Here is a great and simple content idea for private equity groups; create a podcast with the CEOs of your platform companies. The CEOs could share their stories on selecting the PE group and working with them to drive value. This would build a tremendous amount of credibility with other business owners and may drive some interesting leads.
Buy-side mandates, essentially, are another form of content that highlights a sector where you would like to source new deals. They are more detailed than general investment criteria, and the ideal mandate should include:
VC Teten’s Criteria For Investing In Your Startup Idea
9/ All in all, Y Combinator matters a lot to all of us in the startup world, including in Europe, because it has contributed so much to revolutionizing startup investing in general and Silicon Valley in particular.
2/ Y Combinator was meant to do angel investing in a different way. Paul Graham wanted to be an angel but didn\u2019t want the hassle that usually comes with it, notably on the legal side (he\u2019d probably tell you he\u2019s a lazy man and easily bored, like so many nerds \uD83D\uDE09). Overall, his interest was in spending time with founders. Hence the idea was to find a processed, professional way to maximize both the probability of success at the earlier stage and the pleasure that Y Combinator partners would have in conducting their day-to-day business\u2014both of which required as much focus as possible on the founders and their products.
Y Combinator does NOT host its portfolio startups in a physical space. Former president of the firm Sam Altman even had to remind the public about that fact in a tweet back in 2015, triggering a heated discussion about the adverse effects of gathering a bunch of startups in the same co-working space. As mentioned by Keith Rabois at the time, the idea is that great startups are (for better or worse) like cults, and \u201Ccults don't share space\u201D. During the 3 months they spend in Silicon Valley, Y Combinator founders work from either home or any office they can find in the neighborhood. In practice, finding a home where all the co-founders both live and work is the preferred option: it maximizes the sharing of information and minimizes the time dedicated to going from home to the office. (And now, because of COVID-19, Y Combinator has announced that it will be switching to remote, maybe on a permanent basis? We\u2019ll see!)
Content plays a key (and underestimated?) role in Y Combinator\u2019s strategy. Graham\u2019s essays were instrumental in generating the traffic that made it possible both to attract the first batch and to provide the founders with a basic education about what startups and web-based applications are all about. Later, Hacker News, a media operated by Y Combinator and of which Paul Graham was the editor for a long time, contributed a great deal to the firm\u2019s influence in the startup world. Today, Hacker News is still one of the hottest and most visited tech sites in Silicon Valley and the world, and having your tech-related content featured there is kind of the Holy Grail. (One day my colleague Mathias Pastor saw a huge jump in traffic on his article, Avoiding Zombie Startups; sure enough, it had been posted on Hacker News and was generating a big debate.)
\u201CWe have significantly exceeded the funds we raised for pro ratas, and the investors who support YC do not have the appetite to fund the pro rata program at the same scale,\u201D the accelerator wrote in a post seen by TechCrunch. \u201CIn addition, processing hundreds of follow-on rounds per year has created significant operational complexities for YC that we did not anticipate. Said simply, investing in every round for every YC company requires more capital than we want to raise and manage. We always tell startups to stay small and manage their budgets carefully. In this instance, we failed to follow our own advice.\u201D
If you're growing a SaaS startup, have an audit of what you have in place to measure your growth and traction. Do you know how much it costs to acquire a user? How long they stay with you? What their lifetime value is? And how that varies with different cohorts?
I lead business development and investor relations for AngelList. It's the most rewarding and enjoyable job I've ever had. I connect family offices, venture funds, startups and tech entrepreneurs to support projects that can change the world. I'm also an angel investor and co-founder of The Fund, an NYC pre-seed VC comprised of founders and senior operators or NY venture-backed companies. Contact me to talk startups or other fun ideas.Adventure beckons.
An operator, investor and mentor. Adi has been actively involved in global startup and venture capital ecosystems for over 10 years, with a myriad of experience on both the investment side along with business and legal operations. Utilizing her experience investing in, and working with startups based in Israel, New York, Los Angeles and the Silicon Valley, she helps entrepreneurs reach product-market fit; maximizing her network and understanding of various technologies, together with business development strategies to identify and secure partnerships. Adi is passionate about disruptive technologies, is constantly curious and loves working with game-changing businesses.
Adriel Bercow is an investor at Kairos K50 Venture Fund, an early stage venture fund investing across all companies accepted to the Kairos K50 program. The K50 program is a global recognition of the 50 most-innovative startups from around the world, with young founders tackling global challenges.
In 2010Alejandro Cremades founded with Tanya Privethe startup investing marketplace Onevest (formerly RockThePost) where they connect early stage startups with investors. After one year of development they were able to launch the platform to the public on November 232011. In less than a yearthe platform was already mentioned by TIME as one of the best crowdfunding platforms in the worldas one of the top 10 digital tools for entrepreneurs by Forbes and as one of the hottest startups to watch by Business Insider. Cremades joined officially as CEO of Onevest on May 12012. Prior to OnevestCremades worked as a lawyer at King & Spalding where he was involved in one of the biggest investment arbitration cases in history which was Chevron v. Ecuador ($113 billion at stake). Cremades is an active speaker and has given guest lectures at the Wharton School of Business and at NYU Stern School of Business. Cremades was ranked number one on Vanity Fair's 30 Under 30 for 2014." 2ff7e9595c
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