Insights
What we’ve learned building companies.
Lessons from the businesses we’ve built with founders, and the ones that taught us the most.
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Why DQventures invests in older foundersWho says you’re too late in life to launch a startup? More experienced (i.e. older) people make better founders. Fact. But older people don’t start companies because they have more responsibilities, dependents, high salaries and high costs. DQventures is here for those people.Read the post →
5 things we learned from raising money in 2024No, it’s not just you. It’s VERY hard to raise capital at the moment. I’ve been raising money for pre- and only-just-post-revenue startups since 2012 (around $30m raised in total). Here are 5 important lessons I’ve learned. Unless you’re a true tech business (not tech-enabled) and growing by >15% month-on-month, forget VCs. Don’t waste your time (or theirs). That includes you, venture studios.Read the post →
Why valuing your startup and pricing your funding round are not the same thingI need to eat humble pie. I advised how (not) to value your startup when raising money, and a chap called Dan Gray set me straight. I can’t put it much better than Dan’s own words, so here they are: VCs are not experts at valuation. Recent history shows that the majority are very badRead the post →
My £12m exit went up in smoke. Here’s what it taught meBefore closing down my first startup, we became an acquisition target for a large, listed business with headquarters in London. The agreed sale price was £12m (around US$14m at the time). Had the acquisition taken place, all of our investors would have made money.Read the post →
Does Money Buy Happiness? This Answer Might Surprise YouWe’ve all heard the phrase “money can’t buy happiness” and then thought to ourselves: “I bet it can for me!”. Turns out we might be wrong.Read the post →
How questioning assumptions led to 13,000% ROI13,000% ROI in 2 hours. This experiment shows the power of questioning your assumptions – too good not to share… In 2009, Professor Tina Seelig gave $5 of “seed funding” to 14 teams of Stanford engineering students. They had 5 days to plan. The goal? Make the most money possible in a period ofRead the post →
Update: June 2024Hi everyone – exciting progress at DQ since our last update (brief details below), but the focus of this letter is something else. It’s a topic we’ve mentioned before, and it’s something we can’t stop thinking about: a brand new and fairer approach to early-stage investing. In short, we need your input.Read the post →
The most precocious, prescient, urgent advice for any startup founderAs Nike founder, Phil Knight, says himself, this might be the best advice, maybe the only advice, any of us should ever give… Full quote below… I asked myself: what if there was a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time instead of working, or else toRead the post →
Is now the time for a new style of startup?As an investor in 2 funds and 70 startups, and from speaking to dozens of investors and founders since Jan, this is what I’m seeing in the market, and what I expect from the next few years. Am I seeing a warped version of reality, or do you see this too? Sales are down. ManyRead the post →
Forget your startup, are you investible as a founder?I love this different way of thinking about entrepreneurship (and whether it’s right for you)… Invariably, when you invest cash, you’re investing in management (i.e. people). 👇 So… what are 𝘺𝘰𝘶 really investing in? Stocks? It’s management’s ability to build a thriving business. Hedge funds? It’s management’s ability to manage risk. VC funds?Read the post →
Can first-principles thinking help you overcome the obstacles you’re facing?What is “first principles thinking” and how can it help you? I talked about the power of first principles in my last post. Check out these examples: >> In 2002, Elon Musk began planning how to send people to Mars.Read the post →
Darius Safavi joins DQventures as Director of Venture DevelopmentWe are excited to welcome Darius Safavi as the new Director of Venture Development at DQventures. Darius joins us from London, where he has cultivated an extensive career bridging fintech, venture capital, and startup ecosystems.Read the post →