Angel Investor Best Practices

Furqan Nazeeri at Altgate ran across this 196 page document that he says is great reading for angels and entrepreneurs alike. With the increasing communication that seems to be happening between investors and entrepreneurs in Atlanta (some of it quite edgey – remember you need a pretty big ego to be in either camp) this could be a handy reference.

Read Angel Investor Best Practices here.

Full disclosure – I haven’t read this yet (I’m not actively raising capital right now, so I’m prioritizing this a bit lower than building product….).

Atlanta Startup Drinks!

Atlanta Startup Drinks is scheduled for Wednesday August, 13 at Fado Irish Pub in Buckhead – details are here.

Atlanta Business Chronicle Wants to Know About You

Do you have something newsworthy happening with your company? If so, Urvaksh Karkaria at the Atlanta Business Chronicle wants to hear from you.

Urvaksh is looking for “news about deals (money being raised metro ATL firms – angel and VC). Also, news about company expansions/growth and business trends that affect the tech circle.”

This is a great opportunity to build a connection directly with someone at a major news source in Atlanta. Let’s keep Urvaksh in the loop and help him get the word out on the great entrepreneurial community we have in Atlanta!

Urvaksh can be reached at ukarkaria@bizjournals.com

How bad does your idea sound?

Hank Williams has a great article over at Why does everything suck? that is a must read, not only for investors, but for entrepreneurs as well. The basic idea is that not every good idea can be boiled down to a simple elevator pitch. As Williams says, “Some things are better seen and experienced than explained.”

As someone who has spent hours pounding my head on the desk trying to whittle down to the “essence” of the complexities of calculating the pricing on dynamic financial products (and why it’s important) and trying to give a one-liner on trust-based recommender systems (come on, people write their dissertations on this crap), Hank’s post is a breath of fresh air.

Huh?

We need to be realistic. If I’m developing some new filtration system, I can come up with a pitch like “Clean Water for Everyone”. And I’ll get the requisite pat on the back for having such a concise and easy to understand pitch. I may catch your attention, but probably not, as I really haven’t told you anything about my company or what we really do or what makes us unique.

Probably a bad analogy (I’m notorious for those) but think about Robert Oppenheimer pitching the Manhattan Project:

• “More fission, faster” – Most people probably wouldn’t get it or be interested
• “Kill more people, faster” – Now you’re just freaking people out

I could go on, but in the name of good taste, I won’t. The point is that not every great idea (no, I’m not advocating that the Manhattan Project was a great idea) can be reduced to a simple one liner. I know, I know, I know – it’s all about marketing and capturing the potential investor’s attention, yada, yada.

Williams says it better: “Good potentially profitable ideas sometimes take time to really understand and they may take resources to prove. The venture community should spend less time and resources on the obvious and more time and resources nurturing ideas that may take more than an elevator pitch to really appreciate.”

Hello world!

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    STOP RUN.

Jeez, I’m old. But this is new, as are a buttload of companies in Atlanta. (Check out ATLlogos for some of them.)

This town has a great startup community and there are some pretty cool things for us here (e.g., Startup Riot), but sometimes it feels like we’re operating in the basement, carefully planning our next move, overthinking the next thing out of our mouths so we don’t offend the dark overlords upstairs (the “experts”, angels and VC’s).

Let’s be honest, we want their money (even though we’re better off without it), we want their contacts, I’m going to hold off on saying we want their advice/guidance (I’m up in the air on this), and ultimately, we want their approval. You’ve definitely got some ego going somewhere if you start up your own company, and who doesn’t what someone….”important”…. blessing your feeble efforts and declaring you worthy.

We’ve all read The Art of the Start, Crossing the Chasm, yada, yada… (No? Then get your ass over to Amazon, Forrest and run to catch up). We’ve all been to conferences, seminars and round table discussions. Many of us have pitched – one on one, and even to hundreds of people. There are tons of books about how to start your company and make 90 bazillion dollars. There are lots of web site that tell you how to start your company and make 90 bazillion dollars – or give up. This site isn’t about impressing the VC’s, effective pitching formats, and the etiquette of butt-kissing – even though we’ll probably add links to a lot of that stuff (and you really do need to read all of it).

Here’s the deal with AtlantaStartup – This site is about the companies and the people behind them. I want to know about you – what are you thinking? What is really getting under your skin? What do you really wish you could say about your company or why you’re doing this? Where do you need help, and how can the startup community help you?

I’d like to profile startups in Atlanta (and not just tech startups). I don’t really want to feature pitches – I’m thinking more of a 5 question format. Not really sure what the questions are yet – help me out here. Like the tagline says up there – It’s All About You.