Focus. It's powerful to do just one thing and pour all your energy into it.
— Gil Penchina
I was one of the early folks at eBay, and by 1999, it was completely overrun by consultants from McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. It went from being a cool, fun startup to an MBA factory.
All I do is talk to people, email people, take meetings with people, and do interviews. Then I work at maintaining relationships with my investors because the trust people place in me is my business model.
Startups are all about breaking the rules and changing the 'natural order' of things. So let's do that for Series A terms.
Any ICO going forward that doesn't use a 'Ticketmaster-style' queueing engine is clearly trying to ruin the ecosystem.
Ethereum is enabling a new form of financing in ICOs that is like a massive gravitational pull - dragging every entrepreneur with a sense for opportunity into its blackhole-level gravity.
Along the way, I learned the key to launching a company. It's all about storytelling.
Buying a banner, you have no control whether ten different people see your ad once, or one person sees it ten times.
Whether someone wants to learn the words to a new Lady Gaga song they heard on the radio or to verify the lyrics to 'Blinded by the Light', the LyricWiki community delivers.
A mistake I've made is investing in my idea rather than the entrepreneur's. Sometimes I'm excited about an idea that is similar to the entrepreneur's idea - but not the same. A smart entrepreneur will convince me it is the same, until I write a check!
You're under tremendous pressure, and everyone needs you to be perfect all the time, and that often creates a perverse incentive to not tell the truth. Please remember - when you get caught not telling the truth, it's over.
I started angel investing because I like hanging out with entrepreneurs.
While seed deals have gotten easy, Series A negotiations still often feel like the death of 1,000 cuts.
Mobile was Internet 2.0. It changed everything. Crypto is Internet 3.0.
It's clear to me now that Ethereum is the new currency of the Internet. It's way ahead of where Paypal was in its day, and it's much more exciting to its customers than Paypal ever was.
When trying to start a company, your enemy isn't criticism, anger or insults. Your enemy is apathy.
It is obvious that the Internet has become such a video-driven entity. With broadband becoming ubiquitous, viewers and advertisers are looking for professional-quality videos.
Now you can create your own Q&A site and be recognized as an expert on any topic you're passionate about in a way that is fast and easier than starting a new website.
There are lot of ways people get non-economic payback - learning, networking, and relationships. These drive most angels more than the money.
Momentum begets momentum, and the best way to start is to start.
Crypto today is a libertarian paradise. If you send your money to the wrong place, it's gone. If you send it to a merchant and don't receive the goods, you have no recourse. This is cash. Treat it as such.
When I participate in a Series A deal with VCs, entrepreneur-friendly terms go out the window. VCs remain attached to age-old traditional industry terms. 'Ratchet,' 'carry,' 'vetoes' - you name it.
When I first started as an angel investor, I was excited to start investing in startups - but I didn't know much. I couldn't tell the good ones from the bad; I didn't understand all these venture capital terms, so I would invest somewhat blindly.
For merchants, it is an amazing opportunity. Compared to Paypal, crypto has no credit card fees, no charge backs, no 'Oops, we decided to hold your cash for 3-12 months while we investigate something we can't disclose.'
I've been lucky enough to be involved in a number of great startups, including eBay and Wikia as an entrepreneur and LinkedIn and Paypal as an investor.
In the U.S., Wikia has content sponsorships with top brands, including Blizzard Activision, Sony, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, ABC Television and others.
