OpenBeta3 PitchCamp Debrief & Congratulations

I enjoyed judging the OpenBeta3 PitchCamp last Thursday with fellow judges Vance Lucas of InvoiceMore.com, Jim Rogers from i2E, Piyush Patel of P L Studios fame, and Shawn Roberts of Brown & Roberts .

I have to admit that I was skeptical that participants who were starting from nothing would be able to come up with interesting and convincing business pitches in 48 hours, but I was very pleased with what we saw. This can definitely be done, and it is fun and challenging!

(more…)

OpenBeta3 PitchCamp Presentation: The Top 10 Unspoken Investor Questions…

Since we only had 15 minutes to do our educational presentation on Tuesday for participants in PitchCamp, prior to OpenBeta on Thursday, I decided to go a little lighter on my “Investment Criteria for Entrepreneurs” presentation…

Without further ado, we present “The Top 10 Unspoken Investor Questions…”

(more…)

Upcoming Talk: Investment Criteria for Entrepreneurs

I’ve been asked to speak at the upcoming OpenBeta3 event organized by the ExtendedBeta community.

I’ve been asked to talk about the investment criteria that angel investors, seed funds and venture capitalists use to evaluate investment in technology startups, and in the process I’ll be discussing the investment criteria I’ve developed during my investment career and that we currently use at Black Mesa Ventures.

This will be a part of PitchCamp, presented 24 hours before OpenBeta3 in preparation for the new 24HourPitch activity, which will be occurring during the event.

In the process of preparing my notes, I went back through some of my favorite posts on this topic and I’ve listed some posts and useful resources. Enjoy!

• Reid Hoffman’s TechCrunch post on this topic is one of my favorites: Reid Hoffman: My Rule of Three for Investing
• Some of the resources maintained by Garage.com are classics. Particularly check the articles on preparing an executive summary, preparing your presentation slides, and the articles “Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs” and “Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists.”
• When pitching your business, you will want to have prepared a “pitch deck”  – a set of slides to quickly communicate your investment proposition. Looking through other company’s slides is a great way to  think about what you need to say and how others have said it. Here’s a suggested format from i2E, the public-private commercialization non-profit for the State of Oklahoma.
• For later stage venture capital, the Murphree Venture Partners investment philosophy page conveys a lot of information very succinctly: http://www.murphreeventures.com/philosophy.htm

Video Posted: “Business Models for Web 2.0 Startups: What works now?”

The OkcCoCo has now posted the full video of  my recent presentation to the Bootstrapper’s Beer:

“Business Models for Web 2.0 Startups: What works now?”

(Be warned: I’m at my loquacious best… This is the full 1.5 hour presentation. I’ll try to put a series of shorter excepts online in the near future for those who are looking for info on specific business models.)

Many thanks to Derrick Parkhurst, the organizer of the Bootstrapper’s Beer and co-founder of the OkcCoco, who invited me to give the talk.

About the group: “The Bootstrappers Beer is a free to attend monthly meeting for entrepreneurs in Oklahoma City. The goal of the meeting is to provide educational and networking opportunities to young entrepreneurs. Many of the attendees are passionate about bootstrapping start-up companies and… beer.”

Preparing for OpenBeta barcamp: “Business Models for Web 2.0 Startups: What works now?”

I’m preparing for the upcoming OpenBeta barcamp, on Saturday. I’ll be presenting my new Black Mesa Consulting powerpoint: “Business Models for Web 2.0 Startups: What works now?”