Seraf Investor Compass

The customer council is one of the best kept secrets of product management and company strategy. Unlike an advisory board, with specialists who often have a closer relationship with the company or even a personal relationship to the CEO, a customer council consists of...

Travel to almost any part of the world these days and you are likely to run into clusters of entrepreneurship. Whether you are located in a hotbed of technology like Silicon Valley, a huge emerging market such as China, or in the ancient city of Byblos, chances are...

Networking is often cited as a core skill for entrepreneurs.  But it is just as important for angel investors, whose job it is to help connect their companies to the people, resources and customers they need to succeed. Most investors have some or all of their...

Running a successful board meeting requires planning and discipline. Which in turn requires some experience and some guidelines. Without this preparation, you will waste precious time focusing on the wrong things. To help you orchestrate great board meetings, we...

We’ve all experienced pedantic people try to make their points by browbeating the listener. And we’ve all been frustrated by repetitive or long-winded people who just cannot get to the point. We just tune them out. They are not effective, whether in person or in...

Investors supporting startups in difficult economic times are frequently called on to give advice to CEOs trying to cope. Financial issues like the cash-out date and how to raise money are always central questions, but reducing financial burn for a pre- or...

Having evaluated four common methods for valuing early stage companies in a previous article, it's time to take a closer look at the Seraf Method which builds on everything great that has come before it (with the debt of gratitude acknowledged!), but adds key...

In addition to articles and eBooks, the Seraf Compass makes various tools and checklists available for anyone to use. An area of diligence we talk a lot about is assessing the market and verifying customer demand. To help guide our investors through that process we...

In our previous article on recruiting new board directors, we discuss the importance of adding key skills to your board. Most early stage companies have a 3 or 5 member board. It’s not unusual for one or two of these board seats to remain unfilled after a company...

Why do web and software businesses seem to get investment traction while real, down-to-earth business and manufacturing-intensive companies flounder to raise capital? It has to do with the type of investor model involved. The investor model has to match the type of...