Presentation given at southstart.com.au, oct 2013.

1. What should startups look for in
investors (other than money)?
SouthStartConf 2013
Leni Mayo
@lenidot

2. This question isn’t asked often enough

3. What does Google think?

5. The world is changing

6. Lets assume you are
• An investable startup
• Raising money for sensible reasons
• Tons of caveats … we’ll get to those later

7. The working relationship lasts
longer than the money

8. Interpersonal aspects
• Trust
• Empathy
• Patience
• Adaption
• Perspective
• Mirroring
• Has time, responds

9. Human naturebeing what it is
sometimes,
what we want
isn’t what we need to grow

10. Where am I going to find these
paragons?

11. Positive Signals
• Prior startup founder experience
• Endorsements from other startups

12. Lead Investors vs Followers

13. Lead Investors
• Step up first
• Set the price and terms
• Take a meaningful piece of the round
• (often) represents the round on the board

14. Followers
• Rely on the leader for pricing, terms, diligence
• Are easier to find than leaders

15. Reputation
“If I had a startup and Steve Jobs wanted to
invest in it, I'd give him the stock for $10, just
to be able to brag that he was an investor”
– Paul Graham, “How to fund a startup”, 2006

16. Megaphone

17. During Courtship
• Where are we heading (vision)?
• How are we going to get there (route)?
– steps along the way: profitability, growth?
– need / want more capital down the road?

18. Caveats

19. Aussie startup thought
leadership comes out of USA

20. Don’t drink the koolade!
(Your circumstances and ecosystem are
different)

21. Media
VC
Accelerators

22. In Australia
Raised money early:
• Seek
• FreeLancer
• TechnologyOne
Bootstrapped:
• 99designs
• CampaignMonitor
• HalfBrick
• (Internode, iinet, Northern Territory? Tasmania ?)

23. What’s right for you?

24. Credits
@chrisdahl
@ivanlim
@jamessmacgregor
@michaeldewildt
@shandsaker
@sw
@tomhoward

25. Questions?
@lenidot
moniker.net