Angel Investment Journal - Angel Investing and Entrepreneur Blog

I student taught (in the second grade) and one day I had the class lined up and ready to leave, but we had about 2 minutes before the bell rang to let them out to the bus. As you probably know, 26 second graders standing in line is an eternity. So I asked them a simple question. “What are 5 things you learned today?”

Every hand shot up and we got to the fifth thing right before the bell rang. The interesting thing was that we had a quiz a few days later. One of the questions on the quiz was something one of the kids brought up when talking about the 5 things they learned that day (it was a coincidence, I didn’t plan it). EVERY kid got that question right. I like to think it was because I was such an awesome teacher, but in reality, it was more likely a result of the kids reflecting a little on their day and about what they learned.

As many people will tell you, experiencing something is probably the best way to learn something (and that is usually done in the form of a mistake). But one problem some people have is that they don’t learn from their experiences or mistakes. That is likely because they do not take time to reflect on it. Without reflecting, hopefully you will learn something subconsciously, but taking time to think about what it is you learned and defining it is a much more effective way to learn.

You probably have the chance to learn 50 things every day, whether they are new or just reinforcements of what you already know. The problem is that most people don’t actually get as much from the day as they could since they don’t reflect. Everyday at 4:45pm, I have a reminder that pops up reminding me to “Reflect” for the day. So I try to think about what it is I learned that day and I write these things down in a file. Some are from reading (blogs, books, magazines or something else), some are concepts I come up with as a result of something that happened that day, and others things come out by accident (maybe while driving).

But even though I take the time and effort to reflect, define what it is I learned, and write it down, I still have the challenge to get myself to go back and read what it is I have learned for some reinforcement.

I decided to do this post as a result of a post on Brad Feld’s Blog - I’ll Never Do An Investment In That Kind of Thing Again.

If you are a Warren Buffett fan like me, you will probably be interested to know Berkshire Hathaway’s 2006 Chairman’s Letter has been released.

h/t Feld

Like a normal college kid, I usually struggled to get up in the mornings to get to class while at Mizzou.

Since my degree was in elementary education, I was able to student teach in the second grade my last semester. People with other degrees did not understand the concept of student teaching. We had to work 55+ hours and dealt with 26 eight year olds with absolutely no pay. In fact, most of the time we bought our own supplies. This was happening while other students were getting 35-38 hour internships for the summer making good money.

Well, I absolutely loved it!

Keep in mind that I was still in college, meaning my partying was not restricted to the weekends. However, I noticed a funny thing on school-day mornings after a night of partying. Instead of going through the “morning struggle” of getting out of bed, I would wake up, usually before my alarm clock and (sometimes, literally) jump out of bed. The reason was because I loved teaching and I was excited to get to the school to get the day going.

For me, and likely most people, the desire to get out of bed is an indicator of how much I enjoy what I am doing. And, as most people will tell you, having a passion for what you do is one thing that will undoubtedly increase your chances for success.

“Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you derive from what you do.”
- Michael Korda

How fast do you get out of bed?

Greg Moreno has a cool post about the value of an idea:

Awful idea = -1
Weak idea = 1
So-so idea = 5
Good idea = 10
Great idea = 15
Brilliant idea = 20

No execution = $1
Weak execution = $1000
So-so execution = $10,000
Good execution = $100,000
Great execution = $1,000,000
Brilliant execution = $10,000,000

I would say that it should be altered a bit since weak and so-so execution should probably be negative numbers. Spending time and money on an idea but not having good execution will likely end up with a negative result.

Seth talks about how finding your niche is much better than attacking an entire market.

Related to this, a lot of entrepreneurs try to present to investors and say “We only need 1% of the market”. Guy says this is pretty ridiculous. First, why would anyone want to get a 1% market share? Second, how do you know 1% will be the magic number? How do you know it won’t be .1% or 5%? Entrepreneurs should do a bottom’s up forecast. Define the niche in the market you are going to target and make a forecast based upon this. Don’t say you need to capture 1% of the worldwide hat industry. Instead, say you want to capture 20% of the Church Hat market (that was a quick plug for Evetta).

Side note, isn’t it cool to be known just by your first name (like Seth and Guy).

Email is a fantastic tool. But spam issues have gotten so bad that attempting to contact someone for the first time dramatically reduces your chances of actually getting a response. This can be a result of spam filters, the person not paying attention to it or taking your email serious since they aren’t sure of the legitimacy, etc. In fact, our response rates on emails have fallen by over 50% just in the past year, even though they were relatively consistent for the previous 3 years.

Mainly as a result of the hungry and foolish whiz kid (Brandon) in the office, we are all starting to pick up the phone more often. You don’t have to worry about spam filters and will definitely have the person’s attention, but you will have much better chance of achieving whatever it is you are after.

I just had to do something with the BBB regarding a reliability seal for a site. I sent an email to the specific address regarding the seal. I then made a note to check back in a few days to see if I had received a response and if not, I could follow up with it. Then I remembered the phone, I made the call and got it taken care of immediately.

Not only can you get results faster, but it saves time - you can talk 3-4 times as fast as you can type. In addition, VoIP can reduce your costs if that may be a concern for you.
Don’t be a slave to email and it’s uncertainties. Achieve better results (and in less time, to boot) by using this revolutionary device called the telephone. 2007 will be the year the phone makes a comeback.

Chris at the NameInspector, has a good post on Web 2.0 names. It covers 10 categories that encompass nearly all Web 2.0 companies. He has some other interesting posts which you may want to check out including one on Guy Kawasaki’s blog, How to Change the World.

I am not a brand or naming guru, but when considering a name, here are a few things I take into consideration. Can you get a brandable name which is also descriptive of the company? “Angel Investment Journal” is descriptive, but is not a name I would consider to be a good brandable name, even though any name can be brandable. Companies that are focusing on building their brand, however generally try to get a name that is not too long and easy to understand, even if it is not descriptive. Amazon and Monster are the two prime examples of this and I would consider them to be great names, as would most people. The wildcard is the domain. Is it available?

One other thing comes into play when talking about a domain is that you can gain credibility by having a great, descriptive name, even if it is generic. It may be considered online branding, because you can get credibility just by having a certain domain. We found this out when we started a site that would help people find vacation properties at lakes. We were able to purchase the domain lakerentals.com for a reasonable price. Even though it may not be considered a brandable name in the offline world because it is so generic, it works very well online. It is descriptive and people would consider it more authoritative than a site like yourrentalplace.com or vacationrentals411.com (even though they are both fine sites).

A final thought on the name for your Web 2.0 company is that a descriptive domain can also help in terms of marketing, specifically search engine marketing. For example, when people link to LakeRentals.com they generally include the name of our company/domain, which is “Lake Rentals”. Those links will also help us rank for searches including “lake rentals” in them. So yourrentalplace.com and vacationrentals411.com may have an advantage over a brandable name such as going2travel.com in that respect.

Of course, you can always go with the route of naming your company like bands do. Just combine a bunch of random words such as Squirrel Nut Zippers.

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose the ventures before us.

- William Shakespeare, Julias Ceasar

Quadszilla, a well known blogger in the SEO industry, made an interesting post a few weeks ago that included that quote from Shakespeare.  The post was about getting things done or DIFN, as Quadszilla puts it. Bill Payne, an angel investment guru, says that execution is one of the biggest challenges facing Entrepreneurs (see his Inc TV interview where he talks about it).

I have said in other posts, there are plenty of ways to make money and plenty of ideas out there. But many entrepreneurs have failed with even the greatest ideas. The reason for the failure generally comes from lack of execution. Either they do not know how to execute properly or they just do not take the action to get something done. The latter is too often the issue and that one is inexcusable.
I find myself getting into ruts where I will work 9 hours in a day, but I don’t get much done. It is not as a result of screwing off, which many people get in the habit of doing at work, but it is a result of not taking the appropriate action to get something checked off your To-Do list. I get caught up with research and planning as well as spending time putting out fires and other things related to running a business. Those things are all necessary, but they are not what makes your company money or helps the company grow. You need to figure out what needs to be done and do it.

DIFN is a acronym that has been getting dropped around the office quite a bit in emails IM’s and has helped us focus on doing the important things that need to get done.

You have probably seen the figures today about the payday some people received as a result of Google’s acquisitions of YouTube. One of the investors was Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia has invested in a lot of hugely successful companies including Google, Yahoo, PayPal, eHarmony, Zappos, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Obviously they have made many, many other investments that did not work out as well. But the question needs to be asked - Are they just extremely good at picking companies or do they add value to the companies to help them be that successful?

Companies seeking investments should try to get some “smart money”, meaning investors that will be able to provide guidance and advice. That is something that can be expected from angel investors as well as VC money. It is very likely that Sequoia does add a great deal of value in companies which they invest. Even though the YouTube founders had some great experience before starting the company, without some “Smart Money” it is unlikely they would have achieved the level of success that would allow them to buy an NBA team.

On the other hand, Sequoia has another advantage, they are a big name and big player that has a proven track record. So it is much more likely they have a larger selection of companies coming to them. A company that gets money from Sequoia instantly gains more credibility than if they receive funds from a less well known VC. So they are more likely to have an interest in working with Sequoia. And since some VC’s have claimed it is getting harder to find good deals because there is so much money in the market investing in private companies, picking from a larger pool of potential companies makes it easier to pick a winner.

So it is likely a combination of expertise and having a great brand that has helped Sequoia achieve so much success.

The Angel Investment Journal aims to keep companies, entrepreneurs, and investors up to date on a variety of topics relating to Private Equity investing and with a focus on Angel Investing. It will also discuss other topics and hopefully educate people regarding Angel Investing as well as trends within the industry.
Business Owners - to start, you can get more information on how to find Angel Investing from CNN and Inc Magazine.

Angel Investors - The Angel Capital Association has a good list of resources to find out more information on the industry.