Angels in Silicon Valley Trends and lessons learned

Pieter Dubois – Founder Paycento pieter@paycento.com

Seriously!

Paycento makes paying for content as easy as a facebook “Like”

Paycento received world wide press coverage in April

www.slideshare.net/paycento

A rising tide lifts up all boats

It’s the era of social flea picking

Incremental improvements leveraging WW platforms

Case: Simplifying Payments, credit card payments

Case: Disrupting the “Store” model

1. Give Title 2. Upload Picture 3. Set price 4. Create link 5. Distribute

Using twitter messages to buy and sell

Remove all friction Great design & simplicity

Remove all friction Great design & simplicity

Outlier

Reality Check: Most fundings are in the $50-250k

IT cost are 10% of what they were in 2000

Tools are much more powerful (cloud)

World wide distribution platforms (Facebook)

Leading to much smaller teams (instagram 13ppl)

But … result is no room for “big thinking” anymore

Incubators taking role of Angels

Outliers

Competition is much harder now

Ironically requiring higher & sustained investments over time

Secret: Become a “habit”

What are (US) VC’s looking for in startups?

TRACTION

Engagement

VC’s also look for

High valuation potential

Case Study

1750 + 250 revenue/mo x 12 months

x 1000 Top 1000 Forbes

24,000,000 Revenue

x 18 Multiplier

432 Million valuation

24 000 revenue per year

(very) Simplified valuation example

: 10 (VC’s want 10x money)

43,2 Million Current Value

4 Million investment = 10%

However …. • Only when there is traction (there is!)

• Competition from Radian6, Visible Technologies, Sysomos, Socialbakers and Buddy Media

• So it won’t win all top 1000 Forbes accounts

• And Engagor’s prices are already bottom level

Finally, most importantly

Thank You

Contact me! Pieter Dubois +32-472.72.45.96 Pieter@paycento.com

www.paycento.com

Twitter: @Paycento

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