The good news: venture is crashing. It’s time to seed again
TL;DR – we are facing (another) economic downturn. But every cloud has a silver lining. This time the downturn provides the opportunities to start seeding startups again in a sane and financially-viable way. “The venture downturn is here” scream the headlines. “Tech’s new season of shrinking”, say the financial articles. Financial analysts do their usual […]
Angels, micro-VCs, rejoice! Now is the time to return to pre-seed investing
TL;DR – we are facing an economic downturn. Now is the time to incubate new ideas that will emerge from R&D once the market awakens. The people who can invest in the pre-seed stage now will reap the largest rewards after the recession. The economic downturn is upon us The COVID-19 pandemic has gone through […]
What exactly is investment banking for startups?
Let me start off by explaining why I felt the need to write this rant. I want to share with you one of the biggest challenges of my professional life – answering the innocent question: “What do you do?”. Yes. Whenever I meet someone new, the first thing they ask is, “so, what exactly do […]
Are you thinking of raising your next round? You may already be too late!
Money makes the startup world go ‘round. But money tends to run out fast. One of the common problems startups face is just that: running out of money. In the back of every founder’s mind, there is a countdown to running out of money. In investor speak, this is called “the runway”, that is, the […]
The Angel Investor Manifesto: why and how to invest in pre-product startups
Up until around 2010, many startups would raise pre-product seed rounds using only an investor deck, idea, and the spark in their eyes. Those times are long gone. Today investors know that the cost of reaching a viable product (in many sectors) is low enough that serious founders will create their product, and initial traction, […]
Digital securities are revolutionizing investing – and it’s going to be amazing!
Are you aware of how digital securitize are going to change the investment world in the coming years? As an investor, you should read this now.
So, you wanted to ICO?
This story was originally written when ICOs were at their APEX and every second entrepreneur I would talk to wanted my help in ICOing. Since then, things have gone south for the ICO industry. So many scammers and bad projects have sullied the waters of what might have been an amazing new industry. But, no […]
What is the difference between a business plan and a White Paper for an ICO?
Everybody’s talking about Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) lately. If you’ve been sleeping in the past few months, ICOs are a way for a company to offer crypto-assets to the public in order to raise funding, and many startups have been doing just that to raise initial capital, often instead of raising angel or VC rounds […]
Why Israelis Suck at Lean Canvas
TL;DR Lean Canvas is popular. It’s used to create a good strategy by breaking the business down into topics and challenging assumptions. The more time and effort one puts in it, the more value is created, and the main derived benefit is expertise in your business. Israelis are results-oriented, not process-oriented, therefore it is no […]
Lessons from 10 years of writing business plans (part 2)
It’s been ten years and 300+ business plans since I started writing business plans and looking back I have gained some insights about the process (and art?) of creating these ubiquitous document, no matter their form: executive summary, one-pager, investor presentation or strategic plan. Specifically, I have come to believe that a successful business plan […]
