About Me
Hi. I'm Mike Kane, a Philadelphia guy investing in early stage venture companies. I co-founded Pour Richards as a way to bring interesting people together to talk about ideas. This saved me the enormous trouble of having to be interesting myself.Pages
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Category Archives: Venture Capital
Why Successful Entrepreneurs Are So Rare
Success as an entrepreneur requires an extremely rare blend of enormous self-confidence and an abiding willingness to be shown wrong and to self-correct. Continue reading
Posted in Observations, Venture Capital
Tagged conditions for success, confirmation bias, entrepreneur, success
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What Immanuel Kant Taught Me About Venture Investing
By far the greatest challenge for any VC is picking the right company to invest in and backing the right management. I have tried to improve the likelihood of success here using something I learned from the philosophy of Immanuel … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Venture Capital
Tagged Copernicus, Critique of Pure Reason, disruption, Kant, transcendental conditions of knowledge, venture
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Why Pay to Play is Bad for Venture
Pay to play in venture term sheets should have the same deservedly bad reputation as it does in government contracting, where it is illegal. In this piece, the author, having seemingly gone quiet this summer, returns with three compelling arguments against pay to play and an appeal to investors to enlighten their self-interest. Continue reading
Posted in Venture Capital
Tagged angels, enlightened self-interest, investing, pay to play, Venture Capital
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Two Questions Entrepreneurs Almost Always Answer Wrong
Entrepreneurs almost always go wrong when answering basic questions on their valuation expectations and on competition. Continue reading
Posted in Financial markets, Venture Capital
Tagged advice for entrepreneurs, business valuation, competitive analysis, entrepreneur, pitching a VC, Venture Capital
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Advice for Entrepreneurs Pitching a VC
Six suggestions for entrepreneurs on how to make an initial pitch to a VC. Continue reading
Make Reading This Blog One of Your New Year’s Resolutions
You probably spend your day reading the same dreary old stuff you’ve been reading since you first worried about “Y2K”. Familiar phrases greet your eyes each day with their dull monotony: unique opportunity, secure socket layer, unified credit, patent infringement, good faith negotiation, no known allergies, large addressable market, sophisticated planning strategies, dull monotony, past due invoice…
Consider this blog as a partial remedy to the humdrum routine and quiet desperation of your typical work day. Think of it as an invitation to the right hemisphere of your brain to get up, stretch, and move around a little. Continue reading
Posted in Observations, Venture Capital
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Rent-Seeking in the Fund Industry
Imagine you’ve just enjoyed a nice meal at a fine restaurant when the waiter brings over the check. On looking at it, you discover there’s a 10% surcharge for “marketing expense”. When questioned, the waiter explains that this is a … Continue reading
The Lack of Alignment in Venture Funds
In an earlier post, I discussed the problem of vintage year risks found in traditional venture funds. There is an additional problem around the lack of alignment between the GP and the LP, and again between the GP and the … Continue reading
Posted in Traditional Venture Model, Uncategorized, Venture Capital
Tagged alignment, entrepreneur, GP, LP, management fees, venture, Venture Capital, venture fees
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Why Venture Capital Has Not Performed
The vintage issues around the 10 year fund are in fact a form of market timing whose risk is additive to total fund risk, but uncompensated to the LP. Continue reading