The sight of it can be intoxicating.

Even if it’s been left under a mattress for years, it smells as fresh as spring.

And if you have enough of it, you can “make it rain.”

I’m talking, of course, about cash.

We all have a special place in…

Keeping score in the stock market is easy:

Oh, you bought Facebook last summer at $35 a share?

Hang on a second, let me pull up the online chart…

Wow, it’s trading at $70. Nice “double”!

Keeping score with start-ups isn’t quite so simple:

The typical journey for a successful…

With school out for summer, the trash-talking playground bullies have gone quiet.

But in the halls of early-stage investing, the zingers continue to fly.

The season’s most riveting grudge match?

The Old-School Venture Capitalists versus The New-School Equity Crowdfunders!

Today we’ll take a quick look at each side’s insults –…

The numbers are clear:

3 out of 4 start-ups fail.

For the founders of these companies, that means years of working around the clock, endless uphill battles, low or no pay...

And at the end of the road, 75% of them will have nothing to show for it.

It makes…

Yesterday you took a brief quiz on angel investing.

You were tasked with evaluating five early-stage companies and determining whether or not you’d invest.

How do you think you did?

Well you’re about to find out...

Start-up #1 – Coffee Bean Retailer

Remember the coffee company started by two teachers…

Just before 11 p.m. on a recent Sunday evening, we were alerted to the presence of a gruesome set of written confessions.

We quickly inspected them, but found no revelations of adultery, theft, or murder.

No--their subject matter was of a far more unusual type:

They were confessions of failure…

Peter Lynch was a rock star of a stock picker.

During his 13 years at the helm of Fidelity’s Magellan Fund, he racked up 29% annual returns.

To put that in perspective, a $50k investment would have grown to $1.4 million.

How did he accomplish this feat… and…

I’m writing this from a white-washed island in Greece called Folegandros.

Yes, it’s summertime…

And I’m honoring the age-old investor tradition of “Sell in May, go away.”

Typically, I can’t get paid to travel like this…

But thanks to a new crowdfunding opportunity, now I can.

And so can you.

Late last year, Amazon.com announced the use of “drones” to deliver packages.

Drones are remote-controlled aircraft. They’re mainly used for military purposes.

At the time, it smelled like a publicity stunt…

Flying saucers delivering little brown boxes of books and shampoo?

Really, Mr. Bezos?

But as…

Every week, venture capital firms see dozens of new deals…

Over the course of a year, a 3 or 4-person firm might see several thousand of them.

But can you guess how many they invest in?

Let’s take a look…

The Funnel

Satya Patel, a venture capitalist with 

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