Last week, I was on a panel with other investors discussing the “do’s� and “don’ts� of angel and venture capital investing some one from the audience fired a series of intriguing compounded questions � why are the VC’s so illusive?, So let’s talk about the truth about the Angles and the Venture Capital firms; here is a few points to start with: 1- Looking for Money Vs. why don’t they have all their information available? Why don’t they disclose how they come up with their valuations?

Last week's angel investment report by the Angel Capital Association reported that investments by angel investors dropped nine percent in 2008, with a hefty percentage of angel investors--40 percent--expecting this year will be a down year. However, a quick check of local, Southern California angel investors finds that although angel investment is down, investors are still investing--albeit much more selectively. "Capital Capital efficient companies offering very competitive terms are still getting funded," says Al Schneider of the Tech Coast Angels , although it appears the group is much more sensitive about how it is investing in deals.

Last night I attended a DealMaker Media (whom I love because they always host such great discussions) panel on raising angel money moderated by Dan Gould and with panelists Rob Hayes (First Round Capital, more seed or A round than angel), Scot Sangster (with OrganicStartup and [...] ...Tags: This is part of my ongoing series Pitching a VC. Last Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advic

Last night I attended a DealMaker Media (whom I love because they always host such great discussions) panel on raising angel money moderated by Dan Gould and with panelists Rob Hayes (First Round Capital, more seed or A round than angel), Scot Sangster (with OrganicStartup and the best spokesperson for Tech Coast Angels that I have met to date), Tom McInerney (TGM) and Jarl Mohn (who invests on his own “account” and whose track record is truly humbling). recently wrote a post on angel financing covering the topic of convertible notes but I realized

Los Angeles? At parties in Los Angeles people talk about a media deal they’re “closing”, what TV star is at the party, and some “gray hat” spam-like technique that made them an extra 100K last month. Folks in Los Angeles are shrewder business people, have better interpersonal skills, but are more full of shit and two faced, and struggle to build products that get virally adopted. Is there a difference between tech startups in Silicon Valley vs. Most emphatically, Yes !

Bob is a Director and long-time member of the Pasadena Angels, has been investing in early stage companies for 5 years, and has been held numerous “C” level positions at private and publicly traded companies. If the company is going to need more capital than Angels can supply, that’s ok.  There are plenty of examples of Pasadena Angel companies that have had multiple Following on the heals of last week’s post from Andrea Belz, we have another guest blogger, Bob Aholt. Bob also teaches graduate level finance courses at Antioch University.   By Bob Aholt

We brought together Peter Cowen of Groundwork Equity , Mark Suster of GRP Partners , Rick Smith of Crosscut Ventures , and Richard Yen of Saban Ventures -- all of who will be on the judging panel for the Tech Coast Angel's Fast Pitch on February 24th, to give us a their hints and tips about pitching to venture capitalists. They also talked about their outlook on the venture capital market, and how likely they are to be investing this year, given the worried economy. Hi For this morning's interview, we thought we'd try something different, and put together a virtual panel of venture capitalists to give us a few tips on pitching your company.

There is just too much to say about the topic and I have been warned about being too verbose with lengthily postings so this is a 3 posting series. Following is the first posting: Some Good reasons to Bootstrap 1- Bootstrapping ensures that you build your business on legitimate, real world value propositions. You truly focused on customer value from day one.

I got the following question from an entrepreneur and I thought I share it with everyone. “Why do many startups actually fail? In my observation, i have felt that there are many a startups which have a brilliant idea, a genuine team to execute that and also a good support for the product they intend to build, but still the companies fail to break even. I

If the limited partners who fund venture firms either a) change the percent of funds they allocate to VCs or b) don’t come through on their capital calls, we’ll all quickly find the venture community becoming drastically constrained. Erick Schonfeld writes about the current state of affairs in his TechCrunch post: “ The End of Venture Capital as We Know It ” There has been a lot of conjecture about how the Venture community will respond to the economic downturn. My personal opinion is that its going to be bad, really bad.