Venture capital returns
We came across these two good articles. Definately worth to read you want to understand venture capital:
Risk Exploding Problem With Venture Capital
and
Getting Funding is NOT a Strategy
Money is always a consequence, not the root cause. You work – you get paid. You sell – customer pays. You roll the dice and get lucky – you get rich. You have a business (plan) that works – you get funding.
But getting funding is not the end goal, not even for a startup. The end goal is to be able to pay all that funding back, and some more. To reach that you need to have a business that works. For getting there, you need the right strategy. The strategy should be all about your business: who is your customer, what is your offering, how you plan to win etc.
The journey from where you are today to where you need to be one day is typically so long that you may need to top up some fuel on the way. Funding is your fuel, helping you to get where you need to go. But it’s just a means to an end, not the reason your startup exists and definitely not your Northern Star. It should not be the driver for your thinking and activities, do not let “what do I need to do to get funded” to mislead you.
Are you the only VC type investor who has such a strategy?
No, but this is still more of an “exception” rather than “the norm”. Some investors who have a similar kind of basic philosophy (model is more of a “scalable Angel” rather than “VC”)
https://www.kimaventures.com/ (the only European on this list)
http://rightsidecapital.com/ (we owe a lot to these guys for setting up a role model we have taken full advantage of. Big thanks to Kevin & al for the inspiration and openly sharing their thinking)
https://svangel.com/ (building on the heritage of the original SuperAngel Ron Conway, they have the longest track record to demonstrate the strategy works)
https://500.co/ (the most vocal on this list. For them investing is just one of the things they do)
There certainly are more but most investors with this strategy tend to prefer a low public profile, they focus on their business rather than PR.