The Accelerator Conundrum: Navigating Your Path to Startup Success

Alright, let’s cut through the noise and get to the brutal truth of the startup accelerator world. Many entrepreneurs, starry-eyed and naive, leap headfirst into 3-month accelerator programs without truly understanding the long-term implications. It’s time for an incisive commentary, a necessary dissection.

1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Financing

Raising money to build a startup is a huge challenge. To be able to raise any money at all, you must first understand how investors think. We have developed the following courses catering to entrepreneurs in different stages of their entrepreneurial journey.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Kindra Tatarsky, Director of Operations, Golden Seeds (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the thirty-fourth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Kindra Tatarsky, director of operations at Golden Seeds, a network of angel investors dedicated to investing in early stage companies founded and/or led by women. Golden Seeds has more than 150 accredited investors, with locations in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco. >>>

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Chenoa Farnsworth, Executive Director, Hawaii Angels (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the thirty-third interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Chenoa Farnsworth, executive director of Hawaii Angels, a non-profit organization of about 80 angel investors that has chapters on Maui, Oahu, and the Big Island.

Irina: Hi, Chenoa. Let’s start briefly with your background and how you got to this point in your life.

Chenoa: Prior to this, I had a company that did consulting for startups on strategy. About four years ago, I also started a venture capital fund with a couple partners. We started the angel group in 2002; I was one of the co-founders of that group and then took over the management of it last year. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Dave Whorton, Founder, Tugboat Ventures (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the thirty-second interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Dave Whorton, the founder of Tugboat Ventures, an organization of investors who see themselves as not “venture capitalists” but rather as “mentor capitalists,” closer in spirit to the approach pioneered by Tom Perkins in the 1970s.  Based in Palo Alto, California, they prefer to invest in companies in the San Francisco Bay Area with a focus on consumer Internet, enterprise software-as-a-service, mobility, and the next generation of online advertising companies. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Lewis Hower, Executive Director, University Impact Fund (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the thirty-first interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Lewis Hower, executive director of University Impact Fund, which bills itself as the first student-run social impact seed financing organization for entrepreneurs that intends to deliver a return to its investors.

Based in Salt Lake City, the fund plans to use local students to source and analyze deals that address socioeconomic issues, such as clean water, waste management, and alternative energy. The fund size is planned to be at about $10 million to $15 million when fundraising is completed. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Dave McClure, Founder, 500 Startups (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the thirtieth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Dave McClure, an angel investor and the founder of 500 Startups, which is a seed fund and startup accelerator based in Mountain View, California.

Irina: Hi Dave, Let’s start briefly with your background.

Dave: I grew up in West Virginia and went to school in Maryland. After I graduated from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, I came out to the West Coast.

The first two years I was a programmer and database developer. And after two years realized I couldn’t work for anybody else, so I started my own consulting company. I ran a small consulting group from 1994 to 1998. That was about 20 people. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Ira Weiss, Hyde Park Angels (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the twenty-ninth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Ira Weiss, who is the faculty director at University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Chicago Booth) and co-manager of Hyde Park Angels,  an angel network that is affiliated with the university and invests in seed and early-stage companies, primarily in the Midwest. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Elizabeth Marchi, Frontier Angel Fund (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-eighth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Elizabeth Marchi, fund coordinator at Frontier Angel Fund LLC. It’s a member managed pooled fund – that is, they review deals together and then vote to invest their pooled capital. Their investments range from $100,000 to $200,000 and they invest in companies based in Montana and the inland Pacific Northwest. >>>

Seed Capital from Angel Investors: Dick Reeves, Executive Director, Huntsville Angel Network (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold.

This is the twenty-seventh interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Dick Reeves, executive director of Huntsville Angel Network that services entrepreneurs in and around Huntsville, Alabama, where it’s based.

Irina: Hi, Dick. Why don’t we start with you telling me a little bit about your background and how you became an angel investor?

Dick: Well, I am a serial entrepreneur, a technical entrepreneur. I’ve done a number of businesses in our town over the past 35 years and raised angel capital from individual, random angels for three of those businesses. >>>

Seed Capital from Angel Investors: Raymond Chan, Tech Coast Angels (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-sixth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Raymond Chan, a member of Tech Coast Angels. TCA has over 260  members and provides funding and guidance to early-stage, high-growth companies in Southern California.

Irina: Hi, Ray. Let’s start with your personal background.

Ray: I have been an angel investor for the past twenty-some years. I’ve been investing into startups — mostly in communications and consumer Internet. I joined Tech Coast Angels about three and a half years ago. Since then I have been involved with a group and made several investments over the past few years, and on top of that I’m on the board of directors of TCA. I’m also in charge of the marketing and PR, and all of our entrepreneur programs for the organization. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: George Zachary, General Partner, Charles River Ventures (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-fifth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to George Zachary, general partner of Charles River Ventures, one of the nation’s oldest early-stage venture capital firms.

CRV invests in the data communications and software & services sectors and provides entrepreneurs with access to a combination of financial backing, start-up operations expertise, and strategic business services. Over the past ten years, CRV’s funds have been ranked among the industry’s top performers. George’s personal focus is consumer Internet. He is based in Menlo Park, California. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nova Spivak, West Coast (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-fourth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Nova Spivak, a serial entrepreneur, who is currently the co-founder an president of Live Matrix and an angel investor soon to be based in Los Angeles.

Irina: Hi, Nova. Let’s start with with your background.

Nova: I started EarthWeb in 1994 with some co-founders, and it went public in 1998 and later became Dice.com – that’s the current name of the company.

Then I helped to co-found and build nVention Convergence Ventures, an in-house intellectual property incubator of SRI International and Sarnoff Laboratories, and after that I started my own incubator, called Lucid Ventures in in 2001. Through that, in 2008 I started Twain.com, a semantic Web-based tool for information storage, authoring, and discovery, which was recently bought by Paul Allen-backed semantic Web startup Evri.com. Now Live Matrix, which is my new startup, is my main focus. And since then I’ve done also a quite a bit of angel investing in very early stage companies.

>>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Russ Fradin, The Bay Area (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-third interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Russ Fradin, a serial entrepreneur, who is currently the cofounder and president of Adify and angel investor in the Bay Area. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Geoff Ralston, Silicon Valley (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the twenty-second interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Geoff Ralston, a Silicon Valley angel investor and serial entrepreneur who started and ran a number of companies and held senior positions at Yahoo! after one of his companies, RocketMail, was acquired. >>>

Seed Capital From The Government: SBA’s Sean Greene (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the twenty-first interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. Irina is talking to Sean Greene, associate administrator for investment and special advisor for innovation at the U.S. Small Business Administration. The SBA was created in 1953 as an independent agency of the federal government to assist and protect the interests of small businesses. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Larry Chaityn, Keiretsu Forum, New York Tri-State Chapters President (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the twentieth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Larry Chaityn, president of New York Tri-State Chapters, the Keiretsu Forum.

Irina: Hi, Larry. Let’s start with your background and then go to the point where you got involved with the Keiretsu Forum.

Larry: My background is in technology consulting, and I have worked for companies like Capgemini and Oracle, dealing with CEOs and CFOs on mapping business strategy and leveraging technology.

I was in the consulting group for both those companies, and I would go out and understand what the business challenges were for Fortune companies then come back and put together solutions using technology to help companies either solve their business problems or initiate new strategies. That was in early 2000s. >>>