Last week Bonnie Halper and I hosted Michael Kocan at our Investor Insights event. He shared a number of things that are on his list when evaluating a company for possible investment.
These are his top 3:
- Founder Fit – is the founder the right person to solve the problem?
- Is this the right team to solve the problem?
- Do they have the mindset to solve the problem? Do they understand their early adopters and do they know the experiments needed to bring the product to market?
Some other characteristics Michael looks for include:
- Not average people
- Founders with a chip on their shoulder/Willing do what is needed to get the job done
- Big motive force/they have a big distance between where they are to where they want to be. (see video)
- Is the problem being addressed a “painkiller” or a “nice to have” solution.
- How does the business create value for the customer and how do they know there is value.
- There was a ton of great info shared for anyone working on or building a startup. As always, too much for this one post. Watch the full recording for the full session and all the questions asked by the audience.
Join us every other week for another discussion with a new investor to hear their point of view on startup investing.
About our Guest Startup Investor:
Michael is the Managing Partner at Outbound Capital. He leverages his prior experience in management consulting to identify business problems and electrical engineering / technical management to help guide their solutions. He leads the identification, analysis and ongoing support of Outbound Capital’s portfolio of B2B startup companies. He invests in startups with strong founding teams solving large, complicated and important business and societal problems.
Prior to Outbound Capital, Michael was a partner at Trend Discovery, a hedge / VC fund. Trained as an engineer and analytical problem solver, Michael previously led management consulting engagements for global Fortune 100 clients. Prior to consulting, Michael was an electrical engineer and product manager at the United States Department of Defense, where he managed multimillion-dollar product development efforts.
Michael earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Bucknell University, and a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.
Outbound Capital Fund II: Outbound Capital is an emerging VC firm pioneering a superior model for investing in early-stage B2B software companies. We are raising a $20M+ Fund II that will invest in 30+ startups globally. We will use our exclusive product-market fit (PMF) data to double down on our winners.
