A well done executive summary cannot miss in your investor deck. What I prefer is a one page with all the main info summarized with an appealing design. Being really brief is the key: investors receive tons of docs from startups and they don’t want to read too much to understand what you do, so less is better. Also a good design is important because it can make your info more readable and keep your reader awake. (more…)
Startups I meet are sometimes too much focused on how much their idea is brilliant, not understanding that market validation gives always unexpected results. Moreover the majority of professional investors in Italy invest only when startups reach metrics showing a positive trend. To achieve this result I always suggest startups to study the Customer Development methodology. (more…)
Chicken egg dilemma in multi-sided platforms
Many investment decks I receive every day are from startups that aims to create multi-sided platforms. This kind of venture is especially difficult because the founders have to struggle with the well-known chicken and egg problem typical of these platforms. Entrepreneurs need what is called critical mass: a sufficient number of customers on both sides, and in the right proportions, in order to guarantee satisfactory value for both clusters of users and to achieve sustainable growth of the platform. If the critical mass is not reached in acceptable time the platform will implode.
So the main question when starting a multi-sided platform is how and when to gather the various groups of users that the platform aims to bring together. When I collaborated with Prof. Cellini of LUISS University in the writing of the book Internet Economics, we analyzed the multi-sided platforms as a distinctive case of internet economy and some useful insights for startups can be extrapolated. (more…)
Gli advisor sono persone che hanno network, reputazione, grandi capacità e importanti esperienze lavorative. Possono essere molto utili ma a volte possono rivelarsi inadeguati o il rapporto con loro può non funzionare. Ecco qualche semplice consiglio per la scelta giusta dell’advisor e per vivere insieme felici e contenti.