Dean Michael Berris

So today is the last day of my mini vacation where I spent the whole week trying to not do any work. I'd say I'm now refreshed somewhat and in a better frame of mind. There's much to be done in my startup projects -- there's the matter of launching them, after being delayed for one week to add in additional polish to both products. One of them is ready and hopefully going to be launched within the next few days, while the other one will just need a host to be put on.

One of the interesting things I've learned while on vacation is that ever since I switched my brain into entrepreneur mode, I keep finding lots of opportunities around waiting for a business to get started. Even while in the province, just talking with my wife (who's also as enterprising as I am, if not more enterprising) about the possible business opportunities ranging from things like food, retail, and things like investing in small scale businesses to get it to a scale where it would be profitable even lucrative. My wife and I both come from families where business is the mode of thinking and it's good that we have things like the business mindset as a common thing. The only issue we have right now is that we're just two people with limited time and resources.

This brings me to one of the points I want to make in this post: where are the investors in the Philippines? I know there are a lot of entrepreneurs: the fishball vendor, the carinderia owner, the tricycle operator, and the fish vendor. However, where are the people who have the means and capital to enable the growth of these small businesses?

I've been mulling around with the thought of doing angel investing for small enterprises at some point in time, and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to start a company with people that I share a common interest with. I'm just not ready yet to give out the name of our company because for web people, we don't have a decent website up yet. I know, that's a little embarrassing but that's beside the point. There will be a time and circumstance when we do launch our website, especially after we have our products out in the wild and gaining traction.

About angel investing, I really want to be able to give people who have great business ideas and are already executing some money in exchange for a small stake in their company. Not all companies will want to take outside investment (I know ours wouldn't for a lot of reasons) but here's a list of things I think should be the "terms" of my investments if ever I get to a point where I can do this sort of thing:

1. I will take only a maximum of 10% of your company, and at most a seat in the board. The board set is not necessary -- but if it is a web/software company, I'd like to be in on the business side of things.
2. I will invest only in companies I would start myself but couldn't otherwise -- this means it would be in the science and technology (not necessarily IT) field.
3. Companies I will invest in will only be ones that have an immediate revenue stream. The revenue trajectory should be positive, meaning the investment I will make would most definitely just be for ensuring growth and for jump-starting further development.
4. I will only sell shares when the founders sell shares or when the founders buy out my shares. In the case of the company getting acquired or if they intend to raise funding from venture capitalists, I'll have the option to share my shares to other co-investors at the valuation that the new investors are coming in at.

Posted via email from Dean Berris' Brain Dump