Words of Wisdom from Ron Conway

by Scott Edward Walker on November 21st, 2013

To Our Clients & Friends: Welcome to our weekly series “Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed.”  Each week, we share a favorite video of a successful entrepreneur, investor or business leader on a variety of topics.  This week, we again present Ron Conway, the founder of SV Angel and a brilliant angel investor.

In this solid interview by Jessica Livingston from about a month ago (courtesy of the Startup School), Ron shares some interesting stories and the following nuggets for entrepreneurs:

• “At SV Angel, we invest in the people first.” (at 2:33)
• “With any product, it’s ‘do the users like it?’” (at 3:48)
• “You never argue with the metrics.” (at 5:25)
• “The founders who companies don’t explode [in growth], and they keep iterating until it does, are really unsung heroes.” (at 8:32)
• “Entrepreneurs like Zuck, Jack Dorsey and Ben Silverman are successful because they didn’t care about the outside world; all they cared about in the early days… is ‘is the product the best it can be and are users loving it?’” (at 12:07)
• The biggest mistake I see with founders and fundraising is founders not focusing enough on finding the investor who can add the most value.” (at 14:36)
• “Valuation and dilution are secondary to [bringing] in a top-tier investor who adds value to the space that you’re in… That’s worth millions and millions to your valuation.” (at 14:55)
• “Once you get any inkling of an agreement, send an email that commits the investor to that agreement.” (at 17:12)
• “Product focus is really, really important.” (at 19:14)
• “The other factor we look for is decisiveness.” (at 20:27)
• “You need to hire fast, and you need to fire fast.” (at 20:53)

I hope you enjoy it.  Cheers, Scott