Premature scaling can kill your business.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Here’s a lesson from experience. Venture capitalists sometimes make an error in directing their portfolio company CEOs to push resources to the limit and scale [...]
Five ways to make and execute a great plan
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus It is all about execution. Waiting over a year to see results is too long, since your chance of mid-course correction is greatly reduced. To [...]
How big is your ocean? A lesson in TAM, SAM & SOM
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Is this a problem or an opportunity? This insight is like a Hans Christian Anderson parable, but aimed at you and your business… There are [...]
The four rules for motivating your employees with money.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus We’ve debated this one forever it seems. Should be overwhelm prospective employees with stock options and perks? Or concentrate our available resources on just [...]
VC investors: Don’t be greedy even if you can.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus First, the marginal exit event: Sometimes the end game or sale of the company is not a happy event for the early investors, including the [...]
Is there gold in your old intellectual property?
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Digging through your IP closet for gold… In past years, several times a month I’d have lunch with one of my CEOs, and each [...]
Budget from the top down or bottom up? A puzzle.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Here’s the argument: Many people believe that bottom-up budgeting leads to waste and misdirection. The advocates of top-down budgeting are strong in their belief [...]
Patent litigation can kill the small guy.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Here’s the bright side to patents. When you think of patents, you think of added value to the corporation in the form of protection [...]
Jeff Bezos asked a question that blew me away!
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Here’s the question: This piece of wisdom came from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, during a board meeting for one of the companies where [...]
My hard-earned lessons from negative exits.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus In my life as an early-stage investor, I’ve been closely involved with so many businesses, there were bound to be numerous stories of actual [...]
Why your investors may not respond when you need money
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus When do most companies communicate? Early stage company investors as a group have a common gripe – almost universal. Information flows from the company [...]
TCA Investors Net All Cash Gain of 5x with Discover Echo — Innovative Microscopy Company Acquisition
By John Harbison, TCA Chairman emeritus Tech Coast Angels’ San Diego network first saw at its 2016 Quick Pitch competition what Discover Echo’s Revolve microscope could do: the company won [...]
Will you BURN the next manager you hire?
by Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus It seems to be a rule, not an exception. Many senior managers and early entrepreneurs create their own mess with this one. The first [...]
Are the “FIVE WHY’S” in your arsenal?
by Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus This is a trick headline. There can be three “whys” or twenty, depending upon the issue and the responses. To make the point, the [...]
47x Return for Companion Medical is Fourth Highest Exit in TCA History
By John Harbison, TCA Chairman emeritus TCA members who invested in the Series A Round of Companion Medical in 2014 realized a 58x return when the company was acquired by [...]
Do you even know what questions to ask?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Great executives and managers seem to intuitively know what they don’t know. But it is not at all uncommon to not even [...]
Reduce five risks: Increase your valuation
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Why five risks? In the creation of a young company, there are five principal risks to be addressed by the entrepreneur. Professional [...]
Leadership for the Pandemic and the New Normal
By Dan Rosen, Tech Coast Angels member and Chair of Alliance of Angels The COVID-19 Pandemic has caused every startup to assess how to survive and plan to thrive in [...]
How Angel Investors Survive the COVID-19 Economic Crisis
By Dan Rosen, member Tech Coast Angels and Founder of Alliance of Angels After publishing my companion piece, “How Startups Survive the COVID-19 Economic Crisis” in this blog on March [...]
What’s the minimum information to give your fellow investors?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Every investor wants regular information from companies taking their money. And most of us investors are frustrated by the lack of regular [...]
How much of a business should go to investors?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Financial History and Projections Let’s start with the basics. If you are investing in a going business with a track record of [...]
Could the company have created a “dirty cap table?”
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Oh, I know. When an entrepreneur started the business, s/he took investments from friends and family in small amounts just to get [...]
Think ahead when raising early investment rounds
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Some businesses just can’t fit within the angel capital or friends and family model for raising funds. Sooner or later you may [...]
What to Expect on Timing of Outcomes in an Angel Portfolio
By John Harbison, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels As one gets into angel investment, it is important to have realistic expectations on how long it takes to see exits, and [...]
Oh, go ahead and ask for a five-million-dollar investment in your startup.
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels I cannot tell you how many times I have seen executive summaries of business plans in which the entrepreneur seeks $5,000,000 to [...]
Seed is the New Series A, and Series A is the New B
By John Harbison, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels More money is being raised before Series A, and companies which receive Series A rounds are further along in terms of being [...]
Investors, the board, and you: Who controls strategy?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels You’re building a company from your vision and a passion, and lots of people are going to tell you that you have [...]
How do you pay an early stage board?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Give one percent equity to each outside board member vesting over four years of service. Many early stage CEOs and board members [...]
Selling a portfolio business? Find the emotional buyer
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels This is one of my favorite insights, since I lived this one in a positive exit from my computer business. Types of [...]
Timing is everything in a sale.
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels
Almost anyone who has sold a company has a story to tell about their good deal, the 
problems with the buyer, a last-minute change of terms, or more.
I have saved this next story until now because it is one of my favorites, and certainly illustrates the point about timing being a combination of luck and skill as well as anything I could devise from fiction.… Read the rest