Many of my newsletters and blog posts are on the topic of raising capital. I talk about how to raise angel funding. And venture capital, etc.

And don't get me wrong, I think, actually I know, that raising funding is critical. Because the #1 reason (by far) why entrepreneurs fail, is that they don't have or run out of cash.

But one thing I'd like to clarify is that you CAN start and grow a business without funding. Or with little funding.

In fact, many great businesses have been started this way. A survey of Inc 500 companies found that 48% started with $20K in financing or less, and 73% started with less than $100K in financing.

And, if you are looking for BIG funding sources, like venture capital, they will often want to see that you have bootstrapped or already raised other, smaller funding sources before they fund you.

So, if I misspoke or implied that you absolutely must raise lots of funding from the get-go forgive me. Rather, you must start by bootstrapping or raising enough funding to get you going, and then later on, many more funding sources will become available to you to help you grow your company.

Let me give you some examples of entrepreneurs who have done this. In fact, most of these entrepreneurs have started with these small amounts and then raised huge amounts of funding when they were ready for rapid growth:

• Under Armour's Kevin Plank funded his company's launch with credit cards.


• Brian Scudamore founded 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which now has over 200 franchised locations in the US alone, with just $700 of funding.


• Michael Dell launched Dell Computers with only $1,000.


• Jill Blashack Strahan launched Tastefully Simple, which offers easy-to-prepare foods and gifts with just $6,000 in savings. Her company now generates over $115 Million in annual revenues.


• Ben & Jerry launched with $8,000 in savings and a $4,000 loan.


• Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor launched Juicy Couture Clothing with just $200 and a revolving line of credit. Juicy Couture was later sold for $53 million to Liz Claiborne.


• Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched the company with credit cards (and later raised angel then VC funding among others).

And, in addition to these and other entrepreneurs who launched their companies with little funding, there are tons of entrepreneurs who have launched their companies with non-traditional sources of funding.

Such as Kenneth Cole, who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from a shoe manufacturer (vendor funding). Or Blowfly Beer, who raised tens of thousands of dollars in funding from customers (customer financing).

The key point I want to stress here is that the vast majority of entrepreneurs have the mindset that if they can't raise money from banks, angels or VCs, that they can't launch or grow their companies. This is simply NOT true. So don't fall into this thinking. As there are 38 other sources of funding, or bootstrapping, to turn to.

 

Suggested Resource: As you just learned, most entrepreneurs fail to get funded because they chase after the WRONG sources of funding. Do you want avoid this failure? And successfully raise funding to grow your business? Then check out our Truth About Funding program to learn how you can access the 41 sources of funding available to entrepreneurs like you. Click here to learn more.

Over the last two weeks, we have discussed the lessons of liquidity, sector, and outliers to be learned from the extraordinary returns earned by Facebook's early investors.

Now let's turn to the only topic that self-interested and red-blooded investors really care about when it comes to Facebook and its IPO.

Which of course is, how the heck can they get a piece of a company like Facebook before it becomes, well, Facebook?

Well, the painful answer is that for almost everyone - it just isn’t going to happen.

The reasons for this go beyond the obvious one of rarity - Facebook being the biggest business story of the new century, and correspondingly having one of the steepest valuation growth trajectories of all time.

And it goes beyond the fact that like so many of the great investment stories of the past 15 years - PayPal, YouTube, Zynga, LinkedIn, Yelp - Facebook’s early investors primarily came from a very small group of interconnected Silicon Valley investors.

No, the heart of the “find the next Facebook” challenge is that the vast majority of investors are either too poor or - more interestingly - too rich to even consider an investment like Peter Thiel’s $250,000 into Facebook in 2005.

Let's start with being too poor.

Forget about deal access and acumen.

Forget about taking the measure of the entrepreneur and just feeling it in “your bones” that he or she has the right stuff.

Forget all that and just deal with the fact that 99%+ of all investors are just too illiquid to write a $250,000 investment check to a private company.

And for those that do have the means, the vast majority are not okay with the very real likelihood that they might lose every last solitary cent of their very hard - earned (or at least hard inherited) cash.

Now, if it is any consolation, so too are the very rich mostly closed off from early-stage private investing.

This is because most of the “real” investment capital in the world today is in the form of professionally managed funds with sizes greater than $100 million.

So when the managers of these funds look at a company at Facebook’s 2005 stage of development, it is just hard for them to visualize how a 6 or low 7 figure investment could possibly “move the needle” of their overall fund return.

And oh yes, most fund managers – because of their career experiences, education, and mindset – are also so painfully lacking in the imagination, technological sophistication and general “hipness” that when presented with a paradigm-shifting business model like Facebook…

…they just don’t get it.

So if neither the rich nor the poor can do it, and if all of the best deals are snatched up by the Silicon Valley Technocrati anyway, what about the rest of us?

Well, at the start, recognize that, in a capitalistic economy, early -stage private equity investing is both the most exhilarating and the most vexingly challenging of all business undertakings.
 
It requires a full internalization of the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Wisdom is needed to know when one is in over their head and that the prudent course is to not invest no matter how tempting.

Serenity is needed once an investment is made, as its destiny rests equally in the hands of the entrepreneur and in those of Fortuna – the Roman goddess of good fortune and luck.

And, of course early-stage private equity investing requires heaping platefuls of courage and guts.

And when stormy weather comes as it always does, courage’s cousin grace is needed.

To remind us that the only ships that never sink are those that never sail.

I hate to admit it, but I'm a bit of a dork.

You see, I did really well in school, so I guess I could have been considered a dork back then. But I was also a really good athlete, so that made me "cooler" and so I never got a dork label.

But I did something many years ago that clearly classifies me as a dork. What did I do? I had one of my articles published in Quirk's Market Research Review. Quirk's is a trade journal for market research professionals that mostly talks about new market research techniques and ways to tabulate data. Pretty exciting stuff, I know :-)

I think many of the other authors at Quirk's are like the guys from Revenge of the Nerds, complete with pocket protectors. But, when I submitted my article, I didn't care, because I had something important to share.

What I shared with Quirk's readers (this was way back in 1994 so they don't even have an archive of the article on their website), was what I call "The Improvement Matrix." I originally created these matrices for bigger businesses who paid big bucks for them.

But over the years, I realized they could be created much less expensively, and have HUGE value to entrepreneurs like you.

So what is the "The Improvement Matrix?"

It's simply a way of looking at your products and services and figuring out what you should improve and in what order.

Let me walk you through it. As an example, let's assume that I'm Sal. Sal's my landscaper. He frustrates me to no end since he's such a bad marketer [in fact he makes me think about getting into the landscaping business since I know I'd clean up....but I'll stop digressing].

OK. The first step is to identify what it is that your customers find most important.

So, as a landscaping customer, Sal should survey me and his other customers on the 8-12 attributes of his business that I find most important.

Maybe Sal would have chosen these attributes to survey:

1. Quality of lawn mowing
2. Quality of plant trimming
3. Offers to do additional work (e.g., clean leaves from gutters)
4. Price
5. Value (fairness of price based on quality of service)
6. Ease of billing
7. Ease of communications with company
8. Professionalism of workers

For each attribute, he should ask customers, "How important are these attributes to you in your landscaping company?"

He could have used a 4 point scale as follows:

1 - Not important
2 - Somewhat Important
3 - Very Important
4 - Extremely important

The results may have looked as follows:

As you can see, Sal's customers considered "quality of lawn mowing" and "ease of billing" to be the most important attributes. Conversely, the least important attributes were "professionalism of workers" and "offers to do additional work."

The next question on Sal's survey should have been: "How do you rate my performance on these attributes?"

He could have used a 4 point scale again as follows:

1 - Poor
2 - Fair
3 - Very Good
4 - Excellent

Importantly, Sal should judge responses to this performance question against how important the attributes are. The results may have looked as follows:




As you can see from the chart, on attributes like "value," Sal's performance is in line with importance. But, on the key attribute of "ease of billing," Sal is vastly underperforming. And, on the non- or less-important attribute of "professionalism of workers" (maybe Sal has his workers dress in formal uniforms), he is over-performing.

So, what should Sal do? Well he should clearly focus on improving his "ease of billing" since this will improve customer satisfaction. Also, if he is investing too much money and time in "professionalism of workers," he should consider re-allocating those resources to improving "ease of billing."

As you can see, the beauty of the chart, based on simply 2 sets of questions asked to customers, is that it identifies the most important areas of your product or service to fix to better satisfy customers and gain competitive advantage.

Now, a final way to look at the performance chart is as a matrix, which I call the "Improvement Matrix."  You can see the matrix below.

The Improvement Matrix is simply a different way of looking at importance vs. performance data. It plots the data and classifies each attribute into 4 quadrants:

1. Underperforming (but OK): you are underperforming in this area, but customers don't care much about it, so that's ok.

2. Overperforming: you are doing well in this area; but customers don't value it. Keep doing what you're doing, or consider allocating resources away from this area into a more important area.

3. Keep it up: these are areas that your customers care about and that you are doing well in. Keep it up.

4. Improvement Quadrant: this quadrant is the key. It shows those areas that customers find important, but for which your performance is not up to speed. You MUST get better in these areas ASAP.

As you can see, the Improvement Matrix will alert you to the key areas of your product and service that you must improve. All it requires is a simple customer survey and plotting of the data. And the results can revolutionize your business. So do it!

Suggested Resource: Would you like to know more ways to improve your business; and turn it into one worth $10 million or more? Then check out Growthink's 8 Figure Formula. This video explains more.

Many years ago I was involved in a business targeting the shoe market. Through some connections I made, I was introduced to a potential investor. This investor was one of the original employees of L.A. Gear, a shoe company that at one point went public and was the third leading athletic shoe retailer behind Nike and Reebok.

Within 5 minutes of my conversation with him, one thing became extremely clear: this guy could give me a ton more value than just the dollars he could bring to the table.

He could tell me exactly how the industry worked. He could tell me what trade shows to attend and which to avoid. He could tell me which manufacturers to work with, and how to negotiate the best rates. He could introduce me to the best distributors to make sure my product reached as many retailers and customers as possible. And so on.

I tell you this because far too many entrepreneurs look at investors, particularly venture capitalists, solely as sources of cash. When it reality, many venture capitalists provide a ton more value than just the cash they offer. In fact, the right venture capitalist or VC is often the difference between your success or failure, or achieving minimal versus maximum success.

The three top areas where VCs often provide value include:

1. Contacts they have in their networks (these contacts can be for partners, employees, customers, distributors, vendors, etc.)

2. Advice in running your business, based on deep experience in your industry and in successfully growing and nurturing ventures

3. Contacts to additional sources of capital

Consider the following five VCs who are consistently ranked among the most respected VCs in the industry. Read their bios, and think about how their experiences and relationships could benefit your company.

Jim Breyer from Accel Partners. Jim Breyer is one of Facebook's earliest investors. He serves on the boards of Dell, Wal-Mart, and smaller ventures such as Etsy, Brightcove, ModelN, and Legendary Pictures. Jim also negotiated the sale of Marvel Entertainment to Disney for $4.3 billion and BBN Technologies to Raytheon for $350 million; and most recently closed two new venture capital funds in China.

Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital. Michael Moritz was one of the early investors in Google, Yahoo, and PayPal. He invested in video camera maker Pure Digital (Flip Video cameras) which was later sold to Cisco for $590 million. He also invested and served on the board of Zappos. Michael has also invested in and sat on the boards of Earth Networks, Gamefly, Green Dot, Klarna, Kayak.com, LinkedIn, Sugar Inc and The Melt.

Brad Feld from Foundry Group and TechStars. You should know Brad's name as he's a frequent contributor to the Growing Your Empire newsletter. Brad's been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over 20 years. Brad has invested in and/or sat on the boards of tons of companies including Abuzz, Anyday.com, Critical Path, Cyanea, Dante Group, DataPower, FeedBurner, Feld Group, Gist, Harmonix, NetGenesis, ServiceMagic, ServiceMetrics and Zynga. ALL of these companies have either gone public or been acquired.

Marc Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz. Marc Andreessen co-founded Netscape, Opsware and Ning. He serves on the boards of Facebook, eBay, Skype and Hewlett-Packard.  He made seed investments in Twitter and LinkedIn, and later stage investments in Groupon, Skype and Zynga.

John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. John Doerr has made some of the best investments ever, investing early in Amazon, Netscape, Sun Microsystems and Google, where he currently sits on the board. He's also invested in online gaming firms such as Zynga and Ngmoco and clean tech firms such as Bloom Energy and OPower.

These 5 venture capitalists are clearly at the top of their game. But there are hundreds of others that could also provide tons of value to you. Look at the BILLIONS of dollars of value that these VCs created, by investing early in companies and helping them achieve massive success. And consider the vast number of connections these folks have, from investing in now ultra-successful entrepreneurs and sitting on boards along with other highly connected superstars.

Importantly, when seeking venture capital for your venture, find the venture capitalists that have the most relevant experience and contacts in your niche, that can thus add the most value to you.

Suggested Resource: In Venture Capital Pitch Formula, you'll learn exactly how to find and contact venture capitalists, exactly what information to include in your presentation, and how to secure your financing. This video explains more.

Last week, I shared the lessons of liquidity and sector that the intelligent early - stage investor can learn from Facebook's IPO.

This week, let’s discuss arguably the most important wisdom to be gained from the story of Facebook's founding, rocket ship growth, and now exit for its early investors.

That lesson is of the power of outliers.

Now, the concept of outliers and how they apply to early stage private equity investment is not a new one. It was best described by the Lebanese thinker and writer Nicolas Taleb, in his best-selling books "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan."

In the Black Swan especially, Taleb described the nature and importance of outliers in a modern, inter-connected economy:

“What we call here a Black Swan is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable."

Taleb continues, "I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explain almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives."

Less famous, but more predictive of the Facebook phenomenon is Taleb's theorizing on how technological interconnectedness vastly intensifies Black Swan impacts.

This idea of technological interconnectedness is related - though not exactly the same – as that of the much ballyhooed Network Effect that is so much at the heart of Facebook's astronomical value.

In its simplest form, the Network Effect posits that the value of a network increases exponentially with each new user on it.

Or, in the context of Facebook, really the sole reason why folks use Facebook is because there are a lot of other folks that use Facebook too.

And, as more users join, such the value for others to join grows that much greater.

And so on and so on.

This is powerful but somewhat obvious so at a minimum, the intelligent early stage investor should utilize as one of their first screens the degree to which a network effect is present in a company's business model.

Now, let’s get to the rub of the matter as to how Taleb’s related concept of interconnectedness both informs and signals danger for the thoughtful investor.

Simply put, global technological inter-connectedness drives the winning business models to heights never seen before …

…because of this, there are a lot fewer of them.

To summarize:

1. The winners are bigger and happen faster than ever - Facebook's IPO will be bigger and faster than that of Google’s which was bigger and faster than that of Microsoft’s, which was bigger and faster than that of Apple’s.

2. Because the winners are bigger, there are less of them.

So that giant sucking sound you hear is the consuming of so much of the energy and return in the deal economy into fewer, bigger and more lucrative deals.

To put it another way, turning $500,000 into $1.8 billion in seven years as Peter Thiel has done as a small minority investor is just not beyond extraordinary - it is also unprecedented.

And, correspondingly, returns of this scale crowd out and widely skew the distribution to fewer, higher returning deals.

Now, how should we respond to this brave new and highly challenging investing world?

Well, one obvious response is to proceed extremely carefully.

Investing in early stage private companies can be great fun and you can make money beyond your wildest dreams if the stars are aligned right doing it….

…but the probabilities are very much against this happening.

And unfortunately, this is true no matter how enthusiastic, how passionate, how hardworking, how brilliant the entrepreneur that is pitching his or her deal happens to be.

So does this mean that early stage private equity investing is for the birds? And that we all should just stay away?

Of course not.

You just have to do it right.

Next week, we’ll share how the world's most sophisticated and successful early-stage investors do just that.

The other day I had the opportunity to interview two entrepreneurs I really respect.

The qualities of an entrepreneur I respect?

1. They've achieved significant entrepreneurial success

2. They've done it more than once, or over a prolonged period, so they clearly weren't "lucky" but rather know how to play the game

3. They're "paying it back" or using their entrepreneurial success to help others

The two entrepreneurs I interviewed clearly embody these qualities.

The first is billionaire entrepreneur Clay Mathile. Clay purchased Iams, the pet food company, in 1970. In the years that followed, Clay grew Iams from a mere $100,000 in revenues to $900 million and sold it to Procter & Gamble for $2.3 billion.

The second is serial entrepreneur Joni Fedders. With her husband, Joni owns and operates a successful decorative packaging company. And prior to that, Joni co-founded a technology services company that she grew to 100 employees and nearly $13 million in sales. Joni successfully sold that company.

Clay and Joni are "paying it back" now at Aileron, an organization that helps business owners achieve more success. Clay founded Aileron and Joni serves as President.

Now usually when I conduct an interview, I do it via telephone and have an audio file to show for it. But in this case, I'm glad Clay suggested we conduct the interview via video.

There were two reasons for this. First, video is much more engaging to watch and absorb the information (but if you want to listen to the audio on the go, feel free to download the MP3 version here).

The second reason is little different... Clay is an investor in Oovoo which is the video technology we used. For those of you seeking angel funding, that's what you want. An angel investor that can not only give you cash and know-how, but who is willing to promote your company. I must say that installing and using Oovoo was a cinch, and, as you'll see below, the video quality was great.

Ok...I'll stop blabbing. The interview I did with Clay and Joni is below. They share some incredible information. If you want to grow your business, listen to what they say, take notes, and then implement. I'd suggest you watch it twice; I'm sure you'll catch a few things the second time that'll make a big impact in your business.

Two things I really like about online marketing are that 1) you can do quick and easy things that can make a real impact, and 2) there's a lot of leverage; meaning that once you find something that works, it's pretty easy to scale.

Contrast that for a minute with traditional advertising like a television commercial. Any changes to your strategy here, such as modifying your commercial or testing it on a new television station, are costly from a time and money perspective, and take a long time to see whether it worked or not.

Below are 5 quick online marketing tactics and strategies that you can implement in your business fairly quickly. And each has the ability to double your leads, revenues and profits.

1. Find out where your competitors are getting their leads and replicate them

This one is pretty straightforward. Simply find out where your competitors are getting their leads, and then do the same.

Let's start with finding and replicating the keywords on which your competitors are advertising on Google and other search engines.

Simply use a tool like Ispionage (http://www.ispionage.com/) or KeywordSpy (http://www.keywordspy.com/) and enter in the domain name of your competitor. The results will show the top keywords on which your competitors are advertising.

Importantly, you should track these keywords. For example, see what keywords your competitors are advertising on today, and take a screenshot of how their ads appear. Then, look again at each of the keywords in 30 or 60 days. If your competitors are still advertising on those keywords, they are probably profitable keywords. Likewise, see if they've modified their ad copy.

Another way to replicate where your competitors are getting their leads is to find the top websites that link to them. While there are some expensive tools that identify the "top referring websites" to your competitors, one no-cost tool is Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org). Simply enter the domain name of your competitor, and you'll see the top sites which link to them and thus give them traffic. Then, contact those sites to see if they'll link to you as well.

2. Understand what customers are doing on your site

It's one thing to drive a lot of traffic to your website. It's an entirely different thing to convert on that traffic.

Importantly, you need to know what customers do once they're on your website. And in many cases, it's not what you'd expect them to do. For example, one entrepreneur I know told me that tons of visitors were clicking on an image on his website, even though nothing happened when you clicked on it. So, he made a slight change; he made it so that when visitors clicked on the image, they were taken to a sales page. The result: his profits soared.

One great tool to see what visitors are doing on your website is ClickTale (http://www.clicktale.com/). ClickTale offers heat maps, usability and web analytics so you know exactly what visitors are doing. And then, you can improve your site based on your findings.

3. Improve your marketing funnel

To improve your results, you need to understand your funnel. For example, your online marketing funnel may look as follows: visitors click on an ad to get to your "landing page" (the first page of your website they visit); then they read the page and ideally click whether they want product A or B; then they go to a page that has more information on either product A or B; then they click a button to get to the order form; then they see the order form and hopefully buy; then they see an upsell offer to purchase an additional item.

As you can see, your online marketing funnel generally has many pieces to it. In order to improve your performance, you must:

1. Map out (on a piece of paper) your marketing funnel
2. Document all of your metrics, that is, currently what percent of people pass through each part of your funnel (e.g., out of 100% of people who get to your landing page, what % click on "product A"; and what percentage of those folks click the "buy button," etc.)

Then, you should start improving each piece of your funnel. With split testing technology, you can test new pages and see which ones improve your funnel's conversion rates.

Two no-cost tools you can use to aid in these efforts are: Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) which will give you your conversion metrics, and Google Website Optimizer (https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/) which allows you to quickly and easily conduct split tests.

Note: if you want to optimize your website based on phone calls to your company, use a tool like ifbyphone (http://public.ifbyphone.com/).  [ifbyphone is a Growthink client who has raised tens of millions of dollars, so I am biased. But I've used their tool myself and it's great.]

4. Determine your winning keywords, and then leverage them

A mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make is to try to rank organically on "root" keywords too early.

What I mean by this is that a desk manufacturer or retailer will often make an effort to rank (i.e., appear at the top of the search results) on the keyword "desk." Such a "root" keyword is often extremely hard to rank on, and typically much harder than "long tail" keywords such as "corner computer desk."

Not only are "root" keywords harder to rank on, but they may not be as profitable.

Rather, what you should do is conduct pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and optimize your marketing funnel as explained above. Then, you will determine the keywords that are most valuable to you.

Then, do search engine optimization (SEO) to try to rank on those keywords organically.

To reiterate: don't blindly do SEO; rather figure out the most valuable keywords first, particularly the long-tail ones, and then optimize on them.

5. Scale geographically

Once you have optimized your PPC advertising campaigns as described above, scale geographically as appropriate.

Google AdWords and Facebook ads both allow for extremely customized geographic expansion and targeting. You can target new customers by zip code, county, state and even country. With regards to countries, consider, as appropriate, expanding to other English  speaking countries and territories like England, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, etc. (or expand based on your native language).

Each of these five tactics will enable you to grow your business fairly quickly and easily. So start employing them today.

Suggested Resource: Want to learn my entire online marketing system to methodically maximize traffic, leads, sales and profits? Then check out my Ultimate Internet Marketing System to learn how you can build the ultimate online lead generation machine. Click here to learn more.

The biggest technology IPO in history has rightfully captured the imagination of both the general and investment public.

However Facebook's stock ultimately performs, what is written is that those that invested in the company in its early days made one of the most incredible angel investments in history.

As a private company, Facebook has been not obligated to disclose the exact prices at which it sold shares in its early financing rounds.

However, both by pretty simple math and disclosures by the principals involved, we can pretty much deduce both the percentage and real dollar return of some of Facebook's earliest investors.

Most famous among them is Peter Thiel, who we know in 2004 invested $500,000 into Facebook at a valuation of approximately $4.9 million.

Facebook S-1 filing shows him now holding 44,724,100 shares of Facebook Class B stock - which at the estimated $41 price at which the stock is expected to go public - would be worth more than $1.8 billion.

For those scoring at home, that represents more than a 36 thousand percent return in 7 short years.
 
Now, first of all I think anyone who has ever made an investment of any kind - whether it be in real estate, in the stock market, in a commodity, in a private company -  that doesn't read that and not admit to at least to a little level of jealously and sense of the unfairness of it all…

…well, I would say that person is either lying, in denial or is just plain discouraged by this now 13-year “lost decade” of investing return that almost everyone that did NOT invest in Facebook has experienced.

So once we put this natural (and may I add wholly unproductive) emotion aside, the thoughtful angel investor should both gain great hope and powerful moving forward lessons from the Facebook IPO.

The first lesson is sector. 

Professor Scott Shane, one of the world’s foremost researchers on angel investing returns, makes the simple but crucial point that when it comes to making quality early-stage private company investments, technology is king, queen, court and everything in between. 

How important is it to have one’s investing focus be tech?

Well, Professor Shane estimates that the return expectation differential between an investment in an early stage, privately-held high tech company and one in a low tech company to be as much as 20x!

How can you make this work for you? 

Well, a simple shorthand to use is the “TechCrunch” test – i.e. whatever sector that most famous technology blog is writing about is a pretty good bet that there is also a LOT of smart angel investment money pouring into dynamic companies in it.

These days that includes social networking, gaming (mobile and otherwise), healthcare information technology, personal and business productivity software, entertainment convergence, and of course all things Apple.

This points to a second Facebook IPO lesson for investors, namely liquidity “signaling.” 

Sites like SharesPost and SecondMarket have become famous for their active and decent bid and ask spreads on high profile and cleanly capitalized tech companies like Twitter, LinkedIn, Zynga and Groupon, among many others. 

How these markets might fundamentally transform private equity investing for the better in the years to come is a story for another day, but for now the intelligent angel investor can view shares trading on these markets as great “acid tests.”

Simply asking the question of whether or not the shares of a private company could ever reliably trade - i.e. generate buying interest - on a popular trading market is a great signal as to the quality of and the prospects for the investment.

Folks, we're just getting started. 

Next week, we'll discuss an angel investment lesson from the Facebook’s IPO so powerful that a whole multi-billion dollar industry is springing up around it.

I have to admit, I'm not a pioneer by any stretch when it comes to most new technologies.

I was the last of my friends to get a cell phone. I held off on joining Twitter and Facebook until my employees told me I had to do it. And for years I refused to keep an online calendar, and rather opted to continue using my physical appointment book (several of which I kept and it's pretty interesting to look back a few years ago and see what I had scheduled on a daily basis).

And it wasn't until last week that I downloaded the QR code reader app on my iPhone (and now I'm like a little kid scanning every QR code I see).

But for some technologies and/or new services, I have been more of a pioneer. I was one of the first users of Google's AdWords program. And I was one of the early adapters of Voice Over IP.

I tell you this since there's a new type of marketing that's available to marketers everywhere. And while I've only dabbled in using it to date, I am going to be making much more use of it in the near future. And I urge you to do the same.

This new type of marketing is Mobile Marketing. And the statistics proving why you can't ignore it are staggering. Consider the following:

GROWTH

1. According to Nielsen, the iPhone's growth was 10 times faster than the growth of America Online.

MARKET SIZE

2. According to Mobile Marketing Association Asia, more people on planet Earth own a mobile phone (5.1 billion) than own a toothbrush (4.2 billion) {gross but true}.

3. According to the CTIA Wireless Association, 250+ million Americans carry mobile phones; representing over 80% of the nation's population.

ACCESSIBILITY

4. According to Morgan Stanley, 91% of all U.S. citizens have their cell phone or mobile device within reach 24/7.

5. According to Facebook, there are more than 350 million active users [44 percent] currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. And people that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook as non-mobile users.

SPEED & ACTION

6. According to the CTIA Wireless Association, while it takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email, it takes just 90 seconds for someone on average to respond to a text message.

7. According to Mobile Marketer, 70% of all mobile searches result in action within 1 hour.

REVENUES & RESULTS

8. According to Borrell Associates, mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons.

9. According to Yankee Group, global mobile payments (called m-payments) currently total approximately $240 billion and are expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2015.

10. According to IDC, mobile app downloads will reach 76.9 billion in 2014 and will generate $35 billion in sales.

So what does this mean to you?

Well to me, it means that mobile marketing should be a key part to the marketing plan of virtually any company. Mobile marketing allows you to reach customers quickly. Customers will get more and more used to paying you and other companies via their mobile device. And mobile applications will continue to explode, and are not only a way for you to stay in front of customers, but they could be a huge revenue source for your company.

So, don't ignore this key marketing trend. Rather, seize the opportunity to become the mobile marketing leader in your niche.

"I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end." ~ Larry Bird

I just love this quote from Larry Bird (who was a professional basketball player, and later coach, for those of you who don't know him). Yes, things always tend to work out, and you always tend to achieve success when you give it your all.

The best is when people look at successful athletes and entrepreneurs and say "look how lucky they are." Well if you call working all hours of the day and maintaining a laser-like focus on your goals "lucky," then I guess they're right. But you and I know better.

I grew up watching Larry Bird. My dad was a huge Boston Celtics fan (which is relatively odd considering he grew up in New York City). So, I became a huge Celtics fan too. And I was a big fan of the heart of the Celtics, Larry Bird.

This guy never gave up. And he nearly always hit the clutch shots.

(If you have 52 seconds and can tolerate terrible video quality, you need to watch this incredible steal by Larry Bird on YouTube. I clearly remember watching this live with my dad in 1987: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0vwJlvB-Po)

But as great as Larry Bird was, he would not have won so many NBA Championships (he won three), if he didn't have great teammates (same with Michael Jordan).

As an entrepreneur, you also need great teammates. Since you can't possibly build a great company by yourself.

In fact, great entrepreneurs are more like Larry Bird the coach (who "hired" and coached his players into being the best they could be) than Larry Bird the player (who performed key tasks and made his co-players better).

The key is this -- you need to find, hire and then train and coach the best people. Because there are TONS of bad people. I learned this very early on at Growthink. Years ago, I generally gave people the benefit of the doubt. If they said they could do something, I figured they could. And then I quickly realized that some people "have it" and some people don't.

I think "having it" is the quality of people who "do what they say and say what they do" and always try to do their best. You want people who "have it" and at the same time people who are qualified and uniquely skilled at the position you need to fill. For example, while I "have it," there's a whole bunch of positions that I'm not qualified to fulfill or which wouldn't inspire me to do my best work.

So, how do you find these great people who "have it" and possess the skills you need. Here are my recommendations:

1. Event Networking: great people have several common traits, one of which is their dedication to ongoing education. That's why great people generally go to events and conferences. You also need to go to these events, where you'll find some very talented individuals.

2. Being Sociable: I've heard lots of stories of people meeting people at sports events, supermarkets, on a plane, etc., and striking up conversations that results in great hiring decisions. I must admit that I'm not the most sociable person outside of work; but I'm getting better at this.

3. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a great online network to find qualified people to come work for you. Join relevant LinkedIn groups to find folks with similar interests and who are looking to further their careers. And reach out to the best ones.

4. Recommendations & Referrals: Oftentimes the best hires are the ones that were recommended to you by friends and colleagues. Send emails out to your network and advisors asking if they know someone with the skills you need. People generally only recommend people that they believe are competent, since their own reputations are on the line.

5. Executive Recruiters: while this will cost more money in the short-term, executive recruiters (also known as "headhunters") can find you great candidates. This is what they do. Importantly, they will often find you people who aren't actively looking for a new job. These are often the best folks. I mean, would you rather hire an unemployed person looking for any company that will take them, or someone who's thriving at a company but sees great opportunity in helping you grow your venture?

Importantly, in its relative infancy, eBay used executive recruiting firm Kindred Partners to find and hire Meg Whitman. Whitman turned eBay into a multi-billion dollar company and herself into a billionaire.

Using one or more of these five tactics will get you qualified job candidates. But, before you hire any, I highly suggest you give them two tests as follows:

1. A skills test: whenever possible, you should test the skills of the job candidate. If you are hiring someone for a research job, give them a research assignment. If you are hiring someone to be a receptionist, do mock calls with them. Etc. I realize that for some jobs, it may be harder to test, but get creative since you want to make sure they will be able to perform.

2. A culture test: if someone comes highly recommended and passes a skills test, it still doesn't mean they're the right hire. They MUST match with your company's culture. For instance, if they're a stiff, and your company thrives on fun and creativity, then they're not the right match. Your company culture is critical, so don't ignore this key test.

Hiring the right players for your team is critical to your success. There are no wildly successful 1-person companies that I know of. So, follow these steps so you can build a great team and a great company.

Note: I've also used Craigslist to find people. I have found good people on Craigslist, but I've also found some really bad ones. But it's possibly worth trying as long as you do the two tests before hiring them.

Suggested Resource:  To become the ultimate leader, you need to do a lot of things, like hire the right people, create the right culture, establish accountability structures, etc.

If you haven't led a highly successful company before, there are a lot of mistakes you will make. However, I've put together a program that allows you to skip the mistakes and get it right the first time.

In my program, I'll teach you everything you need to do to find, recruit and train the right people, and build an amazing organization that allows you to thrive. Click here to access it now.