This video is a talk I gave at the Element8 angels workshop in Seattle: Investing a World With Few Exits.
Some of the key points from my talk:
- I believe only 25% of all companies that could have been sold actually end up successfully exiting
- If a company misses the ideal time to exit, then the most likely result is that it will fail completely
- After seeing this happen over and over again I started to recognize a few patterns
- I’ve identified five categories of these failure mechanisms:
- Over-investment by VCs
- Competition
- Intellectual property infringement
- Negative momentum
- Waves of Consolidation
- This talk describes in detail the failure mechanism due to patent infringement
- In my opinion, if you have a good patent,the only reasonable strategy is to sell the company
- As soon as possible after the patent is granted,
- Or when you have disclosed the technology – whichever is sooner
- If you are a small company, the risks of owning a good patent are not a reasonable business, or investing, decision
[…] video is an excerpt from a talk I gave at a workshop on exit strategies sponsored by the Element8 angels in […]