Time again for the annual visit to San Francisco to attend and present at SOCAP, the social capital conference. Once again this year, I’ll be running a workshop, “Investing without Exits“, Wednesday, 2:20pm in the Fleet Room. Early stage impact investors face a market that has few acquisitions, fewer IPOs, and is filled with entrepreneurs who liken selling their companies to...
One often misunderstood topic of entrepreneurship is “sustainable competitive advantage“, and specifically, the advantage from a “network effect“. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, iTunes, and many other modern technologies succeeded due to this effect, but the anecdote I like to use is almost 150 years old, the telephone. The anecdote goes this like: One telephone has...
I’ve spent the last few weeks reading applications upon applications. 122 applications for Fledge. Another 56 for Social Venture Partner Seattle’s Fast Pitch. Plus a few dozen more for Seattle Magazine‘s upcoming Impactful Company Awards. All of these in just the past 60 days. Earlier this year were more than a hundred others at five business plan competitions at local...
Podcast: What’s up Bainbridge, “From Idea to Plan” Do you have an idea for a must-have product or service, but need help with what comes next? On four Tuesdays in July, OfficeXpats at the Pavilion in Winslow is offering a lunchtime course to take your business or nonprofit idea to the next step. Interview with School for Startups Radio Join host Jim Beach everyday at 8:00pm EST...
Two years after the Federal government passed the JOBS Act, legalizing crowdfunding the sale of startup equity, the law sits idle, awaiting a final set of regulations from the SEC. Here in the State of Washington, we grew tired of waiting, passed the Washington Jobs Act, and are moving forward toward legal equity crowdfunding for Washington companies and residents. The last step in that process...
Putting aside the impact for a moment… for early-stage impact investors, how can there be a reasonable return on investment if there are little to no 10x’s to be found? A bit of analysis and a surprising answers…
Less than 0.4% of American startups are funded by venture capitalists. We know this thanks to the measurement and reporting of the venture capital industry and the Kauffman Foundation. 2,000 companies were reported to receive their first round of venture capital, out of a bit more than 500,000 new companies created annually. (Both of these are U.S. statistics). Investments by Angel investors are...
Yesterday I attended and spoke at a great investor event set up by Element8, “Investing a World With Few Exits“. The event kicked off with an amazing summary by Rob Wiltbank, which not only reprised his conclusions from his groundbreaking research on Angel investing, but included analysis on new data sets he has been collecting. The key learning continues to hold true. In the...
This weekend I broke ground on book #7 in the series, The Next Step: The Realities of Startup Funding. The key lesson is that for startups, money is time. Or more specifically, money buys your a faster time to market and a potentially faster path to profits. This is not how venture capitalists or Angel investors talk about money. For them, money is fuel. Which, from their perspective, is true...
Green Lines Series | Michael “Luni” Libes, Founder & Managing Director, of B Corp Certified Fledge Posted on 04/08/2014 by Kerrie Mullaney | Leave a comment Our team met up with Michael “Luni” Libes for a one on one interview to find out more about the successful entrepreneur and the driving force behind Fledge. Read along to find out more about what inspires Luni to support young...
