As we have entered the third quarter of 2022, I’m looking forward to what lies ahead for me as an angel investor. I joined TBD Angels last year, and am proud to be counted among more than 250 active investors nationwide. I’ve already made several investments through the platform, and I’ve been very impressed with the process and the quality… Read More »Looking ahead to 2023
For all the years I’ve been angel investing and talking about it (see Speaking Gigs), I’ve been saying that as an angel, I don’t have to have a “thesis.” My portfolio reflects this lack of focus, as one can easily see. For the past several years I have been concentrating my efforts on Revenue-Based Financing (RBF). After much investigation I came to the conclusion… Read More »Angel Investing 2021-22 Recap
Bear with me, please, as I take you on a youtube journey… I’m a sailing geek. I met my wife back these four decades ago when I was her sailing instructor, in a program co-sponsored by the Ithaca YMCA and Cornell Physics grad students (!). The classroom sessions, as you might imagine, involved vectors. During the pandemic, my sailing activities… Read More »A Long Story That Leads Back To Entrepreneurship
The Black Lives Matter movement has brought to the fore the inequities ingrained in our society. In my field of investment, it is a long term problem. While we’ve made some progress in funding more companies led by women, people of color, or other disenfranchised entrepreneurs, it has been slow, and it’s still an uphill battle. I’ve been looking at Revenue-Based… Read More »Building Funding Tributaries
There seems to be momentum building around Revenue-Based Financing. Everywhere I turn there are more investors thinking about, or actually using, some RBF Structure. I will say more about RBF in a moment, but fist a couple of words about the current COVID-19 (Coronavirus) situation. We are in a national and global crisis as I write this, with a pandemic… Read More »RBF 2020-bis + COVID-19
As I’ve written before, I’m very interested in revenue-based financing. I’m currently interested in two very different deals where RBF is on the table. There’s also been an uptick in interest in the model from several of may angel colleagues who have previously only invested on the classic Angel/VC equity model. I thought it would be worthwhile to write down my… Read More »RBF 2020
Back in April 2018 I went to the annual Angel Capital Association (ACA) Summit, where I met a fellow by the name of Luni Libes, who was presenting on the topic of revenue-based financing (RBF), which his accelerator/fund, Fledge, uses as its primary investment vehicle. Luni maintains that the angel/VC model is fundamentally flawed and that a new paradigm is needed. What… Read More »Revenue-Based Financing
When a doctor examines a patient and comes up with a diagnosis of a very rare condition, another doctor might look at the first and say: “you’re finding a zebra there, but it’s really just a horse.” The guiding principle there is that rare diseases are rare, so you have to find extraordinary evidence to support the finding. Most hoof prints… Read More »Horses, Zebras, and Unicorns
As a seed stage angel investor I’m constantly running into pre-money companies that need just a little capital to get over a perceived hump in order to raise a “real” round. This is actually very hard money to find. You’ve got this great idea that you’re pursuing. You’ve run up your credit card to the max, raised a little money… Read More »Early Money is not Easy Money
At a recent Q&A event the topic came up of how to get to the point of being fundable. Terms like traction were bandied about. But as a part of the discussion afterward I pointed out to one entrepreneur that they might be charting the wrong course for their company. Here’s the deal… We’ve all heard of Lean Startup methodology… Read More »Cheating to Reduce Risk