Back Unto the Breach

FX AlignedI haven’t posted, tweeted, commented, attended angel meetings, or otherwise engaged in weeks. And most likely I won’t be for several more weeks, as… I’m starting a new company!  It’s called FX Aligned, and it will introduce 3rd party trading desk services for institutional investors in the world’s biggest market, the $4-5 trillion DAILY foreign exchange market. And just like Jake and Elwood, the Blues Brothers, I’m “on a mission from God, and I’m getting the band back together again.”

The company just incorporated, I’ve been busy with all the prosaic annoyances like finding office space, lining up credit cards, filing 83(b) paperwork, etc. Don’t even have a landing page up yet on fxaligned.com. While I actually have some backlog of first drafts of blogposts, I’m not going to spend time on polishing them up until I need a break…which may not be until the snow flies. In the meantime, you can always see who I’m following on Twitter–it’s all startup stuff–and let me know what I’m missing.

And you can help me–I’m a big believer that stealth is bad, ideas are cheap, and it’s all about execution. If you know of people who are fluent in the world of foreign exchange, please introduce me. While it’s a cousin of securities lending, where I spent the last 10 years, I’ve still got lots to learn, and I’m looking forward to diving in.

Thanks in advance,

Ty

Best Post on Financing a Startup I’ve Read

Stop reading this and go straight to the wonderful article by David Skok of Matrix Partners entitled

Cash is King: 8 tips for Optimizing your Startup Financing Strategy.

The article covers a broad range of issues, from milestone planning to amount of extra runway required, all of which add up to THE most important startup objective: ensuring your company doesn’t run out of cash.  David, incidentally, was described to me by a current TechStars company as the “highest value provider” of all of the TechStars Boston mentors they worked with–which must be very high praise indeed.

A tip of the hat to the excellent digest Venture Fizz for finding this article. Scroll through the Voices section (aka the blog) to see all the guest articles they’ve assembled.

Changing from No to Yes

Changing investment decisionsI recently changed course and invested in a (unnamed for the time being) green energy-related company.  I see all sorts of startups related to green energy, all of whom previously got a thumbs down. Most often the no is on the team or on capital inefficiency questions, just as in any other sector.

I had seen “X Company” present at angel meetings or conferences three times before, and I never regretted passing on them. So what changed my mind and got me to invest? In this instance, there were four things: personnel, a recommendation, addressable market opportunity, and traction.

Let’s take them in order. (more…)

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