investors Archives - Startup Economist

You Don’t Need Traction. You Need to Understand Why They Say You Do.

Friday, 13 June 2025 by Paul O'Brien

There’s a special kind of eye twitch that founders get the 37th time they hear, “We’d love to invest, but you need more traction.” It’s a vague hand-wave of a dismissal that sounds helpful, but is really just cowardice in a hoodie. And when you ask what kind of traction they mean, they blink like

Published in Insights / Research, Raising Capital, Startups

9 Comments

Startup Ecosystems Fail Because of Investors

Wednesday, 28 May 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Yes, I meant what I said in that headline… let’s see if I can back it up. In my conversation with Bryan Hancock on Executive Connect, I pulled back the curtain on the startup mythology that’s selling cities, founders, and investors a false bill of goods. We don’t need more accelerators. We need people who

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Published in Economic Development, Startups

9 Comments

This Is Why It’s Critical to Our Economy That We Distinguish Startups from New Businesses

Friday, 11 April 2025 by Paul O'Brien

This might be among my most harsh criticisms of our economy, and I don’t write it lightly but rather because as time progresses, we can see more and more clearly how misrepresentation of focus, skills, and experience, actually harms entrepreneurs. Not All Failure is Created Equal And more importantly, not all failure is worthy of

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Published in Economic Development, Startup Ecosystems, Startups

30 Comments

Time for Congress to Reform the SEC’s Outdated Accredited Investor Definition

Thursday, 06 February 2025 by Paul O'Brien

Public policy isn’t just a framework for startups and investors, it’s a gatekeeper deciding who gets to play the game. And few policies are as restrictive as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) definition of an “accredited investor.” This definition has long determined who can and cannot invest in private securities offerings (i.e. startups), not

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Published in Startup Ecosystems, Startups

35 Comments

The Personality of your VC Matters, Ask Investors their MBTI

Friday, 28 June 2024 by Paul O'Brien

It would seem I struck a bit of a chord the other day, pushing the popular Myers-Briggs personality assessments well beyond the overdone “What’s the best Myers-Briggs Personality of Entrepreneurs?” to instead share what personalities make the best startup advisors. Begging then the question of whether or not personalities correlate with quality startup investors. A

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Published in Insights / Research, Startups

15 Comments

Founders, VCs Might Not Like My Sharing This, But They Should

Thursday, 21 September 2023 by Paul O'Brien

One of the more challenging skills to help develop in a founder, is being able to discern b.s. from experienced and valid advice. As you might imagine (and I hope you can relate from the all too prolific frequency with which this happens), it’s particularly difficult to know how to put questions back on a

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Published in Insights / Research, Startups

16 Comments

I’m Afraid VCs Will Take Over

Tuesday, 17 January 2023 by Paul O'Brien

How do startup founders protect their company from investors in the shareholders’ agreement? Should they? Protect from what?? Seriously, think about it for a moment. The startup community is flooded with people who ‘don’t want VC,’ think, ‘investors will take over,’ and fear the influence or control of investors. This paranoia is a problem in

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Published in Startups

18 Comments