Chapter 18: 提问与倾听

投资者问自己的问题

  1. Why has this founder chosen this business?
  2. How commited is this founder?
  3. What are this founder’s chances of succeeding in this business - and in life?
  4. What does winning look like in terms of revenue and my return?

    大耳朵小嘴巴

    You want to have big ears and a small mouth in these meetings. You want to ask concise questions that take no more than a couple of seconds and then listen deeply to the answers, considering them with every fiber of your consciousness as you write your notes on paper—just like Columbo.

    投资者问创始人的问题 - 策略性问题

  5. What are you working on?
  6. Why are you doing this?
  7. Why now? (Why will this idea succeed now?)
  8. What’s your unfair advantage? (What makes you uniquely qualified to pursue this busines? What secrets do you know that will help you beat both the incumbents and your fast followers?) Sometimes, founders will not have an answer for this question. And that’s okay. This is one you often end up answering while looking in the rearview mirror.

Chapter 19: 战术性问题

  1. Tell me about the competition.
  2. How do you make money?
  3. How much do you charge customers?
  4. How much does your average customer spend?
  5. Tell me the top three reasons why this business might fail.

Example answers for AirBnb might be:

  1. Hotels and HomeAway are our two biggest competitors. Hotels and HomeAway are both much more expensive—typically two to three times more expensive—than an Airbnb.
  2. We take a transaction fee.
  3. We take 3 percent from the host and charge a 10 percent fee from the guest.
  4. Our average stay is 1.7 nights, with a total charge of $225, of which we keep about $40.
  5. Regulations are our biggest challenge, finding inventory is our second-biggest challenge, and having a consistent, high-quality experience is our third-biggest challenge.

Chapter 20: 放弃是最常见创业失败的原因

The number one reason a startup shuts down is not actually running out of money, which is what most people believe. The number one reason a startup fails is that the founder gives up.

Chapter 21: 投资已经有产品的公司与估值

When you’re evaluating deals at the earliest stages of a startup’s life, there is not a lot of data to go on. You can put angel investing into two basic buckets: pre-traction and post-traction.

Pre-traction means the product doesn’t have users or revenue. In the pre-traction bucket, you will hear investors discuss startups in various phases of progress including, roughly from early to later: back of the napkin, basic research, business plan, mock-ups, functional prototype, MVP (minimum viable product), beta testing, and stealth mode.

Simply put, there are enough companies that have product/market fit, some traction, and some angel investors but need more capital to finish their mission. “Those are the startups you need to focus on with these first thirty angel investments. You want the people who are doing it, not the people talking about maybe doing it after you fund them.

Another great technique is to simply ask the founder, “Is that valuation set in stone?” and just listen. Perhaps they, like countless startups in the past, will come back to you in a couple of weeks, after their round didn’t materialize, and have a different number in mind. This is a marketplace and valuations can go up and down, but valuations are not as important as understanding who the other investors are, how the business is doing, who the customers are, and who’s on the team.