Angel Investing/Venture Funds: March 2006 Archives

Today, my partner went down to Wall Street to meet with a banking buddy of his.

Somehow, he got wind of our venture fund, Neuron Ventures. And it's now the buzz of him and his Wall Street friends. Apparently, they are really excited about what we're doing and how we're doing it. Wonders of wonders.

Not sure why that happened. But I would think it's a good thing that the word is out about us and it could help us if, when we meet them, they know about us already and have already did their research on us.

Colleges - a place where our future generations emerge and develop the new and cool.

Nowhere is this more true than for Web products and services.

We, who have been through the Internet boom/bust years, are now in our 30s and 40s. We have fused the internet into our lives, but we did not grow up with it. We had to integrate it slowly, deliberately, and smartly throwing away old habits...or not. Sometimes we can't let go of the old ways of doing things because we're old farts.

On the other hand, the teens and tweens of today have grown up knowing only the Internet in their lives. They have used every bit of it and have no experience of life without it.

A growing belief is that this generation is really where the next generation Web products will emerge. They see and experience the Internet in ways that we are too old to know. And thus, they can see holes and opportunities in the spectrum of Web services that we can't.

We need to tap into this resource and nurture the next set of great entrepreneurs. College internships? Consulting gigs? Or even simple conversations? All of these and more can be utilized to really figure out what products and services will be necessary and vital for the future Net generations.

PPM= Private Placement Memorandum.

A long document describing what we're offering and what the terms are for investors. It's got a ton of legalese and some basic language too. We lucked out by hiring a boutique law firm in NYC who only works on venture funds. They also were able to put together a PPM which was very easy to read even though it has the usual disclaimers and such.

It took a little time to work this out. So many little details on what we are selling to potential investors, but I suspect that we took less time than most.

We wanted to be very standard and not do anything unusual which could raise uncomfortable questions amongst our investors. I figure this saved us a couple of weeks for sure.

In any case, we're done and ready to go sign up investors!