Topic: Investor legends: World Most Exclusive Investor Club - page 3. (Read 734 times)

The takeaway: Many not-for-profit groups struggle to match their income with their expectations. This might be due to over-expectations, but, in most cases, it will be because of the fundraising mistakes they are making.

1. Being scared of ‘the ask’
People can get shy when it comes to asking for money, but if you believe that your organisation’s work is both important and valuable it should be easy for you to tell others about it – and then ask them for a donation.

If an organisation has motivated you to get involved, then there's a high chance it will do the same to others – but they can't get involved in sharing the passion if you don't give them an opportunity to do so.

And it should go without saying – if you don’t ask for donations, you won’t receive any.

2. Having non-donating board members
The board will need to lead the way when it comes to donations – even if it’s just a small donation from each board member. If a board isn’t fully committed to the giving process it will be hard to expect anyone else to be.

Don’t be afraid to approach the board for donations. Rich or poor, large or small donations – all board members should give.

3. Poor or non-existent record keeping
If you don't keep records of all contact made with potential givers (donors, clients, customers, audiences, correspondents, suppliers) you're practically throwing money away.

People who have been in contact with your group are much more likely to donate to you than those who have never been involved with your group.

Keeping a database of past givers helps you to know whether they've given in the past, how much they gave and how often they give, and tailor your communications with them accordingly.

4. Skipping homework
It doesn’t take much more than access to the internet to help improve your fundraising expertise.

With so many resources available to help your group further develop its fundraising skills there should be no excuse for you to lag behind and stick to the same old boring fundraisers.

Have you checked out the material available on the internet, your local library, or in the bookshop?

5. Lacking goals
Being a not-for-profit group without any fundraising goals is like being a hiker without a map– you might move forward, but you have no idea where you’ll end up or how long it’ll take you to get there.

Successful fundraising relies on tight monitoring at all stages, which involves having fixed goals and strategies that can be assessed, achieved, or modified.

6. Sending out one-size-fits-all requests
Sending out a one-size-fits-all request for donations can be a recipe for a fundraising flop. Identify the particular details and interests of whoever you’re approaching (see point three above) and home in on them.

For instance, a business and an individual will need separate donation requests. Personalise your pitches to the prospective donors who will receive them. Concentrate on the areas where their values and yours meet.

7. Not applying for grants
Around $80 billion in grants is given out each year in Australia – but so many groups miss out on getting their share.

Identify six to seven key grants each year and get the dates on your calendar so you don’t miss the submission deadline.

Also spend some quality time doing your homework in the Funding Centre’s Grants Help Centre.

8. Not building relationships
Once a supporter makes a donation to your group it is important to build a relationship with them – if you don’t treat your donors well they’ll either end the relationship as a one-off donor, or they’ll find someone else to support.

As a rule, the bigger the donor, the more fuss you should make over them. By building significant, lasting relationships, a supporter can go from being a once-off donor to someone who makes multiple pledges year after year.

Building this relationship is a matter of not only valuing their contribution, but reinforcing how their donations are used for the benefit of the community – and what else you could do with more resources.

9. Not embracing change
Having the same event year after year can be effective, but if it is failing to grow in income or participants it should be time to re-evaluate.

If an event has become stagnant don’t be scared to reinvigorate it with some slight changes, or try something completely different to help build some excitement around the event.

10. Forgetting your manners
Manners will get you everywhere in the world.

Your donors are not being forced to give you anything, so when they do you’d better thank them. Send your thank you emails or letters promptly, and where possible ensure that they are individually specific, and preferably hand signed.

For big donations send a hand-written note and think about inviting the donor to an event – this might encourage them to give another donation in the future.

No matter how much was given, make the donor feel good about their donation. Make them believe that they have entered into a rewarding relationship with a group that appreciates them.

Say thank you because it's the right thing to do, and because donors who feel valued are much more likely to donate again.

Lots of fundraisers get worried about making fundraising asks… they’re not sure the best way to do it, they feel under-prepared for making in-person asks, and they get nervous when it comes time to “pop the question.”

Making asks in-person (and on the phone) is one of the most valuable skills any non-profit fundraiser can possess… and nothing moves a non-profit forward like sitting down with your donors to ask them for major gifts to your organization.

If you’re not quite sure whether or not you are making the best asks possible… or you get nervous whenever you have to make an ask… here’s a quick, 5 minute guide to making better fundraising asks:

Always Ask a Question
If there’s one change you can make to your asking strategy that will have the most impact, this is it. Far too many fundraisers “make asks” without every really asking a question.

Have you ever found yourself making statements instead of asks? If you say things like, “I really hope you’ll consider making a gift to our organization,” or, “Please think about making a donation, we could really use your help,” then you are not making asks, you are making statements.

In order to be effective, asks need to be questions. After you make an ask, the donor should feel like he or she needs to respond with “yes” or “no.” If you’ve gotten into the habit of making statements, instead of asking a real, honest to goodness question, making this change could double the number of donations your organization receives through in-person asks.

Always Give a Number
A second key component of making strong fundraising asks is always giving a number. This means that when you make an ask, you should be asking for a set amount… an actual dollar amount.

Far too many fundraisers will ask a question like, “Would you be able to make a donation to our organization today?” This is good, because it is a question (not a statement) but because you aren’t asking for a set amount, chances are that when donors say yes they will end up donating far less than you had hoped.

Instead, say something like, “Would you be able to make a $5,000 gift to our organization?” This is a strong ask, and offers a suggested giving amount that is in line with your goals for the meeting.

How much should you ask for? That depends on your non-profit and what you know about the donor and his or her financial capacity. 

Stop Talking After Your Ask
Here’s a little secret from the business world: after you make your ask, stop talking. Don’t say a word. Let the donor be the next person to speak.

In fundraising, as in sales, the next person to talk after the ask usually “loses.” This means that if the donor is the next person to talk, they will usually say “yes,” even if it is to a lower amount or to making a gift over time. If the fundraiser is the next person to talk, they will usually start talking themselves out of a gift by backpedaling on the ask.

Remember – when a donor doesn’t immediately say something after an ask, it isn’t because they are mad or trying to squirm out of it. As a rule, they are almost always thinking about a way to say “yes.” They are thinking about whether they can afford the gift, whether or not they need to check with their spouse or business partner, where the money will come from, etc.

After you make your ask, stop talking, even if it seems uncomfortable, and let the donor think and answer.

Practice, Practice, Practice
My final tip is that if you feel nervous when making asks in-person or on the phone, the best way to get more comfortable is to practice. This means running through ask conversations in your head, practicing in front of a mirror, and holding practice conversations with your friends or other staff members.

Consistent practice is the only way to get comfortable with making asks.

Website: https://verifer.io/

Industry: KYC, AML, PEP and compliance verifications

Stage (idea, ready business, pre-startup, etc): Ready business with turnover of approx. 5 million usd . in 2018

Type of investment, proposed share for investors:

Needed amount: hard cap 6 million usd. / soft cap 720.000 usd reached.

https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/verifer-io

Token Details:

1 IOTW = USD0.055

Total IOTW supply : 2.56 billion

Hard Cap : USD20 million, unsold tokens are burnt.

Private sales Bonus : 25%

Check out more details here: https://iotw.io/


https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/iotw-a-highly-scalable-blockchain

Fundseeker's presentation: H Education World ICO

Website: http://www.h-education.world/

Industry: Education

Stage (idea, ready business, pre-startup, etc): Live Testing (Fully Functional by 13th Jan. 2019)

Type of investment: Token Sale at preferential prices

Needed amount: 1000000 USD

https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/h-education-world-ico

Every entrepreneur is under the impression that he or she has the best idea for a business — nobody has ever come up with something so clever, so appealing, so needed. But there’s a big gap between coming up with a great idea and executing on it successfully.

In fact, the failure rate of new businesses in the U.S. is downright demoralizing: About half of all startups fail within five years, and roughly 20 percent don’t even make it a year.

One of the biggest factors in stumbling and falling is scaling too quickly. Entrepreneurs’ perspective of where the market could grow often doesn’t line up with where the market currently is, fueling moves and investments that are premature — and may not pan out.

BOOSTING YOUR CHANCES OF SUCCESS
So what can you do to increase your company’s staying power? For starters, hiring a diverse team has been shown to be a big indicator of success. That’s because having a variety of perspectives and backgrounds on your team can ensure you’re seeing the big picture, not simply what you’re familiar with or naturally attuned to.

Financial acumen is also a strength many successful founders share. The simple truth is that if a business owner doesn’t know how to manage money, it really doesn’t matter how much he or she makes — it won’t last long. Learning about balance sheets, P&L statements, payroll, and business taxes is essential for running a successful business; gaining a basic understanding of how business credit scores are earned, as well as how valuations are achieved, can be vital to earning funding.

But that’s not all your business needs to have a fighting chance — here are three other things you need to have locked down before your startup can grow.

1. DEEP KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR MARKET
Entrepreneurs enamored with their own ideas can really get into the nitty-gritty of their offerings, knowing every color, size, or customization possible and carrying a laundry list of use cases. But knowing everything about your own product or service just means you’re an expert on what you do — you also need to become an expert on what the market’s doing and what your competitors are doing.

“While some entrepreneurs occasionally switch industries and find success, venture capitalists are more inclined to fund a founder or team who has worked in a specific industry for years,” explains Promod Haque, senior managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners, a venture capital and growth equity investment firm. “Founders with deep domain expertise in a particular field are typically more aware of customer needs, market opportunity, and the competitive landscape, which makes them more credible to investors.”

2. A VISION THAT DARES
When things get tough (and they will), the entrepreneurs who manage to make it through to the other side are the ones who have a deep passion for what they do, a vision of what they want — and a map for how they’ll get there. Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart, and it takes true dedication to a mission to make the ups and downs worthwhile.

“Vision is the vital energy that drives the entrepreneur, the founder, the co-founder, and his immediate team. Vision is what makes them dare: dare to explore, dare to challenge, dare to insist, dare to keep pushing, dare to have the determination to succeed,” says Juan Jose de la Torre, IBM’s digital transformation leader for the Middle East and Africa. “And vision is what creates and establishes the culture, which is the key component that gets softly shared between people creating and establishing norms.”

3. DATA THAT MAKES THE CASE FOR YOUR BUSINESS
To earn VC funding, partnerships, or any other type of investment, you have to be able to show others that the market is as eager to see you succeed as you are. Establishing how much interest there is for your offering — as well as how much people would pay for it, how long they need your product or service, and how you might build upon your initial relationship with customers — can tip an investor’s assessment from “interesting” to “necessary.”

Surveys, studies, and focus groups are all good ways to gather this data, but personalized conversations with people who’ve already bought into your concept can also yield great information. “Even if I went into a client and said this is not fully vetted yet, but I’d like your insight, they were always honored to have a first look,” says Anisa Telwar Kaicker, founder and CEO of Anisa International, a maker of applicators for high-end makeup brands like Laura Mercier and Estée Lauder. Their comments were valuable because “they would be the ones buying the product,” she adds.

Having a great idea is the first step to startup success, but it can’t be the entire foundation. Invest in establishing a true vision for your business, learning about the market, and proving there’s demand for your idea. Without these things, you can’t succeed, but with them, you just might.


https://www.investorlegends.com/blog/3-things-you-need-for-a-successful-startup

I was glad to be asked about common mistakes with financial projections. I read about 100 business plans a year for angel investment and business plan competitions. Most show unrealistic profitability. More people doing business plans should realize that most startups are unprofitable at the beginning; and that high growth correlates with losses, not profits. High projected profits indicate lack of understanding, not reasonable expectations of profitability.

Profitability mistakes

1. The most common mistake is with profitability. Most of the business plans I see project profits too high, or profits too early. In the real world, startups choose growth or profits, not both. The plans I see are aiming at angel investment. And for that, the investors win on growth, not profitability. Think about it: If a startup is profitable early on, it doesn’t need investors.

2. The second most common mistake is underestimated marketing expenses. Many successful tech businesses, especially software and web businesses, spend 30% or more of sales on marketing.

3. Don’t underestimate development expenses, testing, certifications, and expenses of regulations.

4. If you are selling physical products, don’t underestimate the impact of selling through channels, as distributors and retailers take their margins and often demand admin and co-promotion expenses. And distributors often pay very slowly, like six months or so after receiving the goods.

5. Never project sales by applying a small percentage to a large market. That doesn’t work. Nobody gets half a percent of a $10 billion market. Instead, sales forecasts should be built on drivers as assumptions. Drivers might be web visits and conversions, emails sent, paid search terms, or, for physical products, channel assumptions such as distributors, chains, stores, and sales per store.

6. Don’t project big growth in sales with only small increases in headcount. If you are going to sell $100 million in the fifth year, get a clue: you won’t do that with only $2 million in employee expenses. Divide your projected sales by your headcount, and compare that to industry benchmarks. For most industries, $250,000 per employee is really good. If you are getting $2 million per employee, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be that efficient. It means you don’t understand the business.

Cash flow mistakes

7. Having a profit doesn’t mean you’ll have cash in the bank. Good startup financial projections need to include cash flow. Always. For more on that, see points 4, 6.

8. Another very common mistake affects cash flow. Businesses selling to businesses (B2B) normally sell on account. A sale generates not money directly, but money owed, to be paid later, which goes on the balance sheet as Accounts Receivable, or AR. Every dollar in AR is a dollar that shows up as sales in the P&L but not in cash.

9. Many plans underestimate the length of the sales cycle and expenses related to selling directly to enterprises.

10. Many plans underestimate the cash flow affect of inventory. Every dollar in inventory is a dollar that hasn’t yet shown up in the P&L but may have already affected cash balances.


https://www.investorlegends.com/blog/10-common-mistakes-with-startup-financial-projections

Company name: Blockwei

Website: https://www.blockwei.live

Industry: Recruitment, Blockchain

Stage (idea, ready business, pre-startup, etc): Idea (Token Crowdfunding)

Needed amount: 500 ETH softcap / 2000 ETH Hardcap

https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/blockwei-hiring-platform-on-blockchain

Beverage.Cash project

– wine and craft alcohol trading platform with integrated social ecosystem and counterfeit protection.

Presently there are two main problems in beverage industry:

 
Counterfeit and product information

According to the industry’s experts, fake wines now account for 20% of global wine sales and the same applies to other alcoholic beverages. As the demand for wine is rising in emerging markets, wine businesses and consumers have become major victims of wine fraud crimes.

Another problem mentioned above is the product information. The labels used by manufacturers nowadays do not satisfy most of the consumers in terms of the information provided. Bearing in mind the widespread concern about health and thus the ingredients used in wine and other alcohol beverages production, the consumers want to make an informed decision when buying the products

We propose to solve both problems with one solution by using of RFID/QR/NFC tags and blockchain technologies.

WEBSITE:  https://beverage.cash/

https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/beverage-cash

Name: AmaStar

Website: https://ico.amastar.net

Industry: Adult

Stage (idea, ready business, pre-startup, etc): Preparing MVP, PRE-ICO

Bonus: 20% bonus

Needed amount: 500 000 $ as softcap , 5 500 000 $ as the goal

https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/amastar-earn-for-porn

Name: Secure Crypto Payments (SEC)

Website: https://securecrypto.me

Industry: Fintech

Stage (idea, ready business, pre-startup, etc): Ready MVP (integrated on few sites) & ICO (Initial Coin Offering, Fundraising event)

Bonus: 25% bonus

Needed amount: 18,150 ETH as softcap , 64,000 ETH as the goal

https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/sec-ico-paypal-for-cryptos

My favorite five secrets of a great business team? This list came to me first as an answer to the question how do you build a great business team on Quora. These five points aren’t something from the business school curriculum. They come from the experience of actually doing it, recruiting a team and growing a business from zero to millions.

MY LIST
1. No skill or experience justifies lack of integrity. You need to trust the people you work with, and particularly, the people who become key team members to build on.

2. Diversity makes better businesses. Not for fake political reasons, but for real business reasons. Teams of different kinds of people – gender, background, ethnicity, and so forth – have broader vision than teams of people who are all the same. Diversity has been given a bad name by bigots. It’s not just morally correct, it’s also better business.

WHAT DIVERSITY DOES AND DOESN’T MEAN.
3. Different skills and experience. You don’t want all developers or all marketers, you want developers, marketers, administrators, producers, leaders, and so forth. I see student groups that are three and four people who share the same major; that rarely works.

4. Shared values create strong bonds. Palo Alto Software was built by a team that shared my founder values about good business planning, startups, and small business. Jurlique was built by a team that shared founder values about cosmetics with only natural organic ingredients not tested on animals. And don’t confuse shared values with diverse types of people, skills and backgrounds. They are compatible, not contradictory, ideas.

AVOID THE ALL-C-LEVEL-OFFICERS TEAM
5. Beware of title inflation. Having the first four people all have C-level titles is usually a sign of youth and lack of experience. In the real world, founders are rarely all fit to be C-level officers for the long term. I recommend vague non-committal titles in the beginning, like “head of tech,” “marketing lead,” and so forth. Leave room to recruit stars later on, as needed, with the big titles.


https://www.investorlegends.com/blog/5-secrets-of-creating-a-great-business-team

Startup myth: The one about founders having to work for free to impress angel investors. This supposedly shows passion. Don’t believe it. Investors want people committed to working their startups, and that usually takes getting them paid. I’ve been getting a lot of upvotes on my answer to this question in Quora:

How do entrepreneurs live without a salary to sustain their families and pay bills?

MY ANSWER
That startup founders are supposed to work for free, and that investors want them to work for free, even as there is capital to work with. That’s just a myth. IMO.

As an entrepreneur, I built a business and supported my family at the same time by continuing to consult in the same field I was developing software for. That’s not unusual. I did not have the luxury of not making an income. When I started Palo Alto Software, we already had four kids and a mortgage. Not making money was not an option.

So that was a lot of work. It was hard. But it’s what really happens most of the time … entrepreneurs do a lot of work on the side, in between, to build their business without the luxury of working full time for free.

As an angel investor, I expect founders to work without formal compensation only during the very earliest phases, because they have to. I expect that to be temporary. And when I invest in them, I want there to be enough money to pay them. I don’t believe startup founders working for free is a sustainable idea as they grow a business. People have lives. They need money.

I don’t like it when founders promise to work for free over any extended period. It doesn’t work. They burn out. They need jobs and income so they quit.


https://www.investorlegends.com/blog/pervasive-startup-myth-dont-work-for-free

Cryptomarketcloud https://cryptomarketcloud.com/

Platform , Blockchain, Exchange

Private Sale round 25% Bonus

STO/ICO Shares in the company

No Soft cap, hard cap 64,000 ETH

https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/crypto-market-cloud-self-contained-ecosystem-sto-ico

Name: mHealthCoin (MHEC)

Website: https://mHealthCoin.io

Industry: Healthcare

Stage (idea, ready business, pre-startup, etc): ICO (Initial Coin Offering, Crowdsale Stage)

Bonus: 10% referral bonus in terms of mHealthCoin

Needed amount: 4,000 ETH or equivalent value as softcap , USD 25m as the goal

https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/mhealthcoin-ico-new-highway-to-health-and-prosperous

Company name: Hiway

Website: https://hiway.io

Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Industry: Marketplace / Freelance

Development Stage: Prototype

Type of investment: Seed Funding

Proposed share for investors: 10%

Needed amount: $500,000


https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/hiway-connecting-the-blockchain-skilled-workforce-to-the-companies-of-the-future

Company name: iLINK

Location: Singapore

Industry: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, E-Commerce, E-Commerce Platforms, FinTech, Mobile Apps, Mobile Payments, Private Social Networking, Social Network

Stage: Pre-Public Sale of Community Based Creation(CBC) Token

2 Billion Total Supply, 1 billion in Ethereum blockchain and 1 billion in NEO blockchain.

Target Hardcap 50,000,000 USD

Distributed in the TGE: 59%

Website: https://cbc.ilink.network


https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/ilink-cbc-geosocial-hyperlocal-social-commerce-ecosystem

How do you find venture funding? I have to start with a major negative: if you have to ask if your startup can get venture capital, then it almost certainly can’t. Venture capital is a very rarified atmosphere of high-end startups and emerging businesses with experienced management teams, high potential growth, secret sauce, and so on.

People without track records don’t get venture capital. Business that don’t look like they can grow extremely fast and to an extremely large size don’t get venture capital. Service businesses don’t get venture capital.

So before you read these tips, first understand the difference between venture capital and angel investment and then you can add in 5 essentials for angel investment. And keep in mind, as you read the second article, that venture capital demands everything that angel investors do—and more. And, most venture capital wants to invest larger amounts in later-stage startups.

Are you still with me? Good. Here are my 10 tips (oh, and by the way, I did raise venture capital for Palo Alto Software at one point, and I’ve been a consultant to venture capital for 35 years).

1. Don’t say venture capital when you mean angel investment, or friends and family. Many people do that. Venture capital is a subset of outside investment, and the hardest to get. If you have to ask whether your startup is a venture capital candidate, then it probably isn’t.

2. Don’t do anything in bulk. Avoid email templates like the plague. Don’t think for a minute that any serious investor would ever read a summary memo, or watch a pitch, much less read a business plan, when it looks like it’s being sent in bulk to multiple investors. That idea dates back to the 1980s when people imagined that VCs were looking at business plans coming in unsolicited. Actually, they weren’t, but sometimes they pretended they were. Not anymore.

3. Do your research first. Identify a select few VC firms that invest the amount you need, in your industry, at your stage of development, in your region. Venture capital firms each have their unique interests, identities, and personalities. They have preferences about where they invest, at what stage, and what amounts. Most of them have websites, and most of the websites announce their preferences. They don’t want to deal with people who aren’t in their category and don’t know it. They expect you to know.

The National Venture Capital Association website is a wealth of information. It has general information about venture capital, advice, statistics, book lists, and even a listing of regional venture capital associations. You can also search the web for local leads (search “venture capital [your location]” ) and industry-specific leads (search “venture capital [your business type]” ).

4. Forget the businesses that prey on hopeful entrepreneurs by selling databases and leads and such. Those contacts are already rubbed raw by unsolicited emails and phone calls. It doesn’t work that way; it has to be one at a time.

Furthermore, on a related subject, those businesses that take your money with the pretense that VCs will browse your summary and find you are cheating you. The deals chase the money; the money doesn’t chase the deals.

5. Approach a select few target VC firms only one at a time, carefully. Be patient. Look first for introductions by checking out people you know who might know them, alumni relationships, business associations, their public speaking dates, any contacts in the companies in which they’ve already invested. Don’t be afraid to submit using their website form or call their switchboards, but keep that as a last resort. Your chances are way better if you fit their normal profile and you’ve been able to meet one of the partners, or get an introduction from somebody they know.

6. Have an extremely good tag line and instant summary. Start with the elevator pitch and get the key points down, but the theoretical 60 seconds of the classic elevator pitch is too much. You need to be able to describe your business in a sentence or two and that sentence has to be intriguing. People have had success with “the [some well-known business] of [some new business area].” For example, Alibaba was called “The Amazon.com of China.” I ran into a company calling itself “the Netflix of kids’ toys,” and with that, the idea was instantly clear.

7. Have an extremely good quick video or a one-page summary, and send that as the follow-on email when you talk with a VC or get an introduction. Expect the real information exchange to happen in email. The expected follow up to that quick three sentences is a summary, in email. These days a great video works better than an email summary. Keep it secure, not public, and a simple password system like Vimeo or one of its competitors is best. The YouTube email-based permissions are risky because everybody has too many email addresses these days, and confusion is risky. Make it seamless. And I like the liveplan pitch too, but I also have to disclose, as I write that, that I’m biased. I have an interest in LivePlan.

8. If your summary video—or summary memo—works, then the next step is a pitch. In practice, what happens is there is a contact, you send the follow-up video or summary, and then you wait, anxiously, to be invited to pitch. The pitch is a slide deck, yes, but that’s not what matters; it’s the VCs chance to meet you, check you out, see your team, and hear your story. There’s a lot about the pitches on this website. Check this out. Still, don’t think success or failure depends on the pitch. It doesn’t. It depends on the story, the credibility, and the VCs assessment of your future prospects.

9. Have a business plan ready before you finish the summary or the pitch. The business plan is the screenplay, the pitch is the movie. Don’t do the plan too big or too formal because it’s not going to last and should never be older than two to four weeks.

Don’t swallow the myth about investors not reading your plan. The truth at the core of that myth is that investors will reject your business without reading your plan. But they won’t invest in it without reading the plan. No business gets money without going through rigorous study and examination first (they call that “due diligence”) and the plan is the active document for the due diligence. Although, for the record, there are some exceptions. When a well-known successful entrepreneur, the people we read about in the headlines, takes a new business to VCs those people will often get the investment without the same due diligence. VCs do compete for those deals. And unfortunately, those people, the stars, will then tell the rest of us that investors don’t read plans.

10. Expect the process to take way longer than you think it will. Due diligence alone will be several months of unending request for more documentation. When VCs say yes they really mean maybe, and when they say maybe they really mean no.

11. (Bonus tip) Never EVER spend investment money before the check clears the bank. Deals fall through all the time.

12. (The most important tip in the entire list, even though I put it last) Choose an investor like you’d choose a spouse.

So that’s my advice.



https://www.investorlegends.com/blog/10-tips-for-finding-venture-funding

Why Angels Are Moving Online

Recently, some accredited angel investors have begun moving their investment activity from angel groups, like the Northcoast Angel Fund, to online platforms, like SeedInvest. This decision got me thinking: Will online angel platforms ultimately replace angel groups?

While I don’t think the online sites will drive angel groups out of business the way that digital cameras replaced chemical-film ones, the web platforms will take a sizable number of angels away from groups. Angel groups are better for the very entrepreneurially experienced, active investors who are writing big checks. But the platforms are a superior choice for less entrepreneurially experienced, less-active investors who are deploying smaller amounts of money.

Here are three reasons why:

SUCCESSFUL INVESTING THROUGH AN ANGEL GROUP TAKES A LOT OF TIME.
Investment success depends on active involvement in screening deals, conducting due diligence, and monitoring investments. Few people have that kind of time. Even experienced and successful angel investors are reallocating chunks of their angel investment portfolios to curated angel platforms because they simply don’t have enough hours to do all the screening and due diligence it takes to make money investing actively through angel groups.

FEW ANGEL GROUPS HAVE ENOUGH SUCCESSFUL ANGELS TO FOLLOW.
A few people make outsized returns at angel investing, while most don’t make any money. This distribution of returns creates a dilemma for people who can’t, or won’t, rely on their own judgment.

If you are going to depend on someone else to screen deals, conduct due diligence, and monitor investments for you, as some angel group members do, then you need to follow someone who knows what they are doing. For members of Tech Coast Angels, Band of Angels, or other longstanding angel group with lots of past exits, that’s not a problem. But at many of the angel groups that have been formed in the past decade, less active members are following group managers or active investors who don’t have a successful track record. Those less active investors are probably better off looking on SeedInvest for the companies that Brad Feld, Jason Calacanis,, or David S. Rose are backing, than following someone local who hasn’t got the track record of identifying companies that have exited successfully in the past.

ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME DEALS AREN’T AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS OF MOST ANGEL GROUPS.
Angel groups don’t see many of the really great start-up investment opportunities because those new companies are disproportionately found in places like San Francisco, Boston, and New York. Take unicorns as an example. There aren’t any in Cleveland or Pittsburgh. That means that for angels in most parts of the country the probability of making a seed stage investment in the next unicorn is higher on an angel platform than through a local angel group.

For active angels with a lot of time and entrepreneurial experience, sticking with the angel-group model makes a lot of sense. Group investors are making more informed decisions about opportunities than platform investors because they are meeting the founders face-to-face, conducting due diligence directly, and negotiating their own terms.

But for less experienced and more passive angels who are writing checks too small to get themselves a board seat, migrating to the platforms makes sense. With a platform, the investor can make better use of his or her time, get access to better deal flow, and can more easily follow expert angels.

Angel platforms will not replace angel groups anytime soon. But many inexperienced angels, and angels with little time and limited capital, will move from groups to online platforms. Because those angels make up a large portion of the people who joined angel groups over the past decade, online platforms will change the accredited angel investment model.



https://www.investorlegends.com/blog/why-angels-are-moving-online

Website:

http://www.blockestates.io

Industry:

-Real Estate (Investment & Management)
-Technology (Blockchain)

Stage (idea, ready business, pre-startup, etc):
Startup stage.

Needed amount:

-Equity Investment: USD$550,000 - USD$1,100,000.
-Security Token Issue: The final amount will depend on the assets that are ultimately secured.


https://www.investorlegends.com/forum/topic/block-estates-the-intersection-of-real-estate-blockchain-technology