I'm not always a big fan of high profile entrepreneurs such as Marc Andreesen. Many times, in my experience, they make blanket statements about specific things such as business models, management teams, etc that are often misunderstood by the entrepreneurs. For example, the statement below about CEOs and who should run a start-up is too general. These types of decisions have to be made based on a number of factors that can't be generalized. At the same time, this particular article by Sarah Lacy is pretty interesting and is an easy read.

(Posted on TechCrunch, June 5 2009)

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are launching their much-anticipated $300 million venture fund this evening, aptly called Andreessen Horowitz.

The fund will make investments of $50,000 to $50 million (yes, $50 million), but will generally focus on early stage opportunities. And here’s a fun fact: they don’t currently have a website, and apparently they aren’t sure they will have one in the future. For now they’ve reserved a16z.com for use if they do ever launch a site. Basically, if you don’t already know Andreessen or Horowitz, or know someone who knows them, getting in contact with them is going to be…difficult.

Andreessen has long been one of my favorite people to interview, because he is tapped into nearly every hot company and isn’t afraid to answer questions directly. That is, when you can actually get him to sit down with you and a camera, notepad or tape recorder. But last week, he had to chat it up with the press since he and long-time partner Ben Horowitz were announcing their the new venture fund. This is not going to be your typical venture capital firm.

For one thing, there’s that $300 million fund size. That’s pretty big for a first-time fund and gargantuan when you consider there are only two general partners, Andreessen and Horowitz. It’s big enough that some people didn’t think they’d be able to pull it off.

How did they? Well, did we mention Andreessen was one of the partners? Heard of the browser? And the lesser-known Horowitz is no slouch. He was the CEO of their second venture, Opsware, which sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. As instant as Netscape’s success may have been, Opsware was the opposite, a hard post-bubble slog.

It’s too early to tell how well Andreessen’s third company, Ning, will do, but Andreessen and Horowitz’s angel stakes in companies like LinkedIn, Delicious and Twitter show their savvy at picking good teams and how much other entrepreneurs in the Valley value their advice. For instance, Andreessen is the only independent member on Facebook’s tiny board of directors. And investors were impressed by the 45 or so companies that Andreessen has independently invested in over the years. Just one, TipMobile, has gone under so far.

So, that’s how they raised $300 million in the worst fundraising environment in 40 years, here’s why: Andreessen says there are only fifteen companies started each year that matter. By “matter,” he means they’ve got the potential to generate $100 million year or more in revenues, and those companies wind up making up 97% of the aggregate industry returns. The firm wants the flexibility to invest as much as they want in those fifteen names, whether it’s $500,000 or $50 million per deal. Considering the two have run big teams and small teams over their time at Netscape, Opsware and Ning, there’s no logical reason they should tether themselves to just one stage of investing.

Like Founders Fund and unlike most everyone else, Andreessen and Horowitz are more comfortable investing when an entrepreneur wants to stay the CEO. Hiring a “grown up” CEO always sounds like a great idea, but almost always hastens a company’s failure, Andreessen argues. There’s strong evidence that the biggest hits come when the founders stay engaged at a C-level position. See: Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, Apple and Facebook.
Another distinction: They’re not meddlers. Because there are just two of them, Horowitz and Andreessen won’t always take board seats. If they pick the right entrepreneurs, Andreessen argues they shouldn’t have to.

The whole interview lasted about an hour, and you can see many of the highlights on my Yahoo show, TechTicker, today. Meanwhile, here are five other interesting things he said:

1. Twitter and Facebook’s investors aren’t worried about monetization, but “it’s sweet” of you to. Twitter has spent about $15 million acquiring 30 million users. It’d be a no-brainer to recoup that if need be. Meanwhile, Facebook will generate more than $500 million in revenues this year—it’s spent far less than that to build the company to date. In other words, these are pretty fiscally conservatively run businesses with huge growth potential and no trouble raising additional cash.

2. Digg isn’t done. Andreessen is still bullish on Digg, citing the fact that Kevin Rose is no longer distracted with Pownce and Jay Adelson is moving to San Francisco to manage the company full-time. He thinks having both guys focused on the company will make a huge difference in the next twelve months.

3. The venture capital market should stop whining about Sarbox and other factors that are hurting their ability to take companies public. Says Andreessen, “Build Companies More Valuable and You Won’t Have this Problem.” That said, he sees a conceivable scenario where public markets are no longer how investors get returns at all. Instead, the same institutional names that used to buy the bulk of the shares at an issue, will just buy out VCs at premiums in private deals. That’ll essentially mean everyday Joes can no longer invest in high growth companies. That’s a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how many scars you have from the dot com bust.

4. At least 300 venture firms will go out of business in the next five-to-ten years.

5. Innovation and opportunities to build businesses on the Web aren’t done. They won’t be done for a long time because the Web is one of the only inventions that’s pure software, compared to computers, the television or even the railroads. That means it can completely change without having to fit into set molds. Anyone—Andreessen included—is deluding themselves if they think they know where it’s going. (In other words, don’t listen to anyone making Web 3.0 predictions.)

PART 2 - THE SOLUTION

In my previous post, I discussed the section of your Executive Summary where you clarify to the investor what problem you are solving in the marketplace. The next critical piece is your Solution. In this section you should be specific but brief about what you are offering and to whom. This section should depict the essence and energy of your business because this is where you sell yourself to investors. Clearly depict your product or service with commonly used terms to state concretely what you have, or what you do, that solves the problem you identified in the previous section. You should avoid using jargon or acronyms that don't mean anything to most people. You may also want to clarify where you fit in the value chain as well as the dynamics of your distribution channels and how you fit in. You should also use this section to be clear about any current customers and revenue channels so you can show you have passed the wallet test.

PART 1 - THE PROBLEM

Is your new product or service a "solution" looking for a "problem?"

If you're trying to raise money from a venture capitalist or angel then you should always pitch your business from the perspective of solving a customer's problem. Don't make the mistake of telling everyone how cool your new widget or new technology is unless you can directly tell the story of how it solves someone's problem. It's the same thing when you're a sales person and you're constantly selling your product or service's "features" instead of its "benefits." A customer doesn't care about the bells and whistles of your widget unless they can see how it will benefit them.

The same concept holds true when putting together your business plan. You have to be crystal clear that your business is solving problems and generating a benefit to a market. Start by explaining why the situation exists in the marketplace and why it is that only now can it be addressed. Use this part of your Executive Summary to explain the market dynamics and the size of the opportunity...briefly.

NEED CAPITAL - GET ATTENTION!

Aside from prayer and/or doing the moondance naked through an investors office there are only a few real-world things you can do to get their attention. Guess what? Without their attention you don't get a check. So, pay attention!

Your business plan is one of the most important tools that you can have to create buzz about your project. The Executive Summary in your plan is often the first and last section that investors will read. If your Summary is positioned and written well then the investor will have lots of questions about your business model. If not, they will most likely show you the exit. Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of making their Executive Summary a description of their business written in operational terms with piles-o-jargon. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, the "Executive Summary is about selling not about describing."

We have had much success using a simple and straight-forward approach that includes 5 key components. Although I can't guarantee that your plan will generate a check, I can tell you that these 5 components will help you position your business for investment and perhaps soon you'll be off changing the world with your new product or service.

In the next 5 blog posts I will define these components:

1. The Problem

2. The Solution

3. The Business Model

4. The Request

5. The Exit

CONNECTING ENTREPRENEURS AND MONEY!

Here is an interesting video from Vator.tv. In this particular episode of Vator Box they are discussing the different websites and organizations that match investors and angels with entrepreneurs and ideas.

See this video on Vator.tv »

INSANITY VERSUS CASH FLOW!

I recently was listening to a podcast of the Frank Peters show focusing on Angel Investing. The guest on his show, Permjot Valia, is an early stage investor. He has an interesting perspective on the start-up and Angel investing worlds.

He had a very interesting philosophy with regards to what financial metrics are most important in a start-up. Often entrepreneurs manage their entire business around the profit and loss statement. Permjot recommends managing from a cash flow perspective.

Here's his philosophy in summary:

- Focusing on Revenue = Insanity
- Focusing on Profit = Sanity
- Focusing on Cash Flow = Reality

Here's a good article from Entreprenuer that started with this question...

Q: Can you give me some tips on managing the cash flow of my new business?

READ THIS FIRST!

Well it's election day and I'm sure we are all distracted. However, I just read through this blog post from Rob James. It's a good one and he breaks down the 8 things he wishes he had been told prior to starting his business. I especially like his paragraph about business planning.

Here's a sneak peak...

3. Have a model, not a planOk, this is a bit of a ‘bum steer’. You do need a plan, but a fully documented business plan that is 100 pages long is so, um dotcom. Nobody reads those things, and at this stage, your business is changing by the day, if not the hour. The reason you have a business plan is to show that you have thought through all the issues. Good sessions in front of the whiteboard, and scribbling in paper gets the same result. You may want to have a 2 pager, but I generally find that whenever someone asks for one, I will rewrite from scratch anyway. But I can’t stress enough how important a model is. A model is just your spreadsheet plan of how you are going to make money. Not only is it good for any potential investors, but it is good for you. Because in your grand plan, you may have not worked out how to make money out of this idea yet. Well, if you don’t figure this out, who do you think is going to do it for you? The investors? Keep dreaming cowboy! Firstly, I speak to a lot of Angel Investors, Private Equity and VC’s and they are constantly frustrated by how many people come to them this way, and its a waste of time. If the VC does see the money potential, do you think they are going to disclose it to you? Of course not! They have to think of their investors. So they will try and get into the deal for as little as possible, and then they will make money from it. The model is also going to be good for you. After putting it together, you might see that you are not going to be cashflow positive for 24 months, can you last that long? How will you last that long? Or you might see that to realise a profitable business, you need 10 Million registered users, is that realistic? Believe me, you will live and die by your model - work on it often and don’t be scared to change it!

Read more here...

YEP, MORE ANGEL INVESTING NEWS!

Here is a continuation of yesterday's post. Deal flow for pure start-ups is definitely slowing and capital is shifting to less risky areas...but I'm bettin' you didn't me to tell you that.

Here's an interesting article from Reuters.

CHICAGO (Reuters.com) — Fiberstar Inc., a small company that converts orange juice pulp into a line of food ingredients and other products, is no longer a start-up. Founded a decade ago, it now has a customer base of loyal multinationals and annual revenue in excess of $5 million.
At this point, the company might seem an unlikely candidate for funding from angels, the private investors who back start-up ventures with typical commitments of less than $1 million.
But that’s exactly who Minneapolis-based Fiberstar, which in the past has relied exclusively on angel investors for private equity, is going after to help raise up to $10 million for working capital and new production facilities to keep up with increasing global demand.
“Our goal is to continue to raise funding from angel investors and angel groups,” says Dale Lindquist, Fiberstar’s president and chief executive. “We’ve respected the investment that they’ve made and as management we’re trying to protect it.”
“It’s very unusual for a company to go as far as we have working solely with angels,” he adds.
It’s becoming less unusual, says Jeffrey Sohl, director of the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. Investing in more established companies is just one of several signs that angel investors are seeking a higher degree of comfort as they look for safer bets in a volatile economic climate, he says.
“The angels are doing post-seed - more later-stage work than they normally would,” says Sohl, noting that venture capital groups, which frequently fund private companies higher up in the development food chain, have also boosted their investment thresholds in recent months.
In a highly unpredictable economy, when credit markets are tight and traditional sources of capital such as bank debt have dried up or become increasingly difficult to obtain, angel investors are taking on more prominence as a source of alternative financing.
Total angel funding during the first half of 2008 has been surprisingly steady, rising 2.1 percent to $12.4 billion, compared to the same period in 2007, according to first half data released by the center earlier this month.
Sohl points out that the numbers also show that angels, who typically take preferred stock or other equity in exchange for their investment, are exhibiting increasingly cautious behavior.
The total number of deals funded in the first six months - some 23,100 according to data collected by the center - has fallen 3.8 percent. Meanwhile, the average size of each deal is up 8 percent, and along with it, the number of investors behind it. The center notes that the total number of angels participating in the first half grew 2.l percent to some 143,000, investing either individually or as part of angel groups. Fiberstar, the food and beverage company, has 152 angel investors.
“What this is telling us is that the angels are spreading out their risk a little more,” says Sohl.
Marianne Hudson, executive director for the Lenexa, Kansas-based Angel Capital Association, notes that she saw this trend begin to take hold last year. Her organization, comprised of more than 170 angel groups, saw average deal size in 2007 rise 10 percent to $266,000. At the same time, Hudson, whose members self-report their investing results annually, saw the average number of investors per deal rise to 55 from 44.
And while Hudson expects that trend to continue in the current economy, she sees another important signal of skittishness among her member groups: the increased use of loosely formed syndicates to jointly fund deals.
“We are seeing more and more angel investor groups co-invest with each other,” she says. “The angels are minimizing their risk.”
Angels will clearly remain an active source of capital as the economy worsens, say these and other experts on alternative sources of financing. Data show an increased appetite for sectors such as software, health care, manufacturing, green technology and other energy-related concerns.
But for start-ups and later-stage private companies alike, the latest numbers signal what will also likely be a very competitive field for a limited supply of investment capital.
“There’s more demand for us - we can pick and choose,” says Knox Massey, executive director of the Atlanta Technology Angels. “Somebody out there is not going to get funded.”
By Deborah L. Cohen(Deborah Cohen covers small business for Reuters.com. She can be reached at smallbusinessbigissues@yahoo.com)

WHERE HAVE ALL THE ANGELS GONE?

Here is a link to very recent article from Inc. magazine. Although the credit markets are beginning to budge some we have seen a dramatic decrease in SBA Loans. At the same time, this article highlights some interesting Angel Investing data points.

Inc. Article

What are you seeing out there? Are funding transactions still taking place?