Seraf Investor Compass

Angel Investing by the Numbers: Valuation, Capitalization and Startup Economics

In the sport of Major League Baseball, the greatest hitters are those who get a hit just one out of every three times at bat and a home run 5 or 6 times out of 100 at bats. In the world of startup company investing, the best-known investors are those who invest in the...

Scavenger Hunt: What To Look For In A Pitch Deck

Deciding whether to invest in a good idea is hard. Even when its potential is clearly explained. Trying to make that evaluation without a solid explanation is an exercise in needless frustration. I’ve talked about the role of a compelling executive summary to get an...

Scavenger Hunt: What To Look For In A Pitch Deck

Apples, Oranges and Rotten Tomatoes: Owning A Diverse Portfolio

I believe building a diverse portfolio is critical to success as an angel investor. But when I first sat down to write an article on diversification of angel investments, I knew right away I was facing a serious challenge. Numerous articles have been written on...

Angel Fundamentals: Understanding Equity Deal Terms – Mapping Key Deal Terms to Key Investor Concerns

As part of our ongoing series on early stage deal terms, in this article we are going to take a close look at the individual term sheet provisions and make sense of them by assigning them to the categories where they belong: Deal Economics; Investor Rights/Protection;...

Emerging Fund Managers Webinar

We hosted a webinar featuring Emerging Fund Managers, where panelists discussed key strategies for successfully launching and managing new funds.

Angel Fundamentals: Understanding Equity Deal Terms – Introduction

Active angels work with term sheets regularly, but not every investor fully understands the sometimes arcane language in these highly-specialized documents. What are term sheets, what do they signify, and why are they so important? If you will walk through this short...

You Can’t Improve What You Don’t Measure – How Tracking Key Performance Indicators Propels Action

Measuring and monitoring performance runs in parallel with managing every type of business. Many organizations rely on high level financial statements to show year over year changes and business trends in order to plan for the future. But relatively infrequent and...

How to Avoid the Closing Package from Hell

The moment of truth has arrived: it is time to close the round. The deal lead and founders worked hard together to line up investors, negotiate terms, work through deal documents and disclosure schedules, and track down every last detail of cap tables. As usual it...

Learning the Hard Way – Due Diligence Mistakes

It is easy to talk about due diligence in the abstract, but it is much harder to practice what you preach. One of the hardest things about early stage investing is that it is really risky - if you don’t have some suspension of disbelief, and you obsess too much about...