by John Harbison, TCA Venture Group Chairman Emeritus (originally published by the Angel Capital Association in their Data Insights Series) In conducting due diligence for early stage companies, we often [...]
Richard Austin is the CEO of Reglagene, a therapeutics company developing brain-penetrating medicines to make breakthroughs in brain cancer treatments. In Today’s “How Did You Do It?” we sat down [...]
by John Harbison, TCA Chairman Emeritus (originally published by the Angel Capital Association in their Data Insights Series) We all know that investing in early-stage companies is a very risky [...]
Jerome Tse (J) is the founder and CEO of Berri Organics, a southern california company creating all natural, organic electrolyte products. In today’s ‘How Did You Do It?’ We sat [...]
Single Pass is a local OC company solving the unique problem physicians face when conducting biopsies. David Friedman was the Deal Lead for Single Pass. In today’s “Angel’s Angle”, David [...]
Bill Colone is the CEO of Single Pass, is a local Orange County company solving the unique problem physicians face when conducting biopsies. In today’s ‘How Did You Do It?’ [...]
Sebastian Amengual is the co-founder and CTO of YBVR, a virtual reality (VR) software company creating immersive virtual experiences for sports fans around the globe. In today’s ‘How Did You [...]
Chris Wentz (CW) is the founder and CEO of Everykey, a company solving the $2 trillion per year problem of password mismanagement. In today’s ‘How Did You Do It?’ We [...]
by John Harbison, TCA Chairman Emeritus (originally published by the Angel Capital Association in their Data Insights Series) We all collectively dodged a bullet after the collapse of Silicon Valley [...]
Anca Copaescu (AC) is the founder and CEO of Strategikon Pharma, a SaaS company streamlining key processes in the pharmaceutical industry. In today’s ‘How Did You Do It?’, we sat [...]
Ben Mones is the Founder and CEO of Fama, a SaaS company revolutionizing the hiring process. Mones has transformed Fama into a hyper-growth operation with a lean business model. In today’s [...]
Steve Kochan is the Founder and CEO of Comfreight, a FinTech SaaS company. He is a former freight consultant who has transformed Comfreight from a weekend side project to an [...]
by John Harbison, TCA Chairman Emeritus (originally published by the Angel Capital Association in their Data Insights Series) We all know that investing in startup companies is inherently risky. Over [...]
David Perry is the Founder and CEO of Carro, an Orange County SaaS company revolutionizing e-commerce. Their tagline is: “Sell more Together.” Perry’s previous company sold to Sony PlayStation for [...]
By Girard Miller, Tech Coast Angels Orange County Angel Member and Investor The collapse of SVB bank has left a huge air-pocket in the startup economy. Although others will eventually [...]
by John Harbison, Chairman Emeritus of Tech Coast Angels (originally published by the Angel Capital Association in their Data Insights Series) Early-Stage investing is inherently cyclical, and for the first [...]
By Noela Tuquero, TCA Marketing Jay Cormier is the founder and CEO of Eyedaptic, an Orange County based augmented reality (AR) eyewear company helping individuals with low-vision diseases see better [...]
By Noela Tuquero, TCA Marketing Jason Wang is the Founder and CEO of TrueVault, the "TurboTax for data privacy" platform that helps direct-to-consumer businesses like MUD\WTR and Salt & Straw [...]
By Noela Tuquero, TCA Marketing Joshua Liu is the founder and CEO of SeamlessMD, a SaaS company helping top healthcare systems engage, monitor, and stay connected with their patients throughout [...]
By Noela Tuquero, TCA Marketing Thor Culverhouse is the CEO of Submittable, a software company helping to streamline social impact programs for foundations, governments, and corporations. With average time savings [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
By John Harbison, TCA Chairman Emeritus (originally published by the Angel Capital Association in their Data Insights Series) As one gets into angel investment, it is important to have realistic [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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