Archive for February, 2008

Founder get Founder campaign launch !

Posted by john in Finance Dept, angel investing on February 19th, 2008

Investissement Quebec is piling a lot of money into promoting the benefits of succession planning recently and whilst not directly relevant to our area of interest (start-up’s) there is a mutually important economic message:

Get the money into the hands of the next generation of guardians in a timely, smooth manner !

I mentioned in a previous post that MSU had been described as "…an agency that encourages successful entrepreneurs to become angel investors." We see this as one of the best forms of  succession planning possible and will continue to strongly encourage it ,but there are other variations on this theme.

Just recently David Crow, originally from Austin, Tx but now living near the beautiful shores of Lake Ontario blogged about how in thriving markets successful companies seem to spawn founders of new companies.

So para-phrasing a question he asks "Where are the Montreal companies that spawn founders ?"

I wasn’t in Montreal to remember the heady days of Softimage, but that’s still the company most people seem to refer to when this subject is discussed locally – and according to the NY Times, that happened in 1994 !

My limited digging around has also shown that Dialogic has spawned a few other founders, as has Telesystem, Mamma.com, E-Fundraising , Zero Knowledge/Radialpoint and AskMen.com but I would be really interested to hear of other successful Montreal companies that have gone on to spawn a new set of founders.

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We’re in stealth mode!

Posted by john in Marketing Dept on February 17th, 2008

Anyone one who knows us well may have wondered why our friend Roberto Rocha described MSU in yesterday’s Montreal Gazette as:

"…an agency that encourages successful entrepreneurs to become angel investors."

Whilst this is accurate (and provides material for another blog post, to come shortly), it’s not the full story … because we are in stealth mode !

For those who didn’t catch the post on companies in stealth mode, you will know that I think operating in stealth mode means 1 of 3 things:

  • You haven’t quite worked out what your doing.
  • You think your idea is so amazingly great and original that if anyone heard about it they would immediately drop what they are doing and do the same.
  • Your project needs hype to have an impact and you don’t want to water down your marketing impact when you actually do launch.

One of the above is correct and when we come out of stealth mode we will take a vote on which one of the above our readers think is correct!

(If you do know what we are up to you are probably one of our "insiders" – so keep it to yourself as we don’t want break our stealth mode quite yet!)

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The long or short of pitching angel investors

Posted by john in Reseau Anges Quebec, Standout Jobs, angel investing, cozimo, startup, xtranormal on February 16th, 2008

Standout Jobs, Cozimo and Xtranormal have recently been pitching their businesses at DEMO. These pitches were all well received by the audience – and one of the key reasons for that is that they were prepared specifically  for that audience. In other words, to deliver a good pitch it is essential to understand the motivation and objectives of your audience.

Knowing your audience is also important when it comes to pitching potential investors. Some time ago Brad Feld published a list of questions that a pitch to a VC should address. We have developed a set of questions that we think are more applicable to pitching angel investors:

  • Set the scene – Explain why the space your business operates in is interesting to you and should be interesting to an investor.
  • What is your vision for the business? How will you be perceived?
  • What is the need you are trying to fulfill? Who specifically has this need? What is the intensity of demand? ( ie are potential customers/users willing to invest time or money to satiate the need?)
  • How many potential customers/users have this need ? (ie How big is the market?)
  • What is your offering? How does it fulfill the need of your potential customers/users? What stage is it at (idea, beta, in production)?
  • What are you competing against? What differentiates your offering from others and why does it matter to your users / customers?
  • How do you generate revenue?
  • What is your strategy for attracting and retaining customers / users?
  • What relevant experience or insight does your team have for executing this strategy?                       
  • In addition to money, what other resources are you lacking right now? (e.g. key hires, key relationships, etc)
  • How will this investment fit in with the overall financial plan of the company? (e.g.Enough funds until profitability (no further investment anticipated) or Interim financing round (how long will this funding last))
  • What business milestones will this investment enable you to reach? Why are these milestones significant? What key perfomance indicators can you use to track progress towards the milestones?
  • Are there any other material matters ? e.g. Outstanding debts, important contracts, specific timing requirements for an investment etc.

Whilst some of these questions might appear to invite broad sweeping answers – that is not the idea. Be tight, be concise and debate each question thoroughly before you answer it.

We will continue to refine these questions based on feedback from entrepreneurs, Reseau Anges Quebec and NAOQ.

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