A big part of what we’re trying to build at f3fundit is an inclusive community of advice and information for founders. Because learning from others who have done it is one of the best ways to improve. We’ll be speaking with investors, founders, and others in the tech community to see what insight they can share from their own experiences. Today we’re very excited to present Brett Martin, Managing Partner of Charge Ventures.
While attending a session at Lowenstein LLP for the inauguration of the 2013 First Growth Venture Network, I had the pleasure to speak with and listen to some of NY and the Valley’s top investors. Some of this advice on how to navigate the VC landscape comes from them.
You quit your job, labored months building a product, and found some traction. Then, you looked at your bank account and thought to yourself: “crap, I’ve got two months of runway left, three maybe if I stretch it. What do we do?”
There is good news for start-ups this Monday. Index Ventures, a EU based firm has launched a new fund focusing on early stage deals, and plans to invest in twenty companies over the coming 24 months. Aside from the positive indicator that money is being raised in order to invest in new companies and that we’re seeing signs of life from the VC sector, what really differentiates this move by Index Ventures is its strong focus on the startup, and it’s approach to investment in them.
What this means is that the partners of the firm will take an active stake in the start-ups by joining their boards, this is a shift away from the status-quo of larger firms whose partners typically don’t engage the startup team due to time constraints or otherwise.
Index Ventures new seed fund is exactly what needs to happen in the VC industry. VC’s need to take a more hands on approach in their invested firms to ensure a greater success to failure ratio, and at the same time, they need to fill the gap in early stage capital that is lacking in many European markets. Some of Index Ventures prior investments are MySQL, Skype, Playfish and RightScale.
In more financing news, the Guaridan has reported that Luke Johnson, the man who brought Pizza Express to market in the 1990’s has acquired a 27{abb65e2b6815f549a727af2ea9f3a377a727ddc064972a198a74f88a6b766686} stake in the Beer & Partners angel investment network.
As a whole, good indicators, and again it seems that those who will lead the world out of its current slump will once again be entrepreneurs.
You’ve been working for days on end, the business plan is more or less finished, you’ve started developing your product, and still putting some polish onto the conceptual side of things. You figure you can get the basics up and running, or simply put you’re at a wall, and the best way and only way to get over it is cash. You’re now officially seeking or looking for investment.
