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Seattle Angel Conference III

April 15th, 2013 | 2 Comments

Tweet You may have noticed the slight increase in posts related to early stage investments and investing lessons from angels & VCs. This year, I am participating in the Seattle Angel Conference as an investor and have been learning a lot as I spend a few hours each week with 20+ other brilliant investors vetting companies. The experience is forcing me to put my thoughts about investment forward and explain to people how I view the world of investment opportunity vs. what others may see. It is highly stimulating and is most certainly making me a better investor of all types of assets. I have slowly been collecting my thoughts on the process itself and want to share those as well. The premise of the group is simple – a bunch of … Read entire article »

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, Startups, Technology

Investing in lotteries

April 1st, 2013 | Add a Comment

Tweet Investing is often difficult to discern from gambling, in fact many day trading strategies are based on the same principles of successful gambling. By successful gambling, I am referring to those gambling strategies that leverage the statistical odds built into the wager system to strategically pull out a profit and not the casual betting you and I may do at the school auction. I was recently at an angel investing conference here in Seattle. The conference was put on by the great TechStars Azure team and was focused on explaining the angel investing process. There were a variety of angel investors speaking from professionals like Geoff Entress, Chris Devore, and Andy Sack to angels who also have a day job like T.A. McCann and Christina Storm. During the talk, one comment struck me as … Read entire article »

Filed under: Investing, Profit, Startups, stocks

5 Investing Lessons from Jeff Clavier

February 11th, 2013 | Add a Comment

Tweet I came across this infographic and thought it good to share in the series of Investing Lessons From Venture Capitalists series. It is interesting because it initially highlights what a tech VC looks at when evaluating an investment so of course if you are starting a new tech company and are planning to raise money for that new tech company you need to understand all aspects of the infographic. For the rest of us who aren’t creating new tech companies and just happen to work at them or are friends and family of them… this is interesting as well for a number of reasons. If you are giving any feedback to a tech startup and don’t have expertise or a strong opinion in one of the areas here – don’t fake … Read entire article »

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, ESPP, Investing, Startups, stocks, Technology

5 Investing Lessons from Chris Devore

July 9th, 2012 | Add a Comment

Tweet Chris Devore graces us with his wisdom in the fourth post in our ongoing Investing Lessons From Venture Capitalist series. Chris is a local Seattle investor (our first local investor) and is heavily involved in a lot of areas building the Seattle startup scene. His investing lessons are shared from the perspective of his move from being an entrepreneur to turning into an investor and prove to offer some interesting insights into early and not so early stage investors. Lesson #1 – Understand Who Else Is Investing It may not be obvious why it is important to understand who the other investors are, but it is very important. The reasons are different for an early stage company than they are for a publicly traded company; however, the need is equally important. Looking at … Read entire article »

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, ESPP, Investing, Startups, stocks, Technology

5 Investing Lessons From Howard Lindzon

April 2nd, 2012 | 1 Comment

Tweet Howard spews investing advice every Monday (usually), he talks about the individual companies he invests in all the time on StockTwits and isn’t shy to discuss his reasoning behind each of those picks. As you may have picked up on, the Investing Lessons series that has looked at Fred Wilson and Chris Sacca focuses on lessons that we can take back and incorporate into our own investment strategies. While it may be great to follow Howard into some of his picks (like Pabrai, I’m a fan of cloning great ideas), I think it is more valuable to learn from his examples and discussions about how he invests. Howard recently popped up in a foundville interview and provided some insights into himself and his thought process. Thinking through the lessons we can learn from … Read entire article »

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, Profit, stocks

5 Investing Lessons From Fred Wilson

March 19th, 2012 | 3 Comments

Tweet Following up from my last post in the series 5 Investing Lessons From Chris Sacca, I came across this article that Jeff Bussgang wrote on lessons for startup entrepreneurs. Reading the article, there were a few key points that Jeff points out as important for startup entrepreneurs. These are great for the MBAs Fred was speaking to and entrepreneurs, but it is interesting the insight that Fred is providing into his thoughts on investing and how relevant they are to investors in public companies. Let’s look at each of the key points and how they are relevant to retail investment decisions.   Lesson #1 – Embrace Failure Fred observed that failure is typically a valuable and powerful experience—forcing introspection, humility, and an extra drive to prove something to others. He observed that the entrepreneurs he … Read entire article »

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, ESPP, Investing, Startups, stocks

5 Investing Lessons From Chris Sacca

March 12th, 2012 | 3 Comments

Tweet There is a lot of hype around venture capitalists, the VC 10x return requirements, their high flying exits when companies like Facebook IPO, and their exclusive carried interest income that is barely taxed. It is certainly well deserved hype, there is a lot of money to be made (and lost) in venture investing, what is interesting though is that the basic principles used in venture investing are principles that any investor can and should use. Have a look at this recent report on GeekWire on the returns of venture captialists, you will see an obvious trend that VCs returns are long term and not short term. The thought here is that these returns are based on longer term fundamental or value investments and not shorter term momentum or technical investments. … Read entire article »

Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, stocks