Quote:
Originally Posted by Shap
Damn just filled out icracked form i got a call within 8 seconds of clicking send. wtf that is nuts.
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iCracked has cashflow that is positive and as far as I know they haven't taken additional investments. As long as you don't royally mess up it shouldn't happen. The worst thing that happens to iCracked is the website and application server go down which occurs once every 2 weeks for a little bit. Sometimes they do get bad part shipments and recalls can be expensive. I still don't know the markup rate for the parts, I'm sure the Asian laborers are working at a very low wage.
What sets them apart from other Y-C investments is they are hardware guys.
They protect themselves by having you make the judgement calls and if you destroy the phone you have to buy it. I haven't done that yet, 240+ repairs, close though.
iTechs (Trademarked) compete for dispatches, you can always call me direct if you want. It's a gamble to rely on the brand or ride it to have instant credibility. They of course do questionable things to us all the time without telling us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shap
This is false from my experience. Times have changed dramatically. A few comments on this paragraph 
#1 I think the failure rate is much higher than 9 in 10. 19 in 20? 29 in 30? It's high.
#2 I don't think any investor in startups has a 50% win on investments in the past 2 years. Why? Because startups now start raising money on an IDEA. Which is completely crazy. 10 years ago you had Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr raising money when they already had proven the business model and had millions of users. It's a very different marketplace right now.
#3 100x is a dream result. I don't think anyone goes into an investment thinking this is a 100x deal. I may be wrong but it's crazy. I've been told this is what you expect when investing in carefully vetted and picked investments.
Make 20 investments.
16 will blow all the money and it's gone.
3 will break even and give you your money (or value) back.
1 will be the home run that pays for it all.
So assume 10k investment in 20 companies. $200,000 invested. $160,000 lost. $30,000 recovered. Then if the home run is 20+ times return you are ahead of things overall. The key (again this is all from what i've researched and been told) is that when you have that 10k home run you then make sure you followup and continue investing in the followup rounds basically doubling down. That's when you go big i guess. For example I have one of my investments that I was in on the companies first round valued at $5,000,000. A year after that investment I was invited into the next round valued at $30,000,000. So clearly company is making big moves and doing the right thing. My initial investment's paper worth already covers this new round. But I would never have got into this round had I not invested the first round. If the company continues their progress I should be able to continue to get in before others not to mention hopefully a pretty sweet exit at some point
#4 YC Funding. I have a very different feeling about the YC funders view their investments. These are guys that have play money on their hands. They killed it on twitter, facebook etc. So these guys now blindly invest in every YC company every term. My thinking is it's a little bit of them giving back, it's a little bit of them pushing the startup economy and it's a lot them gambling and making sure they are in on the next BIG BIG BIG thing. The next Billion $ thing. |
Listen to this podcast:
Marc Andreessen on Venture Capital and the Digital Future | EconTalk | Library of Economics and Liberty
Marc Andreessen discusses the Google founders among other things, talks about the most successful investor(s).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shap
Thanks for the question. Right now I've simply made investments in other companies where I had little to no say in the day to day business decisions. That said I try to invest in companies that are driven by making money. Any company who is pushing an idea or trying to build a user base isn't as interesting to me as a company that has a growing monthly revenue base. I love recurring revenue 
let me know if that answers your question |
Revenue is important. Snapchat, WhatsApp, and so on are uneasy if you are just looking to build a valuation based on the number of users you have.
Start ups are trendy now.
Answered my question, thanks.