February 11th, 2013 | Add a Comment
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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
July 30th, 2012 | Add a Comment
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With the recent twitter outage, it is interesting to take a look at what the markets did during that time. There have been a number of studies that I have referenced on my twitter feed in the past about the hedge funds and research that have been dedicated to twitter outages and I’ll admit my fun study doesn’t go into the sort of depth that it could or should to be used as research in trading. Nonetheless it is interesting to look at how the markets behaved in response to the outage. There is some speculation that trading idea sharing on twitter affects the market or can be used to acheive alpha in the markets. Based on my little research – twitter makes no difference whatsoever. Traders and investors will … Read entire article »
Filed under: Investing, Profit, Startups, stocks, Technology
July 23rd, 2012 | Add a Comment
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I get a lot of feedback about my Covered Call ESPP strategy from efficient market theorists. They tell me that I will make and lose money on the trades based on the efficiency of the market. They commonly forget that markets are composed of people and when it comes to individual transactions there is a buyer and a seller. Howard Marks ranted about this in a recent letter (see below). The fact that transactions have buyers and sellers means that while the market may display efficiencies, each transaction
Understanding who is on both sides of the transaction is important. If you are looking to make a new investment of any kind, an Angel investment, a Real Estate Investment, or purchasing shares of a business on a public market you need to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Investing, RealEstate, stocks
July 9th, 2012 | Add a Comment
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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
July 2nd, 2012 | Add a Comment
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The series Investing Lessons from Venture Capitalists has gotten off to a great start. I have looked at a few great investors and found some great insights. Chris Sacca, Fred Wilson, & Howard Lindzon have all provided some brilliant insights by publicly talking about their investment thesis and strategies. Let’s briefly recap them here with a short tweet-able description…
5 Investing Lessons from Chris Sacca
Lesson #1 – The Team Matters
“Invest in teams you would spend a secluded weekend with.” – http://wp.me/pS3iU-kP (CC: @Sacca)
Lesson #2 – Support Systems Are Important
“Pay attention to who is supporting, advising, & guiding the business” – http://wp.me/pS3iU-kP (CC: @Sacca)
Lesson #3 – What Product
“No product – no business, poor product – poor business” – http://wp.me/pS3iU-kP (CC: @Sacca)
Lesson #4 – Customers Make The Difference
“Will someone actually pay real money … Read entire article »
Filed under: Accounting, Banking, Entrepreneurship, ESPP, Investing, Profit, RealEstate, Startups, stocks, Technology
April 2nd, 2012 | 1 Comment
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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
March 19th, 2012 | 3 Comments
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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
March 12th, 2012 | 3 Comments
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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
