Nuggets from our recent Angel Investment panel in Boston

I recently organized a little event around Angellist with our friends Nate and Boaz at HTML5 stalwarts Bocoup.� We had invited Nivi (angellist founder) to town for our annual meeting and this event but he underwent a root canal surgery instead and could not make it over.��

So we got together a ?last minute yet great? group of people:

• Steve Kane, repeat entrepreneur and founder of LuckyLabs
• Jeff Fagnan, angel and venture capitalist, first money behind VentureHacks
• Mark Jung, repeat entrepreneur, chairman of Songbird, ex COO Fox Interative, founder of IGN etc etc
• Judy Obermayer, Golden Seeds and Launchpad member
• Scott Kirsner with his usual flair and style did a great moderation job.

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The highlights are well worth a listen, in particular if you want to listen to:

• why Angellist is the reference marketplace for early-stage funding, moving from a simple VC hack blog to a true lean product company
• the blurring of angel and venture
• how the fundamental shift in velocity means traditional angel club methods are probably dead or in need of drastic evolution
• why Jeff Fagnan would have funded Dan and Brian at Norgard at Namesake even if they were selling steakknives
• how Bubs at colourLOVERS raised 90% of his funding through Angellist (even though he was a YC grad)
• how Steve Kane is not really Jeff Fagnan?s older brother, they just do yoga together
• why Friends and Family money is not always the best idea
• why VC?s sometimes destroy you and why raising money is a zero sum game
• why you better know what you?re going to do with that first $100K
• why convertible debt is really equity

I want to tip my hat to Steve Kane here for some really heartfelt and important observations, including thinking about success with a long-term perspective (and not confusing fundraising with success), what matters, why your tradeoffs as a founder are fundamentally different from anyone else?s.

Panel Highlights (16 mins)

Angel Investing Panel - Highlights - 201105 by fdestin

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And if you really cannot get enough below is the full length video

Angel Investing - BoCoupAtlas Panel - 201105 by fdestin

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