team, scalability, strategy, location

That’s what a VC is looking for according to Bill Payne in Angelsoft Blog. I don’t agree that location should be important in today’s world. Proximity with the team, meaning that they feel comfortable working together and that they can trust each other is key, but I find that this proximity is much deeper than “location”. 

today I discovered Silicon Alley…

…and Angelsoft. Here is a video about the startups/investors incubator they are buliding in NYC’s Silicon Alley.

other people’s learnings

7 ways I’ve almost killed FreshBooks, a great post about lessons learned. These are some parts of it:

- whatever numbers come out of your Excel jockeying, they’re wrong (…) It’s really easy to stare at a spreadsheet and say, “that’s it! I totally get this business…I understand how it all works and look at that year 5 revenue!”, when the reality is it will take 10 years to get there, cost you twice as much as you thought, and you’ll probably be running a totally different business by the time you get there.

- nobody cares about your business as much as you do, and frankly people who are smart – consultant/MBA smart – don’t know your business as well as you do despite the fancy words and references to past success (…) Stay open to their advice and take it into consideration as you make decisions, just don’t bet the farm on what they think you should do.

- sign the right deals with the right partners at the right time for the right reasons. You can build a business without being forced to work with the wrong people at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. The choice is yours – don’t forget it. Opportunities will present themselves if you keep your feet moving and you string together a series of small successes.

- I’ve learned to spend 80% of my time thinking about what not to do, instead of all of my time thinking about what we can do.

- there’s still a lot of time for you to change the world