A question I’m frequently asked, and frequently struggle with in the rapidly-evolving seed stage investing world, is “What’s the difference between a super angel, a micro VC, and an VC?”  Actually, there’s probably a joke in there somewhere but I […]

If you’re a fan of American football, you probably know all about Tom Brady.  Even if you’re not you’ve probably heard his name, seen his picture in the news or a magazine, or know about his supermodel wife Giselle.  But […]

We often describe partners as a form of “leverage”, as in I personally am able to accomplish more through collaboration with my business partners than I could achieve myself.  I mean partners in the small partnership (like a VC firm) […]

It’s no secret, we VC’s are programmed to think in Powerpoint (or Keynote if you’re an Apple person).  We almost always ask entrepreneurs to show us a slide deck either before, during, or as a follow-up to a first meeting. […]

Much virtual ink has been spilled on the pros and cons of taking seed stage investment from larger VC funds.  Chris Dixon and Fred Wilson have their viewpoints, more recently Mark Suster and Brad Feld added their perspectives and helpfully laid […]

The social games market has exploded onto the startup scene in the last three years.  We all know about the remarkable growth of companies in this space, yet we tend to forget that Zynga was founded in July 2007. But […]

Scenario:  A seed stage investor is considering investing $1M in a very raw startup, but one being built by an exciting team in an interesting market.  The “bid” on pre-money valuation is $2M, the “ask” is $3M.  The ask is obviously 50% higher, which is a heck of a lot.  Compares this to a hedge fund evaluating an investment in Google… the difference between buying at $550/share and $825/share likely will make  a world of difference on ultimate return.

This seed stage company goes on to get acquired for $50M without taking additional capital.

I attended the inaugural Open Angel Forum event in Boston last Friday night with a handful of other angel and seed stage investors.  There were six companies that presented at the event, some of which I’d previously met with but several were […]

A frequent complaint by entrepreneurs is that VCs fail to provide a prompt “no” to startups which they don’t plan to invest in.  There’s lots of reasons VCs do this… we have an incentive to preserve an option to invest […]

As promised, I’ve moved my blog.  The changes include: New URL –> agilevc.com will be the new home, but I will eventually get leehower.com pointed here as well New “Brand” –> I used to call my blog Venturesome, which I […]