In early 2012, my HBS Alumni Angels colleagues and I launched the Venture Capital Access Program (VCAP), an initiative to help women and minority-led businesses to raise capital from the Harvard alumni angel community. This is a partnership between HBS Alumni Angels of Greater NY (HBSAANY) and the National Association of Investment Companies (NAIC), the...
[Continue Reading]How to Judge an Investment Proposal (especially at Pitch Contests)
I periodically serve as a judge at pitch events for companies raising funding. In every case, I’m assessing each company against our standard criteria for investing. For some of the new employees at our firm, I put together a guide on how to serve as a judge at investment pitch events, evaluate investment ideas, and...
[Continue Reading]How an Indiana Accelerator Helps Its Companies to Succeed
I met some time ago with Brad Wisler, co-Founder of SproutBox, and shared with him our research on portfolio value creation by venture capitalists. He wrote a thoughtful note, which I’ve shared below, with permission: David, Thanks for sharing this paper with me. I love the title, which almost perfectly sums up our philosophy. What follows...
[Continue Reading]High Returns On A Small Fund Challenge Low Returns On A Big Fund
I previously posted this on Techcrunch. Let’s say you decide to invest in a VC fund. Congratulations: you’re now supporting the least unpopular part of the investing industry. That said, how do you avoid suffering the poor median returns the industry is known for? Assuming you have a large amount of capital to invest, the...
[Continue Reading]Charity Auction: Pitch Your Business to NY Angels and Golden Seeds
Would you like to have a private lunch with Brian Cohen, Chairman of New York Angels, and Deborah Jackson, Managing Director of Golden Seeds (and me)? I’m not eligible anymore for bachelor auctions (actually, my price would have been pretty low if I ever even had tried), but I have hit the auction block to...
[Continue Reading]A Closer Look At The Quality Of Angel Returns Data
I previously published this at Techcrunch. The good news for Techcrunch readers: Every major study conducted to date has placed angel investors’ IRR between 18 and 54 percent, as summarized by my Partner John Frankel and Professor Robert Wiltbank in prior Techcrunch articles. The bad news: the data on angel returns has historically been...
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