Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nicola Corzine, Band of Angels Acorn Fund (Part 5)

By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: What is the single most important thing that angel-backed founders can do to increase their chances of success? Nicola: The important question they have to ask is, Do I really live this product, do I really want to build this company? Is it everything to me? That passion can’t

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nicola Corzine, Band of Angels Acorn Fund (Part 4)

By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: Do you invest in teams straight out of school, or do you require previous business experience? Nicola: One of the great reasons to work with the Band of Angels at large is the network we bring to the table. It is not just the ability to inject money and

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nicola Corzine, Band of Angels Acorn Fund (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: And what type of experience do you require from the founders? Nicola: We don’t necessarily expect CEOs, but it is great when they have good domain knowledge, so it is not uncommon or unlikely that we would like to see some VP-level people who are building out their first

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Entrepreneurship Education: What DO B-Schools Teach About Venture Capital?

In case you thought otherwise based on the two recent discussions, What B-Schools Don’t Teach You About Venture Capital and Why B-Schools Set Up Entrepreneurs To Fail, I actually strongly believe that financing strategy is a very important piece of entrepreneurship education. Venture Capital MUST be taught at B-schools and even engineering schools trying to

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Venture Capital in India: Ashish Gupta (Part 7)

SM: I think the individual-led incubator model is the best one for India. AG: A lot of these education institutions are hampered by the fact that the quality of mentors to the entrepreneurs is not high. They continue to labor under serious delusions as to what constitutes a business.

Venture Capital in India: Ashish Gupta (Part 5)

SM: What is happening on the retail side? AG: Lots of interesting stuff is happening in retail, financial services, and education. One way to look at India is as a readjustment of a standard of living. Everything that goes into standard of living is in a boom phase.

Venture Capital in India: Ashish Gupta (Part 4)

SM: There was a wave in the category of mobile value-added services. What is your synthesis of that at this point? AG: The biggest challenge for most of the companies at this point is that the carriers choose to keep 85% of the revenue. They expect the startup to put in the capex to get

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Venture Capital in India: Ashish Gupta (Part 3)

SM: What about entertainment? AG: There are a lot of Bollywood and music sites. They have unclear business models, but traffic continues to grow and they are able to pay for themselves. Those continue to flourish.