Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a crowdfunding bill that will allow startups to offer and sell securities via crowdfunding sites and social networks. If passed by the Senate and signed off on by the President, the bill will become a law, giving entrepreneurs new options for raising money for their companies. Here’s a look at the current and proposed crowdfunding rules, and how this bill could shake things up for startups. What is crowdfuding? As the term suggests, crowdfunding is funding from a crowd of people; that is, many people provide small amounts of money to financ
. . . → Read More: What the new U.S. crowdfunding bill means for entrepreneurs
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Traditionally when businesses expand they fund growth by offering company stock or pledging assets to secure debt. As the public offering and lending markets have pulled back in the current economy we see more business expansion funded through venture capital and angel investor groups. With angels moving up the funding hierarchy and leaving a gap with only friends-and-family as the next funding option for entrepreneurs, there is an interesting legislative initiative proposed to fill this gap with federally authorized crowd funding. Crowd funding has not been recognized as a legal w We’ve completed our series on convertible debt and hope that you enjoyed it. If we ever get around to writing a second edition of Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist we’ll be sure to include this as well. If you go to the resources section of Ask the VC we’ve included standard forms used in a variety of venture deals. As of this posting, we’ll include some standard convertible debt documents subject to the disclaimer that we aren’t you lawyers and make no reps or warranties with respect to these documents, so use at your own risk. Related posts (see original pos Everybody knows that when you raise money at a startup your ownership percentage of the company goes down. The goal is to have the value of the startup go up by enough that you own a smaller percentage of a much larger business and therefore your total personal value goes up. The simplest way to think about this is: If you own 20% of a $2 million company your stake is worth $400,000. If you raise a new round of venture capital (say $2.5 million at a $7.5 million pre-money valuation, which is a $10 million post-money) you get diluted by 25% (2.5m / 10m). So you own 15% of the new comp Following is the video (see original post) along with my notes. Four key principles of entrepreneurial communities – led by entrepreneurs – 20 year view from today – engage the entire entrepreneurial stack – continually get fresh blood into the system briefly focus on the first – entrepreneurial communities have to be led by entrepreneurs entrepreneurial communities have leaders and feeders feeders include everyone that does things that are inputs into the entrepreneurial community – lawyers – accountants – angel investors – venture capitalists – government leaders are the entrepreneurs – The Wall Street Journal has a story out today that says “Web Startups Hit Cash Crunch.” There has been a fair bit of reaction in the tech blogs and I thought I’d toss into the discussion some things we are seeing: 1) There are so many startups out there raising money. I don’t think this is a bad thing. It’s a good thing. Entrepreneurship is in vogue. Innovators are innovating. Makers are making. But I cannot remember a time when we have gotten more inbound traffic. It is not just coming from entrepreneurs. It is coming from angels, seed investors, VCs, lawyers, accountants, friends, aunts, un It’s really easy to find information about raising money from angel investors or VCs, but many people don’t think about another important way to fund your startup: raising money from family and friends. I’ve raised money from friends and family twice and want to share what I’ve learned so that you can raise money from your friends and family and still be able to attend your family reunions. Raising money from friends and family can be easier and less complicated than raising money from professional investors, but is not without drawbacks. There are certainly pros and cons to raising money fro Cap Tables (short for capitalization tables) are spreadsheets that show how much everyone owns of the company. You can get a stockholder ledger from your lawyer that will list all the stockholders and show how many shares or options they have, but I don’t consider that a cap table. For the past 25 years, I’ve used a simple form, mostly given to me by the partners I worked for when I first entered the venture capital business in the mid-80s, but with a few modifications by me over the years. Last night I put together a public read-only google spreadsheet that shows you a basic cap table in t (Although this orignal post was written about VC diversification, the points are equally valid for Angels.) Question: How do VCs mitigate risk in their investment portfolios? Are VCs simply looking to diversify the type and stage of companies in which they invest, or do they employ other financial hedging strategies? I’m not aware of VCs using classic financial hedging strategies. In many cases, they are prohibited from doing this by their LP agreements and/or investment documents in the companies when they make an investment. While I’m sure there are some folks that Today, I’m talking with David Rose, who founded AngelSoft, now , in 2004. Gust provides a platform where angel investors and entrepreneurs can connect and discuss ventures. Originally created with angel investors’ needs in mind, Gust now has more than 750 investment organizations worldwide using its platform to manage deal flow and other day-to-day tasks. Over 125,000 startups have, through Gust, worked with more than 35,000 individual investors on their ventures. The company is based in New York City, has a development office in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and a European office in Pa |
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