It’s been an interesting couple of months on the angel front. Having invested in many companies over the past nine years, some of them have aged to the point that things are happening. Some of them have rotted on the vine, others are ripe enough that they’re getting picked. So here’s what’s happened in my portfolio. One company closed its doors. Frankly,… Read More »A Tale of Four Exits
I received the following email recently from my Walnut Ventures colleague, Sal Daher, who had asked me for an interview for his upcoming podcast series. His email describes the series and has links to the pertinent places: his web site (where you can join his email list) and the iTunes store for the podcast itself. Message follows: The Angel Invest… Read More »Sal Daher’s New Podcast Series
I’ve made my first Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF, also known as “equity crowdfunding”) investment in Troupe Jewelry. I’d like to encourage each and every one of you who was interested enough to read this post to follow me into this investment, and I’ll explain why below. Reg CF allows ordinary people — non-accredited investors — to legally invest in startups alongside,… Read More »Equity Crowdfunding & Troupe
I’m a pretty committed seed stage investor. Of my investments in 2016, Troupe, UltraCell, Blurr, and edivvy all qualify as seed since they were really early investments done as convertible notes. Nix86, while an equity investment led by two later stage groups, was the first money in, and the company was pre-revenue. Of my investments in the previous two years, three were seed investments and two… Read More »Seed Stage Investing
I’ve just passed my 8 year anniversary as an angel investor earlier this spring, and I thought it might be worthwhile to note some of my thoughts. I started out doing this because I wanted to re-engage with the entrepreneurial community after a living couple of years in upstate NY. Someone suggested angel investing as a great way to meet… Read More »Angel Thoughts, 8 Years In
We went down to Roger WIlliams University in Bristol, RI, where Dr. Andy Rhyne and his students have been running some feed trials, first with clown fish, and more recently with shrimp. The shrimp trial has just completed, so Larry Feinberg invited a group of investors and other friends of the company to a tasting in Bristol on May 9,… Read More »KnipBio Shrimp Tasting
I was sent a survey recently by Vanessa Dunaway, a Babson MBA student, and I thought I’d answer her questions publicly. The answers are probably of some interest to more than a few entrepreneurs looking for funding. 1. Why are you an investor? There are many reasons I got into this. Initially I was looking to connect with an early stage… Read More »About Angel Investing
The other night we were driving off to dinner in Burlington in our Nissan LEAF electric vehicle (EV). At a red light we came alongside a bright yellow Audi with a lowered suspension and resonators on the exhaust, driven by a young man. When the light changed, I took off as usual and quietly left the Audi behind. At the… Read More »Call Me Petty – Stupid EV Tricks
I received a pointer to an interesting blog post in my email today. http://davidafields.com/more-clients-more-time While this particular post is aimed at sales people and consultants, it turns out that it is at least as applicable to entrepreneurs. Angel investing is a contact sport. At every panel I talk about how the game is played: network, network, network. Stealth? Just say… Read More »Old Tech For Entrepreneurs