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Articles

Everything You Need to Know About Angel Investors

Connecting with the right kind of Angel can be the answer to an entrepreneur’s prayers Entrepreneurs, you know about Angels of course — but do you really know one when you see one? Venture capital is synonymous with startup funding, at least that’s what conventional wisdom and folklore tell us. The reality

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Entrepreneurship

Startup Trends and Stats

Startup Failure Rate and 80+ Other Startling Statistics About Startups A great piece of research on startup statistics and trends: Some highlights: Startup Failure Rate Statistics Incompetence, at 46%, is the most common reason why businesses fail, according to a Statistic Brain study. The percentage of startups that fail after

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Funding

Startup Funding Infographic

An excellent overview of the kinds of funding available for entrepreneurs (startup funding). But this can be very misleading in a way: The “money available” and amounts invested absolutely do not reflect the likelihood of attracting funding from each source – nor do the amounts indicate how effective the funding

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Entrepreneurship

The ABC of raising your seed round

Usually, I am cynical about pithy posts proffering advice such as “5 steps to …” – particularly when it is about becoming a successful entrepreneur, or raising venture funding.  Most often, I find these posts written by articulate armchair quarterbacks (who have never really done it themselves) or by what I

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Pitching

Nikola Tesla Pitching Silicon Valley VCs

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Sure, it’s a parody, but this is as close to the typical entrepreneur-pitch experience as it gets – particularly the comments of the VCs responding to a pitch by one of the greatest innovators that ever lived. And, sadly, I’ve been on

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Attributions

"My Breakup Letter To (Some) VCs" – Well Said

Not since Adeo Ressi rocked the venture capital industry by creating the scathing VC feedback site, TheFunded, has an entrepreneur so bluntly articulated the frustrations about dealing with venture capitalists, and of the venture capital industry’s treatment of entrepreneurs. Recent article by experienced and accomplished entrepreneur, Sindhya Valloppillil,  founder &

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Humor

Venture Pitches – It’s “X” for “Y” …

In earlier post, I was writing about the sometimes-effective-but-overused “High-Concept Pitch“, and showcased a satirical website that generated automatic versions of the It’s an “X” for “Y” styled pitches. I stumbled across a Quora discussion about the topic, with a few insightful answers. Somewhere down the list, a member posted

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