s something you want to be a part of.” MightyMeeting: “We’ve been fortunate to get great advice from a few good people. Let me mention some of them here. “First, there is Adeo Ressi’s Founder Institute. I did not get a chance to attend the training program, but I did have the pleasure of pitching at the Founder Showcase. “The outcome of the event has been tremendous, and Adeo’s advice has been invaluable, always blunt and to the point. One of his emails started with: “You are making rookie mistakes and your round will fail”. Got my attention. “True to the style, Adeo’s thefunded.com offers an honest review of the investment community. Definitely worth a look. “Second, there is Venture Hacks. The blog is run by Nivi and Naval. I actually discovered their book before I discovered the blog. Both are highly recommended. Good stuff that will educate you and save you tons of time. “Venture Hacks also runs AngelList. You can apply online. If you got the goods, you will get intros to angels in the list. The intros carry Venture Hacks credibility, which is significant. “In our case, the intros we got through the Founder Showcase and through Venture Hacks lead to great connections and, ultimately, money in the bank. “I also had good experience with the Open Angel Forum and the DEMO conference. Both are very selective. Both are also very high quality in terms of the advice and the connections that they offer. “The exposure and intros we got helped us build the funnel.” Postling: “AngelList is a collection of amazing angel investors, all waiting for your brilliant idea. You fill out an application and, if you’re awesome enough, your application will be sent out to everyone on the list. You’ll then be introduced personally over email to anyone who is interested. “… we sent out our application once, touting our idea of “social media management for businesses”, got 8 fantastic introductions, and were ultimately funded by David Rose and Chris Yeh. The Venture Hacks guys came back to us and said, ‘We want to send your application back out onto AngelList with the added social proof of being invested.’ “To give you some context, over the last 3 months, we followed the Customer Development methodology and went outside of the building. And we found that the social media management tools space was commoditizing quickly, with everyone concentrating on selling to a small sliver at the top (media companies, PR, agency, etc). We also met with VCs, who gave us the same feedback. So it was time to pivot. “So we pivoted (explained in the GigaOm post, but I’ll say more soon), and sent the new direction to AngelList. And this is where the craziness started. “My first phone call was with Tom McInerney, 3 hours before I was flying out to SXSW. After about a 30 minute phone call, Tom was in. He then introduced me to his friend Paige Craig, who would also be at SXSW. I met Paige in Austin, and after meeting, he told me he was in. The next day, at a Venture Hacks meetup at the Four Seasons hotel, he pulled over Dave McClure. We went out to the balcony (he wanted a cigarette) and I pitched him. He was in. The following day, I spoke with Thomas Korte, who moved up our scheduled phone call a couple days once he heard Dave was investing, and he was in. I also got an email introduction via my friend Russ (founder of SeatGeek) about his investor Kal Vepuri, who was also at SXSW. Kal and I spoke on the balcony of the Austin Convention Center, and I was blown away by his intelligence and humility. So Kal was in. Finally, my friend Michael Galpert of Aviary connected me with Gary Vaynerchuk, who is a perfect investor for us given what he is passionate about (social media for businesses). David Cohen finished off our round not too long after that.” Big thanks to the guys from BlockChalk, MightyMeeting, and Postling for sharing their fundraising stories for the benefit of other entrepreneurs.
• The WSJ reports on AngelList 22 June, 2010, 8:03 am
  It’s a pain in the ass for interesting startups to get meetings with good angels. You have to bug your friends, one-by-one, to introduce you to the angels they know. The global community of angels on AngelList offer an alternative. Startups apply to AngelList, we pick the ones that we think the angels will like, and we send them to the angels. The angels read these pitches, meet the startups they like, and, perhaps, invest. We’ve announced 5 startups that have been funded through AngelList but, as Scott Austin reports in The Wall Street Journal, “Of the 48 companies featured so far on AngelList, about half have received funding.… Marco Zappacosta, founder of Thumbtack Inc., a site that lets people book services like tutors and dog walkers, won three commitments from angels after pitching his company in March at an Open Angel Forum event in San Francisco. He then turned to AngelList and received three more commitments to close a funding round at $1.2 million in June. The service, he says, “is good at getting worthy start-ups into the inbox of investors.” Read the full article here before it goes behind the WSJ’s pay wall. By the way, the 5 startups that we’ve announced are Startup 0, Postling, Divvyshot, MightyMeeting, and BlockChalk. Scott “outed” Thumbtack in the WSJ — so that makes it six. Startups: Get intros to AngelList here. Angels: Join AngelList here. Everyone: Get AngelList updates via Twitter and RSS.
• Local startup BlockChalk raises national money with AngelList 17 June, 2010, 11:33 am
  Today we’re announcing that BlockChalk has raised money with AngelList.  BlockChalk is a “GPS-enabled communication system for your neighborhood.” Update: Read BlockChalk’s story in their own words: Lessons from raising a seed round. Update 2: Scott Austin at The Wall Street Journal reports on AngelList: Start-Ups Get Free Chance to Pitch to Angel Investors. Joshua Schachter introduced us to BlockChalk. He was already committed to the financing and suggested they use AngelList to fill out the round. We sent BlockChalk to AngelList and the following investors asked for intros and invested: Joshua Schachter (Our source) Mitch Kapor (Investor in Twilio) Thomas McInerney (Investor in Klout) Josh Stylman (Investor in betaworks) Josh Stylman (one of the AngelList investors above) then introduced BlockChalk to Chris Dixon and Eric Paley who also invested: Chris Dixon Eric Paley So an AngelList intro to Josh Stylman turned into friend-of-a-friend intros to Chris Dixon and Eric Paley. It’s obvious in retrospect, but we didn’t anticipate these second-order intros when we started AngelList. It’s very cool to see this emergent behavior. Satya Patel, Michael Dearing, and David Liu also invested in BlockChalk: Satya Patel (Battery Ventures) Michael Dearing (Investor in AdMob) David Liu (Investor in SimpleGeo) About BlockChalk In their own words, “BlockChalk is an early stage location-based service that helps people connect with their neighbors and mobilize their local communities. Using GPS-enabled smartphones, BlockChalk users can interact with people in their neighborhood to ask, answer, praise, gripe, report, prevent, borrow, trade, and much more. It’s easy and free; you don’t even have to sign up. BlockChalk is currently on iPhone and Palm, as well as on Android via HTML5.” I think the foundation of BlockChalk’s fund-raising story is the pedigree of their team: Stephen Hood is the former head of product at del.icio.us, Dave Baggeroer is part of Stanford’s d.school faculty, and Josh Whiting is a former senior engineer at craigslist and former head of engineering for del.icio.us. Mark Suster says that “Everything that happens is a signal.” And it’s a great signal when Joshua Schachter, who worked with two of the co-founders at del.icio.us, is investing. Startups: Get intros to AngelList here. Angels: Join AngelList here. Everyone: Get AngelList updates via Twitter and RSS.
• The Startup Game 16 June, 2010, 8:09 am
  Why Games Are Fun: The Psychology Explanation: “Fun games operate on the principle that our actions will definitely bring us closer to the goal. If you go and slash rabbits (action), you will definitely gain experience points (relation), and you will eventually level up (goal). “This is the reason so many people, including myself, have failed at difficult, uncharted things like entrepreneurship. There’s no guarantee that our next step will bring us closer to the goal. For example, we could easily invest 6 months into building a product that nobody wants to buy. Now, that specific problem can be ameliorated through processes of customer development, but the general problem still exists. “If we get a job, we’re probably going to get paid for our labors. “If we build a product and take it to market, we’re probably not going to get paid for our efforts. So where’s the motivation? It requires a lot of risk, and the human brain is not wired to consider long-term rewards! The nucleus accumbens, which may play a large role in the distribution of the phenomenon of pleasure and reward seeking, is part of the ancient limbic system, which motivates lots of behavior. Long-term goals require premeditated planning by the prefrontal cortex.” [Emphasis added.] I think there’s an opportunity to apply game mechanics to: Starting a startup. Managing employees in a startup. Managing teams in general. Please steal this idea and let me know what you come up with. This would be a great project for a business school Ph.D.
• Ads for startups 15 June, 2010, 8:07 am
  For the last few months, we’ve been using InfluAds to power an ad widget near the top right of Venture Hacks. I think of InfluAds as “ads for startups”. This is what it looks like: Advertising with InfluAds gets you on Venture Hacks and about 20 other startup blogs like A Smart Bear, Tony Wright, and Hiten Shah. InfluAds calls that group of blogs the “startup community”. You can also advertise on other groups of blogs for Design & UX, Work & Productivity, and Web Development. Personally, I like the ads — they’re relevant and tasteful. They’re modeled after ads from The Deck. Whenever a new ad shows up, I click on it to learn more about the product. I’ve corresponded with their CEO, Anibal Damião, over email and he seems genuinely interested in helping startups reach new customers with classy ads. So check out InfluAds, tell them we sent you so we get rich off the referral fees, and use the VENTUREHACKS promo code to get a whopping 20% discount.
• This fortnight in Twitter 14 June, 2010, 8:03 am
  Highlights from the @venturehacks Twitter feed from the last fortnight. The most retweeted tweets. “I usually like second time entrepreneurs, mostly because I f’ed up everything on my first company.” – @msuster, http://vh.co/dtZbGv @ 41:08 “If you find a lawyer who talks about solutions not problems, hold on to them.” – @sgblank, http://vh.co/9UPJGR “Internet is one of the primary export industries in the US.” – @fredwilson, http://vh.co/ci4ZsT The business school curriculum teaches how to suck at startups http://vh.co/deiWMY. Fav new blog by @jasonfreedman, an MBA at a YC startup. If it was easy, everybody would do it. P.S. Instead of showing our avatar next to each tweet, I’ve picked images that are related to the tweet. P.P.S. It’s easy to find your most popular tweets on the Your Tweets, Retweeted page. P.P.P.S. Twitterrific on the iPad is the best way to read tweets ever.