The Full Ratchet: Vc | Venture Capital | Angel Investors | Startup Investing | Fundraising | Crowdfunding | Pitch | Private E

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: -Christine Tsai -John Greathouse -Lindel Eakman   Each investor describes a situation where they did decide to invest, what the key factors were that led to “Yes” and how that investment has worked out.   To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

Bilal Zuberi of Lux Capital joins Nick to discuss Startup Moats. In this episode, we cover: An overview of moats Example companies with moats How to build a monopoly from the outset and if Bilal requires in startups he invests in Incremental vs. step-change innovation and the implications on the breadth and depth of the moat The types of moats Bilal's take on data and network effect-based moats using a business model as a moat His thoughts on building brand as a sustainable competitive advantage How NPS score plays a role An example where Bilal thought there was a moat but it proved not to have the defensibility predicted And finally I get Bilal's take on Lux's investment strategy, their portfolio and how they are building value in the water, on the ground, in the air and even up in space   To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

Vic Pascucci of Lightbank joins Nick to discuss New Founders, New Stages, New Offerings-- The Only Constant in Venture is Change. In this episode, we cover: Where'd you get your start in venture and how'd your path lead to Lightbank? Can you walk us through the Lightbank backstory... before you joined? What's the current thesis and investment focus for the firm? How active a role do you play with portfolio companies? What, if anything, do you think the team at Lightbank can do a better job of going forward? Do you think your approach is different than Eric and Brad's? Recently spoke w/ Semil Shah about the multiple stages, within seed... pre-seed, seed, inst seed, post seed, seed extension. WTF is going on with the seed round? There's been an explosion of seed funds... do you think this is a problem? Is there a bubble at seed or, w/ the way barriers to startup have come down, is the influx of capital warranted? I'm noticing entrepreneurs moving away from SAFEs and Convertibles... are you seeing the same? If

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: Adam Draper Chris Farmer Mark Suster Each investor highlights a situation where they decided not to invest, why they passed, and how it played out.   To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

Madhavan Ramanujam of Simon-Kutcher & Partners joins Nick to discuss Monetization Strategy & Why Price Trumps Product. In this episode, we cover: What's the backstory and how did you develope this monetization expertise? What VC firms and/or investors have you worked with? What's the most common missteps that innovators make? What are the 4 types of innovation fails? I want to talk about your three key rules for monetizing new products: Having the WTP conversation early, Investigating how to charge not just what to charge and not settling for one-size fits all... Let's start w/ the WTP conversation, walk us through this point and the three questions one should ask? Essentially, are you suggesting that startups run a conjoint analysis to see what features customers want and how much they'll pay or is it more than that? How do the results inform the pricing strategy? Is this the Van Westendorp methodology, if not, how's it different? Talk more about the second rule... Investigating how to charge, not j

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: David Verrill Galen Mason Jason Calacanis   To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

Zach Coelius of joins Nick to discuss Investing in Rocket Ships Before they Take Off, Part 1. We address questions including: His Path to investing The Biggest difference between entrepreneur Zach vs. the entrepreneur Zach invests in? Best lesson from his startup, Triggit? Right place, right time... how do you apply to investing? Top 3 characteristics you look for in founders? Great entrepreneur... bad idea/bad market... how do you proceed? How about with founders that aren't quite ready yet for funding? How did you get your start on AL? Strengths of Syndication Process? Krypto Labs in Abu Dhabi- major takeaways, thoughts on crypto & ICOs? Early exits... do you take them when you get the option?  At what amount/multiple do you take money off the table Lessons from poker that you apply to investing?   To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: Andrew Parker Niki Scevak Bryce Roberts Charles Hudson Each investor illustrates a critical lesson learned about startup investing and how it's changed their approach.

Semil Shah of Haystack joins Nick to discuss First Institutional VC Fund Raised-- Key Learnings, Part 1. We address questions including: Maybe we can start off with how your investment focus has evolved since the last time you joined us. What are your thoughts on how seed has split into pre-seed, seed, seed extension, and post seed? Are you investing once with a company or reserving for these various stages within seed? You just closed fund 3... tell us about the first two funds that set the stage. Would you do things differently if you could go back? Which raise was the hardest? How did the expectations of LPs change from the early funds to the institutional fund? What surprised you most about the raise? Did you connect w/ prospectives through referrals, cold calls, a combination? Walk us through the metrics... how many targets, meetings, avg commitment amt, etc. Did you ever think you might not complete the raise? What's the best advice you got on the raise and who'd you get it from? In our first interview

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: -Ben Einstein -Ezra Galston & Stuart Larkins -David Cowan Each investor discusses sectors, drivers and/or trends that may have significant impact in the future and are potentially positioned for outsized-returns.   To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

Guy Turner of Hyde Park Venture Partners joins Nick to cover founder profiles and the characteristics that lead to the strongest startups. We address questions including: You've observed over 50 startups, across your portfolio, and have written extensively about founder profiles. What are the two high-level categories of characteristics that you've observed? Within the inspection characteristics category... what are the three dimensions that matter most? The first two modes seem to differ primarily on the experience dimension... what are the two modes and what are their strengths and weaknesses? Mode 3 you call the exec turned founder.... and mode 4 seems to have the ingredients for big outcomes or big flameouts. Walk us through each of these and their defining characteristics. We've discussed four modes, but based on your framework there should be eight. What about the other four modes? Do you think modes 1 and 2 work better for all investors or just HPVP? Dealflow filtering and evaluation... can you use th

In today's special segment the following investors are featured: Chris Olsen Jay Acunzo Mike Collett

Today we publish part two of the interview with Chris Farmer of Signal Fire Ventures. In this segment we address: Why he's using Beacon to make VC investments when their are numerous other applications that may have more economic value How he's created an engaged, active advisor network that are also LPs in the fund What characteristics the best advisors share Chris' thoughts on the surge in micros VCs and how that has impacted the asset class Chris' advice for founders raising initial capital Wrap-up of Key Takeaways & a Tip of the Week Guest Links: Signal Fire Ventures Chris on Twitter Signal Fire on Twitter Techcrunch Article:  Watch Out, VCs: Chris Farmer Plans To Massively Disrupt The Industry Part 1 of the interview w/ Chris Key Takeaways: 1- Deconstructing Beacon   Beacon is a connected platform that starts w/ sourcing but also does monitoring, context, diligence, syndication and most importanty, per Chris, portfolio support.  It's a data platform that looks like a Bloomberg terminal for the

Chris Farmer of Signal Fire Ventures joins Nick to discuss his firm and their platform, Beacon, a robust data engine that reveals the best sector, market and startup investment areas. We address questions including: Can you start off with the firm's thesis and your main focus at SignalFire? You talk about the four big founder pain points that you've observed... what are they?. Number one pain point is Hiring top engineers...  Tell us about his Data platform, Beacon, and how it addresses this pain point? Sourcing and analysis tool that helps show you where to focus? Can you give me an example of what you see when you look at a sector, sub-sector or even at the company level? Does this data really exist with very early-stage startups or nascent sectors, before they've really emerged and have traction? Sources? I've worked for companies that had a difficult time getting one database to talk to another.  Can you really source unstructured data, from limitless sources and structure it in a way where it's streaml

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following investors are featured: Nathan Benaich Ethan Kurzweil Jonathon Triest & Brett DeMarrais Each investor describes their investment thesis and how they evaluate startups for investment.   To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

Welcome back to TFR for another Cram Session. In these special releases, we have aggregated the takeaways and tips from previous episodes. In this installment, we will be recapping the following episodes: 87. Fintech Investing, Part 1 (Sheel Mohnot) 88. Fintech Investing, Part 2 (Sheel Mohnot) 90. SpaceX & Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars, Part 1 (Tim Urban) 91. SpaceX & Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars, Part 2 (Tim Urban) 93. What’s Wrong with Venture? Part 1 (Dave McClure) 94. What’s Wrong with Venture? Part 2 (Dave McClure)   To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.  

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following investors are featured: Jordan Nof Pete Wilkins Anand Sanwal Each investor highlights a situation where they decided to invest in a startup and why they said yes.           To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

UILabs recently hosted a panel of IoT experts to discuss the future roadmap for IoT.  I moderated the discussion and the panel included: Ben Forgan, CEO of Hologram Brenna Berman, Executive Director of City Digital, UI Labs Jenny Fielding, Managing Director, Techstars IoT Jim Gagnard, CEO of SmartSignal (acquired by... GE).    To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following investors are featured: - William Mougayar - Sheel Mohnot - David Cowan Each investor highlights a situation where they decided not to invest, why they passed, and how it played out.           To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following investors are featured: - Tom Tunguz - Mark Peter Davis - Adam Draper - Lindel Eakman Each investor illustrates a critical lesson learned about startup investing and how it’s changed their approach.             To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.