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Chris Borland, NFL Top Rookie, Retires amid Concussions Controversy
ESPN reported that Chris Borland is retiring after one year, giving up over $500,000 in salary, citing head injuries as the primary concern. The NFL may be a non-profit, but its member teams are all businesses. It makes me think of one of the shortcomings of business. Normally I would argue that business is the principal framework […]
Angel Investors in Boston
ArtistBomb, Inc. has not pitched in front of any investor or group of angel investors in Boston. We’ve had plenty of practice, and plenty of one-on-one conversations with mentors and gatekeepers. Their questions and comments have surprised me. These folks aren’t what I thought. The Investor Spectrum At the far “conservative” end you have Ben […]
Does it Matter How Founders Split Startup Equity?
Ask the question, “How should founders split startup equity?” and you will most likely receive a hand-wavy answer. Some offer blanket statements like, “The programmer should get at least 30%.” Others offer calculators or other arbitrary measures. These answers have never satisfied me. Before I offer a more rigorous approach, I’d like to play Devil’s Advocate […]
Elevator Pitch at Boston ENET
Last Tuesday I had the chance to give an elevator pitch for ArtistBomb at Boston ENET. (The pitch was recorded, so I can post a link if it gets uploaded somewhere.) I’d like to share the formula I used so that you can adapt it for your own work. What’s the Goal of an Elevator […]
Two Must-Join Networking Groups for New or Aspiring Boston Entrepreneurs
About a year ago I left Terrafugia and launched myself solo into Boston’s entrepreneurship scene. The advice given to me by a distant mentor was “find some local entrepreneurship resources and get involved.” I started by Googling. I was amazed by how much exists in Boston. Two groups in particular have earned a lot of […]
Steely Eyes Toward the Future: Why POSCO is My Favorite Stock
(The following was written on July 25 as the first part of an entry to the Value Investing Challenge. It was just an exercise, as I didn’t meet the criteria for entry. I never developed the figures to go along with the text. Maybe you’ll find it useful. Remember that it’s not about the stock, […]
What the Market Thinks about North Korea
Is South Korea going to be attacked? Well, we can get a sense for market opinion by analogy with World War II. Back in 2004, Financial History Review published an article correlating market events with World War II events. In particular, they looked at the prices of Nazi German bonds and Belgian bonds. Below is […]
The Surprising Math Behind Startup Dilution
This recently blew my mind, so I thought I’d share some simple math with you. Imagine an investor wants to invest in your startup. He says it’s worth $1 million and he wants to invest $500,000. He’s going to take half your company, right? Wrong. He’s going to take one third. At least, that’s the […]
