Posts about Investors

Six Dating Analogies to Demystify the Startup Hiring Process

How to Raise a Seed Round amidst Economic Collapse and a Global Pandemic

On Microsoft in the Nineties and Timeless Lessons from the Dot-com Bubble

The Future State of Startups according to a Tenured Operator & Investor

On startup creation and investor interest in a down market

On the Dyson Sphere, Customer Discovery, and the Two Variables of Founders

Or: Direct Transfers and Forward Contracts and Equity-linked Financing Notes, Oh My!

Episode #22 | Investing via Gen Z Interests & Adapting to Fast-Changing Times

Examining Q4 2022 and Projecting to Q1 2023

The Definitive Ranking of the 150 Most Active & Influential Angel Investors of 2022

Episode #21 | On Founding a Company, Becoming Homeless, and Breaking into VC

Episode #8 | Adam and Tom talk SBF and the situation that continues to unravel

Episode #20 | On Showing Grit, Finding Innovation Avenues, and Investing for Tomorrow

Three Signals that Early-stage Angel Investors Can Use to Invest in More Unicorns

Chatting with Composer COO & Co-Founder Ananda Aisola about their recent Customer Round

Episode #19 | Automating Growth, Building with Community, and the Need for Grit

Episode #6 | Adam and Tom talk SBF and the situation that continues to unravel

A Deep Dive into Africa’s Startup Ecosystem and Fundraising Landscape with Ajim Capital Founding Partner Eunice Ajim

Or: The Reports of Crypto's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Episode #5 | Adam and Tom deal with the fallout of FTX thanks to CZ exposing SBF. Plus, why are there so many acronyms?

Episode #4 | Adam is left on his own to tell you about this week in the markets.

Fund of Fund Manager Ben Ehrlich Shares His Framework for Assessing VCs

Five Lessons Founders can learn from legendary horror Producer Jason Blum

Episode #3 | Adam and Tom finally learn that less is more. Also, we're still discussing Elon Musk & Twitter...r

Vibecap GP Dave Goldblatt Explains Why Decentralization Really Matters

Episode #2 | Adam and Tom talk Elon's plans for Twitter and VCs investing in public equities

Episode #1 | Introducing Secondary Saturdays

How COVID Paved the Way for Venture’s New Era

On the Power of Emotive Marketing and Neumann’s Second Act

Episode #18 | On the Rise of the Solo Investor and the Relationship between Team & TAM

A Deep Dive into Southeast Asia’s Startup Ecosystem and Fundraising Landscape with Veteran Operator and Investor Viktor Kyosev

Super-Angel Sam Huleatt on Being the Most Helpful Investor Around

Episode #17 | From AngelList to Angel Investing

At Stonks, we’re focused on building the absolute best demo day experience in the world. We host nearly 200 demo days a year with partners like 500 Global, Techstars, Tachyon & others. Over 100 Unicorns have come from these partners’ demo days in the past — startups like Uber, Dropbox, Canva, Sendgrid, Carta, and Paypal.

Five Phrases to Never Say during a VC Pitch

Episode #16 | Capital and People in Crypto Investing & Focusing on the Fringe.

On Investor Interest in Troubling Times

Or: It’s Time to B̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ Invest!

Due to the seemingly inevitable march of globalization, our world is more interconnected today than it ever was before. Ironically, despite this growing overlap, inter-regional correlation rarely follows. That is, startup and venture capital conditions in one market seldom (if ever) correlate directly to the conditions in another. A wide variety of factors — whether currencies, climates, commerce, or disparate socioeconomic conditions — generate a myriad of diverse environments for local startups and investors.

YC’s Changes

Investor demand, early-stage deal trends, fundraising activity, and other measures of relative market performance can vary materially by geography.

**Spoiler Alert: This is the largest change to the Stonks platform since we started.**

The amount of capital earmarked for startup investing has never been higher. Ripe market conditions, record-breaking funding levels, and an influx of traditional and non-traditional investors in 2021 has helped insulate the world of early-stage investing.

With headlines increasing mentions of bear markets, inflation, and stagnant IPO / public equity demand, the worlds of startup investing and venture capital continue to show promising trends and insulation from broader market downturns.

Event RSVP count is a strong indicator of a Demo Day's ability to generate higher levels of investment interest.

Following an impressive start to Q1, Stonks saw investment interest on the platform slow on a per startup basis towards the end of March into April. Looking at the numbers, the weeks of March 27th, April 3rd, and April 10th saw 16, 20, and 9 startups receive investment interest on Stonks, respectively. Over those same periods, median investment interest generated per startup remained low, failing to eclipse $350K in any week.

At Stonks, we believe everyone should be able to invest in startups.

YCombinator started in 2005, and has been used to launch over 3000 startups, which were collectively valued at over $300 billion as of Jan’21. Some well-known ones include Stripe, Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, Doordash, Dropbox and Reddit.

Startup investing is limited to those who are accredited investors, per SEC rules. Deals cannot be discussed or shared publicly, unless the startup or a qualifying platform is verifying accreditation. This has historically been a significant burden for both startups and platforms.

We watched our investor base spike with 279 new investors all while handling our own accreditation, signing and wiring. We were stunned by the quality of investors that came inbound through our event without a single meeting — founders of unicorn companies, media moguls, GPs at top funds and many, many more.

Index investing in the public markets has yielded superior returns for most investors than active stock-picking. The data shows that fewer than 20% of active money managers outperform an index (such as SPY) over 10 years. Stretch it out to 15 years, and fewer than 5% of active money managers will outperform a broad index.