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If You Have Ever Been Rejected, These Are The Investors Every Entrepreneur Should Be Pitching Right Now

A few years ago, I quit my day job to pursue my start-up dreams. Early on, I pitched over 100 VC firms with my idea for a software start-up. I created a pitch deck and a business plan. And I got a dozen meetings! Unfortunately, those meetings were about all I got out of it, and they didn’t go well at all. I was shot down at every turn: “We don’t invest in people. We invest in teams. You need more people on the team than just you.” “The idea is promising, but you need more customers to validate that the product provides value.” “We prefer to invest in businesses with a recurring revenue model.” “The product needs to be defensible. What’s the barrier to entry?”  The rejection letters were even worse. Here were people who hadn’t even given me an opportunity to present to them and answer their questions, pointing to seemingly every reason under the sun why my idea wouldn’t work. The first smackdown I received came courtesy of a guy at Bain Capital (Mitt Romney’s company), w...
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ATRION CAPITAL SEEKS TO DIVERSIFY PORTFOLIO GLOBALLY

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Nearly two-thirds of businesses have yet to do any risk assessment of a no-deal outcome in the  Brexit  negotiations as “Brexit fatigue” sets in, the British Chambers of Commerce has found. With six months to go until the UK leaves the EU, the BCC said many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) were “either awaiting more clarity before they act or are suffering from Brexit fatigue and have switched off from the process because they don’t believe they will be affected”.   Yes we must take back control, not from Brussels – from Whitehall Simon Jenkins   Read more Adam Marshall, the director general of the BCC, said: “Too many businesses across the UK are still not ready for Brexit. Many smaller firms don’t have the capacity to scenario plan, don’t think they’ll be affected or have simply switched off from the process altogether.” Atrion Capital has privately announced plans to  increase investment in companies across Europe, Asia, Af...
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This VC Went From Representing big businesses to Funding Women- and Minority-Led Startups

When Emily  was 22 years old, a woman gave her the chance to interview for a job that required 20 years of experience, even though she had zero. It was a senior executive ad sales job .  This was back in the 90s, during the color-printed national newspaper’s heyday. Emily was already at the paper to interview for a lower-ranking job, but when she heard about the ad sales exec opening, she blurted, “Oh my god, I want that job!” The VP interviewing her (a woman) laughed, but Emily doubled down, “No, I really want that job.” The VP realized she was serious. “Just because you had the audacity to ask me for this,” the VP told her, “I know you'll go out here and ask the clients for everything that you need.” At the time, the 22-year-old had a 3-year-old toddler of her own and was caring for her father’s two preteen children after his passing the year prior. She was just about to finish college, against all odds, as a teen mom who’d grown up in low-income housing. She t...
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The Recession Is Coming: How to Set Up Your Company for Survival

To hear it from reporters covering the  venture capital scene , startups are swimming in VC loot a la Scrooge McDuck.  Numbers from Crunchbase  claim that global VC money in the first quarter of 2018 beat the previous highs from 2017, bringing the market to its highest peak since the dot-com crash. Impressive -- but those numbers don’t tell the whole story. The Q1 report looked great, but the  Q2 report  is even dreamier, as deal and dollar volume continued to grow after Q1. That might not be as great as it sounds, though. Sure, $100 billion funds,  $14 billion funding rounds  and  billion-dollar scooter companies  are cool, but things are starting to feel a little bubbly. Shortly before the dot-com bubble popped, US VC peaked in Q2 of 2000. During those months, investors ponied up about  $30 billion . Last quarter’s  $23 billion  inched the market one step closer to previous highs that  proved unsustainable...
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ANDREESSEN HOROWITZ LENDS CREDENCE TO CRYPTO WITH NEW FUND

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Venture capital firm  Andreessen Horowitz  is bringing in a former federal prosecutor, Katie Haun, as its first female general partner to help manage a new $300 million fund—a fund dedicated to investing in  cryptocurrency  and blockchain-related efforts. Andreessen Horowitz has long invested in cryptocurrency firms, including the digital-wallet company  Coinbase  and the gamemaker  Cryptokitties . But in addition to signaling its commitment to the technology, general partner Chris Dixon says that creating a fund will give the firm more flexibility to make different types of investments. The new fund will invest not just in traditional equities, but in digital tokens as well. In other words, it will invest not just in companies but in the cryptocurrencies created by those companies. An Andreessen Horowitz spokesperson said investors in the fund are among the firm’s usual investors. Haun got her start in cryptocurrency by investigating two of its b...
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WHERE VC'S WILL INVEST IN 2018: BLOCKCHAIN, AI, VOICE, PETS

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VENTURE CAPITAL ISN’T  a monolith, but startup investors are compared to lemmings for a reason. Once a trend gets hot, every firm needs to make a play, or come up with a good excuse for missing out. (To be safe, if the firm does miss a trend, its partners should privately trash talk it to anyone who will listen.) Investors continue to aggressively pour money into startups. As of the third quarter, US investors were on track to match or exceed 2016’s $69 billion in investments, according to the National Venture Capital Association and Pitchbook. For startups, riding a trend such as artificial intelligence can be the difference between a hot round of funding and no investor interest. Founders have spent the last year throwing terms like  blockchain , neural network, and machine learning into their pitch decks in hopes of attracting investment. Those trends show no signs of slowing in 2018. To those, we’ve added other themes that investors will be tracking in the new year. ...
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