Heidi first introduced herself as Business person and venture capital (she had her own business – inventing clipparts – and is now part of the board of TIVO and yellow pages in Canada. So she has experience from the 2 sides of the venture capitalism, and wanted to share lesson learnt from it. Her talk was quite interesting, although not really relevant for Exchange division and Red Gate.

Lesson 1: VC is a "hits" business (they want 10x ROI), however actual numbers are as follows:

                - 4x    average of all investments  

                - 2.7x average without top 10 deals

                - 2x   average without top 30 deals

                - 1.8x average without top 50 deals

                Less than 40% of investments return more than it was invested and almost 50% don't return anythig at all

Lesson 2: Venture capitalists = portfolio managers

Lesson 3: VC often turn down good companies – be careful with their management: they  might ask lots of info from you, and decide to invest in your competition

Lesson 4: Due diligence = gut + homework + time

Lesson 5: If you do not trust someone, do not invest

Lesson 6: Best entrepreneurs do not hide the ball: VC should help.

Lesson 7: Startup entrepreneurs are not always good CEO (so a VC can drop you and hire someone else in CEO position)

Lesson 8: All startups change course – Roll with the flow

Lesson 9: Be prepared to invest more money… or not

Lesson 10: VC need to find exits

Are they better ways to raise money than VC?

Good news: you do not need much money anymore to start a business (computers are cheep, Marketing is cheap…) But do not underestimate the amount it will take to get a customer buying your product.