Ronald Conway is an angel investor often described as one of the “super angels. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail.
Ron’s thoughts on startups and entrepreneurship
# Great defining companies are being created at a much quicker rate than they were 10 years ago. Awesome news for entrepreneurs.
# An ideal entrepreneur is a little bit crazy (crazy-smart) is good
# “Getting your money back( (from an entrepreneur) is not a bad deal”
# We try to invest in companies in the mobile space that are not as reliant on the carriers in order to grow and be as successful. There’s going to be a lot of mobile apps that are going to become huge. We’re in a company called iMob, which is building iPhone apps in the gaming sector, and that’s a huge growth area that is not carrier dependent.
# We try to invest companies in the mobile sector that aren’t as capital intensive. I don’t focus on hardware. I focus on software.
# The real-time data market could reach a billion dollars in 3 years
# I think as time goes on, there is going to be many more ways to monetize Twitter, much more so than even Google and Facebook. They include charging companies to get followers. If a company is in the suggested area when users sign up, a company can easily get 10,000 followers in a day. This type of exposure is apparently worth paying for.
# In an Interview with Ron Conway at Stanford GSB, he had this to say:
- Bootstrap as long as possible
- Release products as soon as possible (don’t wait until Beta is perfect)
- Get market traction
- Then raise money (at this point it will be easier to have interest of multiple investors and therefore a higher valuation and less ownership dilution
# Trends/spaces currently experimenting the highest growth according to Ron:
- Flash Marketing
- Mobile
- Gaming
- Location-based with commerce in it (Foursquare)
- O2O: Online to Offline (ShopKick.com, Milo.com)
