Saturday, February 24, 2007

Ben's presentation on VC Funding at FOWA

Ryan Carson and many others were real fans of Ben's presentation on VC funding at FOWA - even one of the Slideshare founders loved it :)

So thanks to Ben, here it is:



There's no doubt the process of getting funding (from anyone, let alone VCs) can be pretty complicated and nontransparent, but this is a great presentation which really cuts to the chase and explains the basics.

Fred Destin and Nic Brisbourne in the UK and Brad Feld, David Hornick and Fred Wilson in the US also do a great job on their blogs of making VC more accessible. There is also a new resource worth checking out calling Startupping.

Having been an entrepreneur who raised money from VCs at Firefly and Lovefilm and an angel investor backing entrepreneurs (Spotrunner, Daylife, Moo, Mindcandy etc) in both the US and Europe and now that I'm working with a VC firm, I completely agree with Ben's view that VC funding may not right for every business but where it makes sense it can make a big difference.

If you have any questions on funding, please post comments and if I know I'll answer and if not I'll try get you answers. If you're an entrepreneur in London come along to an OpenCoffee club or start one locally and try persuade your local VCs to come along and see what they're missing :)

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4 Comments:

At 2/26/2007 09:59:00 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Saul, I have been reading your blog and just linked you on my blogroll...thanks for some great posts.
Re. your recent comments on resources available for Entrepreneurs (esp. basic questions/ FAQs related to funding etc), this category of posts on my blog may also be useful: http://global-themes.com/category/faqs-for-entrepreneurs/

 
At 2/26/2007 02:14:00 pm, Blogger dherman76 said...

Great presentation. This is extremely thorough and could be a great resource to many entrepreneurs.

 
At 2/26/2007 07:53:00 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Saul. This was a very open and informative presentation. I've been through several rounds of funding as an entrepreneur and never seen the issues so concisely explained.

It was refreshing to be told so openly that raising VC makes the outcome for the entrepreneur quite binary i.e. make a ton of money for everyone or [probably] get nothing yourself. Do you have any thoughts on the concept of founders selling some stock during a fundraising to create greater alignment with the investors?

It was also interesting to see reverse vesting raised as this is one issue that is generally buried until late in a deal. The "but I already own the stock" moment.

Thank you to Ben and Index for communicating so openly.

 
At 9/21/2007 11:28:00 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for your nice post!

 

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