So, I’ve got to that time in any investors life where I have to make a fundamental decision. With ever increasing regularity, I get offered investment opportunities which compete with my existing portfolio. On the occasional times its happened before, I have declined the investment. However as time goes on, this causes my options to […]
So, I’ve been in quite serious investment negotiation with a startup that I had previously mentored. They are doing well and are looking for an additional investment round to fund growth. While competent with their own business and market, the primary founder is a little lacking in general business experience, so I have to date […]
A theme repeated now several times during my mentoring sessions, is the misunderstanding of what legal advice is or should be. The first time this happened, was about a year ago, when a promising startup asked for my advice on how to offer share options to new employees. Now any startup with some traction has […]
I realised that I had discussed company valuations several times, but had not explored or discussed the most common mistake that many startups make, the cliched “My startup is worth £1M” Here are a few compelling reasons why you’re not: 1. As mentioned in a previous blog, if your startup really is worth £1M, why […]
My old family founded company, Densitron is about to be bought by a group of former employees through their new company Quixant see here: http://goo.gl/BSzC7a It was a company founded by my Father in the UK, a Mr Degawa in Japan and Mr Luskin in the USA. The group took the Japanese companies name Densitron […]
So I’ve just been offered an investment in a company. The company has been valued at a pre-money figure. Pre-money valuations are a less than reputable tactic used in the VC industry to increase the value of a company and it works like this. Your company is worth £1M, and you want to raise £500K, […]
In an earlier blog I described the traditional way to value a company. Paul Graham of Y Combinator, attempts to value a company based on “equity vs. investor added value” using mathematical equations, essentially an ROI model: There is a third model which is often unspoken, and the only true measure: Your company is worth what […]
So I’ve just had another mentoring session with my Incubator in London. It was organised in a slightly ad-hoc manner, so I ended up meeting startups I’d already speed mentored a couple of weeks prior. One startup was a mobile app for black cab customers. It was a slightly awkward meeting as we had been […]
After observing the Tech City Media, one would think that the goal of a startup is to raise finance. Most success stories both here and in the States centre around that theme and for an early stage startup with little traction there are often no other metrics to go on. However, let’s not get distracted, […]
So, for those that have met me will know that I don’t consider myself a founder and I therefore shy away from giving in depth startup advice. Don’t get me wrong I founded a very successful dot com company which pioneered the Internet and data centre industry. However I did this within the confines of […]