Today I went to the Angel Capital Education Foundation’s event Starting An Angel Organization which was graciously hosted by the folks from the Georgia Centers of Innovation. The event was pretty interesting although I think it was more useful to the folks from Augusta, Gainesville, and Valdosta who are trying to start up angel groups in their cities.
During the event, I heard one interesting confirmation. During a conversation one of the participants agreed with my assessment of fund raising in Atlanta and said:
Yeah, the [fund raising] atmosphere in Atlanta has stagnated.
Wow. People from outside of Atlanta clearly see the situation here has stagnated but there are many folks here who just refuse to believe it. I’ve gotten numerous emails from local investors who say they just don’t agree with my assessment of the local fund raising atmosphere.
Am I crazy? What do you think of the Atlanta fund raising atmosphere?
Published on January 15, 2008
in Events.
Knox Massey made a mention on his blog for an event called “Starting an Angel Organization” (yes, even after all that I’m still willing to make this reference). The idea with the event is to help folks who might want to start a new angel group or join an existing angel group. Like I’ve discussed many times, more access to capital will help improve the ability for local entrepreneurs to focus on value creation instead of fund raising. Also, if entrepreneurs believe they can raise money and be based here, they won’t be tempted to leave.
Unfortunately, I heard about this event too late. The deadline to apply for this event is today. I’ve sent in my materials and should be good to go but if you’re at all interested (the event is on January 24th and it runs all day) go and register right away!
This is a pretty funny list of VC personalities to avoid. I’d say most, if not all, of these extend to angels too. Now who is going to come up with a list of entrepreneur personalities to avoid?
Good article in the Wall Street Journal about the new wave of venture capital and angel investing. As many of you have seen, newer individuals who are investing are past entrepreneurs themselves. Personally, I think this is a welcome change since these folks understand what it takes to start and run a company. In my time with my company and helping others, I’ve heard a lot of inane statements from investors who just don’t get it. For example, I’ve heard this:
“Well, if they need this technology we can just keep raising prices and they’ll pay whatever we tell them.”
Yeah, that’s a good idea b-school boy. Unfortunately your book learning doesn’t completely translate into the real world. Even if you think you’ve got a monopoly (you don’t), then there is a price point where customers will live without whatever you’re providing (product, service, technology) and keep doing business how they were before.
Another one that I recently heard was:
“We’re not convinced about this product/service. If there was a demand for this there would be bigger competitors doing this.”
Say what?!? Isn’t this the essence of starting up a company? You see an unmet market need and you fill it. By this inane argument there should be no startups and everything that needs to be done will be done by big companies.
My point in all of this is that you need to choose your investors wisely. Sure, there are a lot of times where you have to just take what you get. When choosing between shutting down your company and taking money from morons, the clear choice is to live a little longer and hope for the best. The best being that the morons aren’t complete imbeciles (this can be a lot to hope for). But if you have a choice, always choose the investor who has been there and done that over the investor who just shows up with a wad of cash.
Oh yeah, this will likely be the last post for the year so happy new year! I’m looking forward to keeping the discussion going next year!
[via A VC]