Search results for: Angellist
-
1
Strong Follow-On Deals Have These Features
When I first got into startup investing, I was mostly investing in early-stage deals. Valuations usually fell between $3 million-to-$10 million (with a few exceptions of around $40 million). I was focused on trying to find the potential big winners as early as I could. And I definitely got a few winners — Density.io, Cabify, FabFitFun, Deel, etc. After a…
-
2
Crowdwise Founder Brian Belley Reveals His Investing Strategy
Note: Startup investors spend a lot of time learning about founders. We want to know about their backgrounds, how much business experience they have, what they think the future will look like… But we don’t spend enough time learning about other investors. Not big league, Shark Tank-style billionaire investors, but fellow crowdfunding investors. To that end, our friends at KingsCrowd…
-
3
Investing in Indian Startups
Indian startups are booming. The country’s middle class is growing rapidly, the population is technologically savvy and the economy is doing well. Unfortunately, I have only one Indian startup in my portfolio. But it’s a banger. The company is ClearTax, and it is killing it. ClearTax is kind of like TurboTax for India, but it offers more financial services. The…
-
4
The Perfect Environment for Startup Investing
While you all know I’ve been a bit frustrated with the high valuations of startups today, there is a lot to be said for investing in this asset class in our current environment. Many bonds are yielding -5% after inflation is factored in (real yield). Stocks are expensive — and much like bonds, their dividend yields are also negative-yielding right…
-
5
What Investors Can Learn From Meb Faber
My friend Meb Faber just put out a must-read document about online angel investing. It’s long — but it’s well worth the read. Meb reveals his biggest wins, his favorite AngelList syndicates and lessons he’s learned since he started. Here’s an excerpt. (Note that the Grove Collective company is actually called Grove Collaborative.) We had the founder of Grove Collective…
-
6
Market Changes Favor New Startup Investors
I’ve now been investing in startups online for seven years. Over that time, I’ve invested in around 125 individual startups and three funds (those funds in turn invested in another 30 startups). The vast majority of deals were early — seed stage, pre-seed or Series A. And over those years of investing, I’ve gained some useful insights. One of the…
-
7
Startup Investments Can Be a Good Inflation Hedge
Inflation appears to have arrived in the U.S. I say “appears to have arrived” because in my opinion, we’ve been dealing with at least 6% inflation for more than 5 years. The reason you haven’t heard about that is because the government manipulates the official consumer price index (CPI) numbers to make inflation look much lower. You can read about…
-
8
Syndicate Leads Should Have Skin in the Game
About a third of the deals I’ve seen on AngelList recently share a disappointing trait — the syndicate lead has only invested $1,000-to-$2,000. This is almost always a red flag, because it’s a sign that the lead has a low amount of conviction in the deal. And that small investment amount doesn’t affect the carry percentage the lead will receive…
-
9
When Is a High Valuation Worth It?
In recent months, I’ve talked a lot about how expensive some startup rounds are becoming. That doesn’t mean you should avoid every round that looks expensive at first glance. Sometimes startup investments seem expensive when they are actually more than fair. AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant explains this concept succinctly. There’s also the Peter Thiel rule: When a company’s valuation climbs…
-
10
Don’t Write Off Weird Startups
Some of the best startup investments I’ve made — and some of the best that I’ve missed — have been “crazy” or “weird” ideas. Take Density, one of the first startups I invested in back in 2014. Density’s mission is to make sensors that count people. Its first product was a door counter that kept track of the number of…
-
11
New $5 Million Limit Enables Attractive Crowdfunding Deals
Last week, the SEC’s new rules around equity crowdfunding went into effect. Now companies can raise up to $5 million per year from the crowd. On the first day, we got a good idea of the potential of this new medium. Gumroad — an online platform that allows anyone to sell goods — raised the full $5 million in less…
-
12
Top Tips From Six Years of Startup Investing
I’ve now been investing in startups for more than six years. And it’s taken that long to prove concretely that what I’m doing is working. This is the frustrating — yet rewarding — truth of startup investing. It takes a very long time to see results. But I am now more convinced than ever that investing in a broad, diversified…
-
13
Pay Attention to Reg CF Deals
On March 15th, the fundraising limit on Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) campaigns will go from $1.07 million to $5 million. Startups that raise capital using Reg CF are the deals that non-accredited investors can access. With the $1 million limit, Reg CF just wasn’t worth it for many promising startups. The rewards didn’t justify the efforts. But once the new…
-
14
The Strength of Early-Stage Companies
We live in a remarkably disruptive time. New technologies are changing the way almost every industry operates. There’s a lot of opportunity for innovative companies to make a big impact. But we also live in a very unique time when it comes to finance and monetary policy. Interest rates have never been anywhere close to this low for this long.…
-
15
Investing in Startups Without Traction
As a general rule, I prefer to invest in companies that are growing quickly. That means startups with plenty of traction. However, sometimes I do break that rule — and doing so recently produced a great outcome. Back in 2016, I invested in a company called Loom.ai. I made the investment through Zach Coelius’ syndicate on AngelList. Even back then…
-
16
Big Changes for Non-Accredited Investors
Last week the SEC announced that it was increasing the limit on Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) deals from $1.07 million to $5 million. In case you weren’t aware, anyone can invest in Reg CF deals. You don’t have to be an accredited investor like you do on AngelList. The new limit is great news for non-accredited investors. The new $5…