Archives / October, 2013

Is the cost of starting a business less than zero?

There has been a well documented and discussed deep decline in the cost to start a technology business over the past ~ 15 years. From the days where every website was custom and each site element was a de novo build to today where virtual servers are easily and cheaply spun up and down and where frameworks exist for just about every feature and functionality that you could imagine building, the cost of starting a tech business has gone from $5-$10M to maybe $50k or less. It’s a remarkable trend and one of several key factors driving the Democratization of Entrepreneurship. But is it possible that the cost of starting a tech business has fallen to less than zero? In…

Getting our Angel List On

In the news/hype cycle of venture and start-ups it’s rare when a single news item captures the attention of the entire community, even for a few days, let alone 3 or 4. But AngelList‘s announcement of “Syndicates” has done just that. And it was pretty fun to watch the reactions which ranged from: “this is stupid” to “this will kill venture investing as we know it” to “this will change angel investing forever” to everything in between (see for example, AngelList Syndicates Will Also Pit Angel Against Angel, The Great Venture Capital Rotation, Leading vs. Following, Some Thoughts on the Big AngelList Deal, and Is @AngelList Syndicates Really Such a Big Deal?) Of course none of these writers know exactly…