How to Avoid Investor Disconnect When Pitching

November 5, 2018.Reading time 10 minutes.

I recently was asked to judge a pitching competition for CannInvest NJ. The format was familiar; each participant was given eight minutes to pitch their business idea to a panel of judges and an audience of on-lookers. The judges gave feedback and voted to determine a winner. Most of the presentations missed the mark. […]

Continual Partial Attention

May 27, 2015.Reading time 11 minutes.

We live in a connected world, and it is a wonderful world. Twenty years ago it would have been hard to fathom that every bit of information we need could be found by clicking an app on a mobile phone. This access to information is, of course, unlimited: trivia, a definition, personal background information, and […]

5 THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY TO SAVE MONEY ON DILIGENCE LATER

April 30, 2014.Reading time 10 minutes.

A company whose board I serve recently decided to accept an offer to be acquired. About one third of the way through the due diligence period, I checked in with legal counsel to see where the legal bill stood and found out that we were already at $200k…..whaaaaat? This was close to the overall budget […]

Pinpointing Problems Worth Solving (Part Three of Three)

April 4, 2014.Reading time 11 minutes.

In part two of this series I wrote about how I believe that founding CEOs who are deep domain experts are the best at getting to product-market fit in a capital efficient way. I profiled ServiceChannel’s CEO’s 30+ year history solving problems in the contractor and facility management space. In this post I will profile […]

Pinpointing Problems Worth Solving (Part Two of Three)

March 19, 2014.Reading time 10 minutes.

In my last post, I wrote about how many startups fail because they try solving problems no one really has or cares enough about to spend money to solve. I mentioned that while poor execution is responsible for many startup failures, you can’t execute your way out of a bad idea. In the venture capital […]

Pinpointing Problems Worth Solving (Part One of Three)

December 13, 2013.Reading time 10 minutes.

Finding a good problem to solve with a startup can be like finding a needle in a haystack. “Haystack. End of Summer” Claude Monet One of my favorite blog posts is Paul Graham’s How to get startup ideas. Paul is one of my top-five bloggers, along with Marc Suster, Ben Horowitz, Nir Eyal, and of course […]

The Undervalued Witness to History

November 4, 2013.Reading time 5 minutes.

During my 20 years as an operating executive, when I would interview a job candidate I would often think: “Is he/she a ‘maker of history’ or a ‘witness to history?’” Candidates would tell great stories where they play the hero: “I created a cross-function marketing allocation process around quarterly initiatives, which included members of each […]

Named one of the “25 Angel Investors in New York You Need to Know” by AlleyWatch in 2014, Jeff has been a venture investor for ten years, an angel investor for eight years. Jeff is CEO of Arcview Ventures, the manager of The Arcview Collective Fund, the first member-managed fund in cannabis. He also serves as Chairman of the Evaluation Committee and Treasurer of the ARC Angel Fund. Jeff has been actively advising startups at Reitler Advisory Group and publishes insights to his blog www.finkabout.it.

He is a frequent panelist, speaker, and judge on venture investing and pitch competitions in NY. Jeff has also guest lectured and held office hours for many incubators / accelerators including Start-up Leadership Program, 37 Angels, NYU Polytech Incubator (New York City and Brooklyn), DreamIT Ventures, and FashInvest. Prior to his work with angel and seed groups, Jeff was a partner of Odeon Capital Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund. Prior to Odeon, Jeff was an operating executive at CA, Inc., and Cheyenne Software, Inc., where he served as GM of the Unix Division, VP of Corporate Development, VP of Corporate Marketing, and Director of Product Management. Jeff also serves as Chairman of the Board of WellLife Network, a not-for-profit offering residential, clinical, and day programs to 25,000 individuals with developmental, psychological, and behavioral disabilities in NYC’s five boroughs and Long Island.

Fink About It

Category: Tech