Part 4 – Lessons learned
- There are lots of lessons to be learned but my top lessons follow:
- Pick your partners carefully. When the chips are down you learn the nature of your partners. Hopefully, they play cleanly and fairly. Some don’t. It sucks when this happens.
- The way Brad Feld played this investment is what makes him such a great venture capitalist. He played it for the long term and was willing to invest a small amount of money even when things looked bleak because it was the right entrepreneurial thing to do. In doing so, Brad managed to retain a relatively large portion of the ongoing company and recover much of his investment.
- Entrepreneurial perseverance counts for a Lot!!
- I don’t know of many start up successes that don’t have moments where the business life is threatened in some material way.
- As an angel investor, seriously consider participating in all the rounds of a venture – especially the down rounds!
- Obviously, it's a rich history to condense into a blog post. Congrats to all the hard working folks at Kefta for a job very well done.
