By Carman Chan

1. Makings of
Success: How
I’ve Chosen
Who to Invest in
By Carman Chan
linkedin.com/in/carmanchan

2. 92%
Within 3 years, 92% of startups failed
Source: Discover The Patterns Of Successful Internet
Startups In The Startup Genome Report
Click Ventures: Within 4 years, only 3% of Our Portfolio
Companies failed
Source: Carman Chan
3%

3. Click Ventures 31 portfolio companies globally

4. How I’ve Chosen Who to
Invest In?
There was a little girl...

5. Someone who...
- Has the Drive
- Can Learn Fast
- will find a Direction
- are Connected

6. My question cloud
What is your
Pre-money valuation?
Who has confirmed in this round?
What is your traction?
How much have you raised?
Who is the competitors or
substitutions?
What is the background of
your team?
How is the team size now,
founders and management
team?
Any holes are there in the
team and any plan to fill the
holes?
What is their problem and how
you solve it?
What are you different from
competitors?What is the barrier and how long
will it last?
What is your idea?
What is your
business model?

7. More
What is the
use of the
funding?
What is current burning
rate and projected
burning rate with the
funding?What is your
current KPI?
When would be next
round of fund raising?
What is your marketing
strategies?
How long it takes to
engage a client?
What is your cap table?
What is the % of your
option pool?
Who is your committed
advisors?
Did you raise last round?
What being achieved after
last round of funding?
Who were the
investors?
What is the
feedback of your
users?
What is your business development
plan?

8. What is really important?
1. Founders that focus and learn are more successful: how focus should it be?
Learn from mentors, successful entrepreneurs (supporting network), KPI and track metrics effectively.
2. Traction: Good conversion rate or improving conversion rate and more users stay with you with a
increasing rate...etc
3. A team with two to three full-time Quality founders is better than a
single founder: At least one business founder and one technical founder.
4. Ability to scale up the startup in the right time: setup workflow, train up
people, management and evaluation, ability to hire and learn...etc. Premature scaling or scaling too slow
can both kill a startup.
5. Interesting idea, technology: only apply for some startup.
6. With basic stuff ready: Pitching deck ready, option pool, founders vesting plan, supporting
legal firm/investment related documents...etc.
7. Pivot once or twice times is ok and can be good:

9. More...
1. Accelerator or incubation support: for those startups not that ready yet and
without track record or without personal connection with potential investors
2. A team with Track Record
3. Complete Business plan: 10 pages PPT for the investors and longer for
yourself. start with what is the “pain” then follow your solution instead of vice
versa may easier to catch attention if investor share or understand the pain.
4. Appropriate Valuation: what happened if too low or too high?
5. Integrity: eg. involved in two startups? Got new idea?
6. Ability to raise series A round and the plan.
7. What is your KPI?

10. Reference
Option Pool: 15%, usually won’t dilute investors in seed stage round
Founder vesting plan: Four years with one year cliff
Advisory shares: from option pool and 0.25% to less than 1% for one to two years.
Co founder: suggest to have at least 10% shares
Cooleygo.com
500.co/kiss
Ycombinator.com/documents
fi.co/contents/fast#