Scaling with Angel Money Only in Canada: Joel Lessem, CEO of Firmex (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: That’s an interesting position because venture capitalists manage portfolios. Entrepreneurs manage their life. Your life is not a portfolio. Life is life. You can do one company. If you fail, then it’s writing off a lot of your life.

Joel Lessem: I’ve had a couple of conversations. I once said, “Here’s the problem. We have different economics.” I said to another venture guy who came by, “You’re playing with your career. It’s other people’s money. You’ve got your eggs in 12 different baskets. I’ve got my eggs in one basket. I don’t have the hurdle you have. You have to make your fund on a couple of deals. I just have to make some money.”

Sramana Mitra: For most people, making money doesn’t mean making hundreds of millions of dollars. In a lot of situations, making a couple of millions is a very happy scenario.
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Scaling with Angel Money Only in Canada: Joel Lessem, CEO of Firmex (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: There are tons of unhealthy business practices. Pursuing growth at all cost tends to make people practice unhealthy business practices. We don’t believe in that. We believe in sustainable growth. We are much more in tune with what you’re doing. We actually appreciate what you’re doing. The more fundamental-driven approach is what we promote in our accelerator. Our belief is that over 99% of the entrepreneurs out there actually will never qualify for venture funding. Your TAM is not a venture style TAM, yet with $4 million in capital, you can build a $50 million to $60 million company. What’s wrong with that picture?

Joel Lessem: I employ 80 people here. We’re probably hiring another 20 next year. I’m actually on the Board of an organization called Ace Tech here in Toronto. I helped build it to a 100-member company. I did a survey and half of them are unfunded. Combined, we employ 6,000 people. Obviously, the unfunded ones are generally profitable.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, they have no choice.
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Scaling with Angel Money Only in Canada: Joel Lessem, CEO of Firmex (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me a bit about the verticals where you have good adoption. You have a horizontal platform product. What vertical is your strongest?

Joel Lessem: Investment banking is 30% of our business.

Sramana Mitra: What’s the next one?

Joel Lessem: Law firms are 20%.

Sramana Mitra: Is there any other dominant vertical?

Joel Lessem: Resources are 17%. Life sciences are 12%. >>>

Why Do I Keep Getting NO From Investors?

If you want funding, you need to start with a business that is fundable.  Ask any serious advisor or investor and you will get an absolute truth: 99% of the ideas as they come are NOT fundable.

From here you have only three choices. One is not so smart. The other two are just fine.

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Focus on Sustainable Growth, NOT Growth at All Cost

You may have read my recent piece Billion Dollar Unicorns: Box Struggles in its Public Avatar, where I discussed how this darling of the VCs is finding the public market rather unfriendly:

Their stock is trading at $13.71 with a market capitalization of $1.65 billion. It touched a high of $24.73 soon after listing in January this year. Box had listed on the exchange at $14 a share. As expected, its valuation has fallen since pre-IPO levels. Prior to listing, Box had raised $564.1 million with their last round of $150 million valuing them at $2.4 billion.

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State of the Entrepreneurship Union: The Disease Has Become an Epidemic

I have always been bullish about the spread of entrepreneurship as a global phenomenon. My organization has worked diligently towards propagating the lessons learned from successful entrepreneurs to those coming after, on a global scale. It has been thrilling to watch the world adopt entrepreneurship as a key tool for economic development.

One of my worries have always been that the Silicon Valley disease of equating entrepreneurship with venture capital financing will also spread, corrupting and misleading inexperienced entrepreneurs around the world.

Well, I am very sorry to report that the disease has, indeed, spread.

In fact, it is now an epidemic.

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INDEX: AWARD — Funding International Award Winning Design Startups

By Guest Author Soren Petersen

Design awards are the design profession’s “stamp of approval” for a wide range of new and classic design related offerings. There are hundreds of design awards, each with its own distinct focus and selection criteria such as business, impact, and culture. The most sought-after awards are the IDEA, Red Dot, IF, Compasso d’Oro, and the INDEX: Award. So, might these design winners offer superior investment opportunities? >>>

Public Access to Startup Investments

By Guest Author Soren Petersen

In the United States, for the first time since 1933, you do not have to earn more then $200k annually or be a millionaire to invest in startups. As long as the startup raises less than fifty million dollars annually, anyone can now get into the game at the ground level. >>>