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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Interview with James Green, DQventures co-founder.In this video you’ll see DQ co-founder, James Green, discussing startup life, angel investing and how DQventures helps senior professionals transition from the corporate world into owning and running their own company. James is talking to successful entrepreneurs, investors and podcasters, Richard Lucas and Kimon Fountoukidis. Richard is a British entrepreneur and investor, who for many years was based in Poland.Read the post →
The paradox of entrepreneurship.There’s a major paradox in entrepreneurship that few people talk about. Yet it affects almost everybody. I’m talking about the tradeoff between timing and experience. Younger founders From a risk perspective, the best time to start your own company is when you’re young and have nothing to lose. (Just go for it!?) The trouble is, when you’re starting out, you don’t know a whole lot… so, you’re more likely to fail.Read the post →
Who are the best investors for an early-stage startup?I saw someone from the venture world comment recently that: “Angel investors are a waste of time”. They said this, I think, because many angels don’t have enough money to move the needle for most startups. I’m actually in that category myself. My typical cheque size is $10,000. For me, that number makes sense.Read the post →
Startup and VC jargon founders should understand.Do you speak startup investors’ language? How many of these terms are you not familiar with? I bet there’s at least one. Be honest… Useful startup terminology TAM/SAM/SOM: total addressable market/serviceable addressable market/serviceable obtainable market. How much of the market can realistically be captured. MVP: minimum viable product. The simplest version of your product that helps users solve the problem.Read the post →
How to attract the best employees to your startup.What’s the right way to attract high performers to join your startup, and how do you retain them? Across the 90 or so startups I’ve been involved with, I’ve seen leaders solve this in different ways, but it’s rarely about the money.Read the post →
Find your torture: how to succeed in startups.Originally published here by Billy Oppenheimer. Thirty-eight years into being a stand-up comedian, Jerry Seinfeld was asked how his daily work routine has evolved over the years. “It’s the exact same,” he said. “I do the exact same now as I did when I was 21 in 1975.” He sits down with a yellow legal pad, he said, and… “my writing technique is just: You can’t do anything else.Read the post →
10 traits early-stage investors seek in founders.Having started investing in startups in 2012, I’ve now done more than 50 direct investments, invested in a further 13 via a fund I cofounded, and have backed 14 more as an LP in Singapore VC firm, Investigate. Here’s what I’ve noticed: The best founders are working on something they care about so deeply that they would do it even if they knew there would be no exit.Read the post →
What is angel investing REALLY like?Being a founder is hard; but so is being an angel investor. I found out last week that one of the startups in my angel portfolio is selling. Hooray (kind of). I invested in 2017 and 6 years later I’m getting my money back, with a chance of a 50% kicker, subject to the terms of the founders’ earn-out. Hey, it’s not a loss! This isn’t a moan, I promise. I’ve got some good ones too.Read the post →
Are older founders more innovative?According to a study that ran between 2007 and 2018 in Germany, founders “who start businesses later in life (50 years old and above) are more likely to bring radical innovations to the market than younger business owners. “ Why we like backing older founders At DQventures we talk a lot about older founders.Read the post →
SaaS funding benchmarks.Early-stage VC, Christoph Janz, of Point Nine Ventures, produces an annual document he calls the “SaaS Napkin”. It’s a summary of the key benchmarks Christoph has witnessed across the world of SaaS funding, and it’s a useful reference point for anyone who’s building – and raising money for – a rapidly-growing SaaS company. It’s too good not to share.Read the post →
How to come up with a winning startup idea.I heard someone giving advice recently about how to come up with a winning startup idea, and to me it didn’t make sense. Identifying random problems that need solving seems like a great way to make an already-difficult process more difficult. Here’s an alternative approach. Most startups fail. Most businesses fail. The odds are against you. So your focus as an entrepreneur should be on improving your odds.Read the post →
Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.It’s now 7 years since I shut down my startup (long story short, we raised $2m but couldn’t find PMF, tried to pivot, failed and shut down. You can read some of the lessons learned here.). We did a lot wrong, but I think we did one thing very right. We acted quickly and decisively. I expect this article might create a mixture of emotions in anyone reading it.Read the post →