Archive for July 2016

By: Elizabeth Usovicz, Principal of WhiteSpace Consulting, as part of a series she writes for ACA aimed at entrepreneurs, "Your Pitch is Just the Beginning."

What is growth hacking? Many startup founders aspire or claim to be growth hackers, but the term’s meaning has lost precision since it was first used six years ago. Like “bandwidth,” the word “hacking” has mainstreamed into popular culture and is often used to describe a shortcut in food, fashion and life in general. Growth hacking for startups is not an easily duplicated quick fix. Investor and entrepreneur Paul Singh noted at a 1 Million Cups meeting in Kansas City that “Everyone wants to read about growth hacking...[but] by the time the growth hacker actually writes the growth hack out, there’s no yield anymore.” 

By: Solomon Brenner, member of Keiretsu Forum Mid-Atlantic and Managing Director at Startup2angel

This post originally appeared on Startup2angel.

The guru of due diligence reports, the man known for thorough research and reconnaissance at Kieretsu is Howard Lubert. At one point, he took a look at some of his investments and compared them to others that were more successful and he found one consistent pattern that determined whether a venture was successful or not that went beyond the due diligence report. It came down to people:

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of state securities regulators with leaders of different parts of our securities markets in the US and Canada to compare notes.  Not only do I admire the regulators for holding meetings such as this, but I learned a great deal about some of our newest types of securities – equity crowdfunding for everyone and Regulation A (Reg A+ for short).

By agreement of all attendees, I can’t share some specifics of who said what, but let me share some of my general takeaways from the NASAA Capital Formation Roundtable about equity crowdfunding:

  • Anyone can invest in equity crowdfunding offerings via two mechanisms:  1) at the federal level “Regulation Crowdfunding” opened for American citizens on May 16 and 2) “intrastate crowdfunding” allows for state residents to invest in businesses in that state.  Currently 34 states have approved intrastate crowdfunding and 29 are currently online

By: Matt Dunbar, co-founder of the South Carolina Angel Network and managing director of the Upstate Carolina Angel Network.

This post originally appeared in Upstate Business Journal.

On Father’s Day weekend, I indulged a bit in watching the last round of the U.S. Open golf tournament and the last game of the NBA Finals. My lovely wife, who doesn’t exactly share my interest in sports (other than college football), opined that she found the sports to be boring — except right at the end when you find out who’s going to win.

Matt Dunbar contributed to this article. He is the co-founder of the South Carolina Angel Network and managing director of the Upstate Carolina Angel Network.

This post originally appeared in Upstate Business Journal.

Risky business

Investing in startups is not for the faint of heart. These businesses are just beginning to develop, and their expenses typically exceed their revenue. In fact, most of them will fail.

But you could find yourself sitting on a goldmine. Case in point: Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. He invested about $100,000 in Google just months after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created the tech giant in their garage.

Bechtolsheim is now worth about $3 billion. That could be you.

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