How Angels & Seed Funds compete with VCs

TL;DR: The emerging “seed ecosystem” of angel groups, seed funds, and accelerators now provides local startups a viable path to seed funding, and eventually “going national,” w/o having to prematurely commit to a Series A lead.  That has dramatically reduced the leverage that local institutional funds once had over their local ecosystems.

Background Reading:

Once upon a time, startup ecosystems (if they could even really be called that) outside of Silicon Valley had only a handful of local VC funds writing checks. Without AngelList, LinkedIn, Twitter, Accelerators, good videoconferencing, and the many other recent developments that have reduced geographic friction in startup capital flows, those funds effectively “owned” their cities, including most of the startup lawyers in those cities; which often resulted in harsh terms and aggressive behavior. For more on this, see: Local v. Out-of-State VCs.

Raising “angel” money in that era often meant needing close connections (family, friends, professional) to very high net worth individuals willing to make big bets on you until you were ready for one of the few local funds to take you under their wing. If you were one of those lucky few chosen, those local VC funds would then, once they were out of their own capital, show you off to one of their trusted out-of-state growth capital funds.

The pipeline was narrowly defined, and choice was minimal: local angels (or friends and family), then local VC, then out-of-state growth capital.

Times have changed.

Today, angel groups are much bigger, organized, and collaborative across city and state lines. Seed funds – which weren’t really even much of a concept a few years ago – will write checks of a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars for rounds that may have been called Series A 3-5 years ago, but are now “seed” rounds. Prominent accelerators have themselves joined the mix, writing their own 6-figure checks and serving as valuable filters / signaling mechanisms to reduce the search costs of investors.

This “seed ecosystem” of organized angels, flexible seed funds, and accelerators has not only increased the amount of “pre-VC” capital available to startups, but very importantly, it has significantly reduced the leverage that local VC funds have over their local startup ecosystems. 

As I wrote in Optionality: Always have a Plan B, sunk money has very different incentives from future money. A seed fund/angel that has mostly maxed out the amount of capital it can fund you with has every incentive to help you find a great Series A lead at a great valuation; they are quite aligned with the common stock. They want a higher valuation and better terms for the existing cap table, just like you do, because they are being diluted too.

However, a VC fund that wrote you a small seed check but wants to lead your Series A has very different incentives. The “seed ecosystem” wants to maximize your Series A options, while a VC fund wants to minimize them, until it gets the deal it wants.

Foreign capital will usually require some heightened level of de-risking or credible signaling before it will cross state lines. It’s much less risky to rely on my local referral sources, and “monitor” my portfolio where I can drop in by the office whenever I need to. If I’m going to write a check a thousand miles away, I need a little more reason to do so. In that regard, it’s well-known that there is a “flipping” point beyond which the pool of capital available to a startup moves from being mostly local to much more national: that point is somewhere between $500k-$2MM ARR (it used to be higher, and can be even lower if you have a strong network). 

Historically, reaching that flipping point was almost impossible without local VC, and this effectively kept startup ecosystems captive to their local funds. The new seed ecosystem, with its ability to often fund 7-figure rounds all on its own, has changed that. Now, if a desirable startup wants to, it can often raise $1-2MM in seed capital without taking a single traditional VC check, then use that to hit the “flipping” point, after which the number of VCs it can talk to goes up considerably. 

Of course, this dynamic is not always so clean cut.  More progressive VCs have wisely developed symbiotic relationships with this seed ecosystem for the obvious reason that it can serve as a pipeline when startups are ready for bigger checks. That is a smart move. What we’ve also seen is that large VCs are playing much “nicer” in seed rounds than they used to, as an acknowledgement of their reduced control over the market. Years ago you much more often saw VCs condition a $250K or $500K check on a side letter giving them the right to lead your Series A. That is increasingly becoming an anachronism, and for good reason.

At the same time that AngelList, accelerators, LinkedIn networks, and other signaling / communication mechanisms for startups are giving foreign capital more “visibility” into other ecosystems, allowing it to invest earlier and more geographically dispersed, the emergent seed ecosystem is also increasingly allowing local startups to “go national” without having to commit themselves to a particular VC fund. The obvious winners in this new world are entrepreneurs and investors willing to be open and flexible with how they fund companies. The losers are the traditional investors – particularly those who used their old leverage to squeeze founders – who haven’t understood that the old game is gone, and it’s not coming back.

Do my startup’s lawyers need to be local?

TL;DR: No. Most top startup lawyers have clients in many different cities, and lawyers specializing in emerging tech/startup work usually exist only in denser tech ecosystems. Familiarity with your ecosystem, and the expectations of its participants, matters more than being physically local.

Background Reading:

If you live in a small town/city and need specialized (not general practice) medical care, you most likely need to look to a larger city to find that specialist. Any kind of service provider needs some minimal user base to build a viable practice. Larger cities have a higher concentration of patients, and therefore a higher number of patients needing a particular specialty, which is what enables the development of specialist doctors.

This is why cardiologists generally don’t live in farm towns, at least not during their working-week. They live in larger cities. And neonatal cardiologists (even more narrowly specialized) generally only live in the very largest cities.

For localized work, specialization requires density.

It’s also why true startup lawyers – corporate lawyers with a focused practice in emerging tech and venture-backed companies – generally exist only in cities with dense startup ecosystems. Even with modern technology that enables casting a wider net for your market reach, most professionals rely significantly on a local client base. If that local base doesn’t exist, they move to where one does, or they change their practice to mirror the local market. Houston has among the world’s top energy lawyers, but slim pickings for technology/vc lawyers. Boston has among the world’s top healthcare lawyers, but slim pickings for entertainment lawyers (many of which are in Los Angeles). No surprises there.

So to the extent work has a heavily local component (like healthcare, and to a lesser extent law), if you need a particular kind of specialized service, you are smart to look for it in places that have a real density of users for that service. Otherwise you will end up with sub-par local providers, which can be fine if the stakes are low, but disastrous when they aren’t.

Startup Law really isn’t that localized.

It may come as a surprise to people that, for a significant portion of my client base, I have never met the principals in person; and likely never will. Videoconferencing and teleconferencing serve just fine (in addition to other tech tools). That is actually the case for a lot of lawyers with specialized practices. Most serious startup/VC lawyers that I know have clients in multiple cities. In my case, about half of my clients are in Austin (reflecting the need for a dense local base to usually build a specialized practice), and the other half are not (confirming that being local isn’t required at all).

Unlike a cardiologist, I don’t need to physically examine anyone to do my job, which makes geography largely irrelevant. Because most startups generally incorporate in Delaware for reasons discussed throughout the startup blogosphere, local state law only plays a small role in most of the legal issues that startups deal with (usually local employment law); and for those issues, most startup lawyers collaborate with local employment lawyers. The corporate issues generally require very little understanding of local state law. I have quite a few clients with lawyers in half a dozen different cities, none of which are the city where the company is headquartered. And it works just fine.

More important than truly local lawyers is lawyers who are familiar with working in ecosystems that look like your own. The norms of Silicon Valley financing and governance are very different from those of Denver and Atlanta, as an example; both what some would call “2nd tier” ecosystems.  But a Denver lawyer would be quite comfortable with Austin norms, and visa versa.

Local v. foreign specialized lawyers is about tradeoffs.

Silicon valley startups generally use silicon valley startup lawyers. Austin startups generally use Austin startup lawyers. And in both cases, that works very well, because there isn’t a cost to ‘going local.’ Being able to meet up once in a while in person with your service providers is obviously nice from a relationship standpoint. There is some benefit also to your investors being familiar with company counsel, although that issue is usually exaggerated for reasons that I’ll discuss more below.

So if you can get the nice benefits of having someone local, without many costs, going local is usually a good idea as long as you can find someone local who isn’t captive to local investor interests. And sometimes you can’t. See: “How to avoid ‘captive’ company counsel.” There is no set of advisors for whom a founder/management team should care more about their independence than company counsel.

For startups with less dense ecosystems than Silicon Valley or Austin, however, the cost to going local can be much higher. The reason VC or Angel-backed startups in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and similar cities often hire startup lawyers who aren’t local is that they (correctly) recognize that their local ecosystems (generally) lack the density to support truly specialized, scalable startup/vc law practices. Each of those cities has fantastic, very smart corporate lawyers who likely have some tech clients, but startup/vc law as a specialization is more difficult to find; although there are exceptions.

My non-Austin clients have concluded that it’s much better, and more efficient, to collaborate with lawyers in another city who’ve seen the exact issues they’re dealing with dozens of times, and have the resources to address them quickly, relative to someone who may be easier to grab beers with, but hasn’t. CEOs need to exercise their own judgment for their own circumstances.

Be careful with localism, and localist incentives.

“Localism” is a term I’ve started using to refer to the underlying, subtle incentives among ecosystem players that push them to promote local people onto a set of founders, sometimes at a very high cost to the company; discussed in the links at the beginning of this post. Ask any experienced founder, and they’ll tell you about so-called “advisors” or “mentors” in their local ecosystem who, while fun to hang around as cheerleaders, unfortunately don’t actually deliver much real advice or mentorship. There are some great advisors/mentors out there, but also a lot of duds.

There are, broadly speaking, 2 ways (not mutually exclusive) in which service providers (venture capitalists, lawyers, accelerators, accountants, advisors, etc.) build their portfolios: (A) being actually good (objectively) at their service, and (B) building relationships and generating referrals from those relationships. Most A-level people rely on both (because the first leads to the second).  But there are a whole lot of people in every business community who are quite mediocre at the actual service they provide, but are exceptional at marketing themselves and building referrals.

If my social capital is the primary way that I get business, then I’m heavily incentivized to refer to people within my personal, local social circle, even if I know that objectively, someone better may be in another city. That “someone better in the other city” has his own social circles she/he belongs to that aren’t as inter-connected (or dependent) on my own. Sending business to them makes it less likely that it’ll come back to me, unless there’s some objective reason for the referral.

I don’t mean to sound cynical about all of this. It is how a lot of good people build their practices and reputations in the business world, and it’s just fine. But it’s important for every team to to be aware of these dynamics in their raw form, and correct for them as needed. And believe me I get the “farmers market” “go local” “support the LOCAL ecosystem” aspects of promoting local people as well, even if I believe the more self-interested dynamics underly a lot of that; at least as it relates to service providers. 

There’s something noble in that, but not when it comes at the expense of founders – who are putting their entire livelihoods on the line – getting shit service. As I’ve written before, nothing builds an ecosystem more than great companies, and great companies aren’t built with mediocre people. 

Watch out for ‘captive’ local counsel.

Circling back quickly to the issue of captive company counsel is a good place to close this out. For many people in startup ecosystems, localism is driven either by self-interested referral circles, or ecosystem cheerleading.  But for the most influential players in a particular ecosystem, it can also be driven by control. Thankfully the transparency of the web is weakening this dynamic, but institutional investors with heavy local influence often like to see local VC lawyers in the company counsel seat because they’ve strategically built leverage over those lawyers by (i) being their clients, and/or (ii) pushing portfolio companies to use them as company counsel. In other words, they’re company counsel, but… not really. 

Obviously you’ll never hear anything like this stated flat out in a board meeting. What you’ll more often hear is discussion about credentials, or familiarity, or experience, etc. etc. “I’m not sure those lawyers have the right experience” or “We’re more comfortable with these guys.” As I’ve written before, sometimes those concerns have merit. Take them seriously, and if you need to upgrade, go through the process yourself to find independent counsel. But also understand how these comments are usually veiled attempts at pushing companies to engage lawyers who are captive to the investors’ interests, and unable to fully represent the company.  If your lead investors seem peculiarly interested in your using a particular set of lawyers, that’s often a good indication of whom you should avoid.

Yes, there’s some reduction of “friction” when company counsel is familiar with the norms/expectations of investors across the table. But its value shouldn’t be overstated. Sometimes what investors call “friction” is just your lawyers doing their damn job. In this regard, we have seen companies from smaller ecosystems choose to engage foreign company counsel not because local VC specialists weren’t available, but because the founder team viewed them all as captive. Sometimes (but not always) they are right. 

There’s no right answer for all companies on this issue. Specialization is important. Local can be helpful at times, but also costly in specific circumstances. But you’ll arrive at a much better decision by weighing all the variables, instead of just assuming that “going local” is a requirement. It most certainly is not.

Do I need a PPM for my startup’s financing?

TL;DR: Legally speaking, probably not. Most tech startups never prepare one.

PPM stands for “Private Placement Memorandum.” You can think of it as the private company equivalent of an S-1, the long disclosure document that companies produce when going IPO. PPMs are lengthy documents that include risk factors, financial projections, business plan information, etc.  For a broad description of what a PPM is, see this article.

In dense startup ecosystems, PPMs are rare.

Startups in dense, more mature tech ecosystems like SV or Austin usually don’t even think of producing PPMs; nor should they. Assuming that they are taking the classic approach of raising money only from accredited investors, a well-made deck and a solid operating plan are often their core needs for closing on early money. Delivering an Austin tech investor a PPM would send an immediate signal that the founders aren’t being well-advised, which itself signals poor judgment in choosing advisors. 

Asking for a PPM signals inexperience.

In less dense ecosystems, however, I do occasionally encounter tech companies who are told by advisors, lawyers, or other players that they need a PPM to close on financing. FACT: The vast majority of tech startups raising money solely from accredited investors are not creating PPMs, and legally speaking, they don’t have to.  Most repeat ecosystem players consider PPMs a waste of time and money. 

One of the main reasons that startups avoid non-accredited investors and stick to accredited-only rounds is that the legal disclosure burdens are dramatically reduced, which means no need for PPMs. In healthcare, energy, and a whole host of other industries, using PPMs in private fundraising is very common. For this reason, if your lawyer is telling you (a tech startup) that you need a PPM, that’s often a good ‘tell’ that they lack experience in the norms of emerging tech financing. 

Exercise diplomacy with more traditional investors.

All of the above being side, I have also on occasion encountered more traditional investors who, because they do not regularly invest in emerging tech companies, ask startups for PPMs (because PPMs are more common in other industries).  All money is green and, particularly for early angel money, you need to be respectful of the expectations that angels bring to the table; even if they’re ‘off market.’

In these situations, it’s best to diplomatically let them know that PPMs are not the norm in the tech startup space, and that the company would prefer (as should they) to focus its legal budget solely on those things that are truly needed.   Asking a more traditional investor what specific information she/he was hoping to see in the PPM, and trying to address those concerns more informally, usually goes a long way to bridge the gap. Sometimes hearing directly from a Tech/VC lawyer about the norms of startup finance also helps. 

Founders outside of Silicon Valley can sometimes forget that most of the resources – blogs, articles, podcasts, tweets, etc. – on startup finance and norms are, in the grand scheme of things, a tiny bubble in the overall business market.  When anyone says there simply “isn’t enough money” available for startups in Texas, or markets similar to Texas, what they really mean is that there isn’t enough money flowing into tech companies. There’s tons of money floating around elsewhere. People who can culturally build bridges between tech ecosystems and more traditional business networks have a competitive advantage in the market, and are often the ones forging ahead building new companies, and even investment funds, while others run around in circles soliciting only the ‘techies’ of the market.

Luddites v. Tech Utopians: 409A and Legal

Background Reading:

TL;DR: Luddites pretend that technology can’t out-do them at anything. Tech utopians pretend tech can do everything. The truth lies in the middle.

In my sphere of the world, I interact with two profiles of people, both of whom I find somewhat obnoxious.

The first are luddites; often lawyers. These people cannot fathom the idea of clients wanting anything less than hand-crafted, white-glove attention to every legal matter. The compromises on quality and customization brought about by software and automation tools are an offense to their professionalism. They’ll walk you through 10 ways in which they can beat a piece of software, completely oblivious to the fact that 99.9% of the market doesn’t give a damn, if the software’s output is good enough.

The second are the opposite of luddites; what I’d call tech utopiansoften young founders or engineers. To these folks, effectively everything legal professionals do is hand-waiving non-sense, charging hundreds of dollars an hour to fill in forms.  Build a simple automation tool, or DIY checklist for them, and their eyes light up; enraptured with how ‘smart’ they are for not ‘wasting’ money on legal services. And I happily admit to a bit of schadenfreude when they end up paying 10x later for cleanup, as part of their education in the value of legal counsel.

Luddites are in self-denial regarding how much of their work can actually be done quite well, and sometimes better, by technology. Tech Utopians are in denial about how much work still requires, and will require for a very very long time, highly-trained, highly-intelligent people who aren’t conflicted, and who can analyze and deliver things that even the most advanced technology cannot. And yes, those people are way more expensive than software.

The bottom 25% of most professions is probably dead in the water relative to software; think TurboTax and LegalZoom. As AI becomes more sophisticated, that will probably move up to something closer to 50%. This is quite visible in law as lower ranked schools (many of which are a racket) are getting sued by debt-saddled graduates who can’t find jobs, and the credentials of lawyers at well-paying firms edge up each year.  To some extent, it’s never been better to be an elite lawyer. It’s never been worse to be any other kind.

Tech-Enabled Lawyers

The truth about almost every profession, at least when you move beyond the lower rungs, is that technology is a supplement, not a replacement, for people. It’s a tool. And a very powerful one for those who can figure out how to leverage it.

E/N’s recruiting process is designed to systematically filter out luddites. That’s because, not only do I simply not have the time or desire to waste hours of my life trying to train them, but technology (automation, machine learning, communication tech, project management, etc. etc.) is so deeply integrated into our workflows that to add anyone who doesn’t ‘get it’ into the mix would cause a total breakdown. Before I look at emotional or analytical intelligence, or communication skills (all of which are important), I want to know what kinds of technology this person already uses in her/his life.

When lawyers from other firms ask how they might operate and scale leanly like E/N, my answer is as swift as it is depressing: “first, you have to fire half of your payroll.” They usually start laughing, until they see the dead serious look on my face. The legal profession is full of luddites, everywhere; even among the younger generation and in firms that service tech clients. And there’s no room for them in tech-enabled law firms. “Get it” or get out.

And yet with all of the technology that we leverage, I tell every single E/N client that we are not cheap, and never will be. Cheaper than our true competitors, certainly. And dramatically more responsive. But talent costs money.

409A: Trim that fat

When I wrote 409A as a Service: Cash Cows Get Slaughtered a few years ago, highlighting how eShares was using their own technology to trim the fat in an industry that (in my opinion) really was in many cases extorting startups, the response from the luddites was predictable. “Here are 10 reasons why you can’t automate a 409A valuation.”

Over the years, eShares as a platform has grown (as I knew they would), and many of our clients have been thrilled to take advantage of their service. Tech-enabled 409A; not fully automated. They recently published a blog post called The art and science behind an eShares 409A breaking down how automation is used in their reports, and how it’s not.

The future of professional services belongs to people who embrace technology and let it do what it does best, without diminishing the areas where human intelligence and creativity are superior, and will continue to be so for a very long time. Not tech-less. Not tech-only. Tech-enabled. 

Local v. Out-of-State VCs

Some things in life are certainties. The sun will rise tomorrow, you will be taxed for something… and startup ecosystem players across the world, outside of Silicon Valley and NYC, will complain about the lack of local VC capital, and the need for more foreign capital. Are they correct in complaining? I’m not going to answer that question. Too debatable, and the debate gets you nowhere.

What I am going to say, and I’m saying this as someone who manages a legal practice with visibility into a decent number of 2nd/3rd ‘tier’ ecosystems in the U.S., is that there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the overall trends in this area.

The Historical ‘Scarcity Culture’ of Local Venture Capital

Not just in Austin, but in many tech ecosystems that have a similar profile, there’s historically been a culture among the institutional investor community that directly reflected the scarcity of local capital, and of information about that capital. I will call this ‘scarcity culture.’ Trying not to come off as too judgmental, because all institutional capital plays a vital role in the business community, regardless of its approach, I would say that scarcity culture is largely summarized with the following statement:

“You don’t like our terms or our behavior? What can you do about it? What alternatives do you actually have?”

Does this mean that all local VCs outside of the densest markets think that way? Of course not. But it is definitely there, in a variety of ways.

Anyone with a broad enough visibility into American venture capital knows it is an absolute fact that California VCs are generally ‘friendlier’ than the VCs of any other ecosystem. By ‘friendlier,’ I mean that they are OK with higher valuations, they are more transparent in their intentions, and they tend to show significantly more deference to a founder team in terms of providing coaching/opportunities for growth as opposed to an early pink slip.  Why is that?

Is it something in the water? The weather? Have they achieved a new level of enlightenment? Hell no. California VCs have the same job as VCs anywhere else: to make money.  The answer lies in one very simple word: competition. And increasingly over the past few years it is magnified by one more factor: increased transparency through technology and decreased friction in networks. 

Competition and Reputation. 

Let’s use an analogy here.  Do you think that restaurant service is better or worse in dense urban environments relative to small rural areas? Obviously it’s better. There’s more competition.

Do you think the existence of Yelp, and the ability of restaurant goers to (i) easily find information on the past experiences of patrons of a specific restaurant and (ii) easily express their own experience about those restaurants, has improved or reduced the quality of restaurant service? It obviously has improved it. There’s a million times more transparency, which dramatically raises the reputational stakes.

In an environment where a quality founder team can, if they don’t like one particular set of VCs, walk almost literally across the street and talk to 10 more, investors have learned (rightly) that to be an asshole is to step right into a massive adverse selection problem. Combine a truly competitive market with inter-connected networks where reputational information flows freely, and you have a system that naturally corrects for bad behavior.  The really good companies, the one’s that everyone would want to invest in, don’t have to put up with anyone’s nonsense; and they do their homework. 

Contrast that with ecosystems where only a handful of investors, many of whom collude with one another, are available for companies that need serious funds, and you have a very clear explanation for why California capital is ‘sunnier.’  California VCs are more “founder friendly,’ because their circumstances make founder friendliness an almost essential requirement for deal flow. Most assholes can’t even survive in that environment, so it selects for ‘nicer’ people.

I am not saying that west coast money is all cotton candy and rainbows; nor am I saying that non-SV local VCs are all difficult to work with. But broadly and relatively speaking California VCs tend to be much easier for a founder/management team to get along with. It is also no surprise that the rise of industry/vertical-focused VC and VC ‘value-add services’ has come out of California. They’ve got to find a way of differentiating themselves in the noise.

Transparency and Friction.

A decade ago, if you needed to connect with X person for whatever reason – to diligence an investor, to connect to an investor, to find out some piece of information – you faced enormous opacity in finding a path to doing so. This opacity added friction not only to connecting with people far outside of your personal network, but also to obtaining information, including reputational information, about market players. Information is essential for separating marketing/branding from reality.

Blogging is marketing. Twitter is marketing. Talking on panels is marketing. Free office hours is marketing. That free beer at the ‘get to meet investors’ meet-up is marketing. This should be obvious to smart CEOs. Yes, this blog is marketing. Calling something marketing doesn’t mean it’s false; it just means you’re acknowledging the incentives behind it. And that you need a mechanism for verifying what you’re being told.

My method in biz dev is simple: “here’s a list of my clients. reach out to any of them, and don’t tell me which one. Ask them about our rates, and our responsiveness, and the independence of our counsel. I welcome diligence.”

Today, if I run into a set of founders who are talking to VCs, whether they are clients or not, I say “Here is a list of their past investments. Get connected to the founders of those companies, and start asking questions. And don’t tell anyone which ones you are talking to. Don’t treat any single ‘review’ as gospel, because it is a one-sided story. But look for patterns.” For a team that is even mildly good at networking, that is a fairly straightforward task. LinkedIn does 80% of the work for them by letting them know exactly who in their existing network, whether they’re local or not, can connect them to their target.

Tools like LinkedIn, AngelList, Facebook, and Twitter, and the way in which they eliminate huge amounts of friction and opacity in networking, have done two game-changing things for founders: (1) they’ve made expanding their networks beyond their local ecosystem 10x easier (I didn’t say easy, I said easier), and (2) in doing so, they have made finding accurate reputational information about market players 100x easier. That ease of accessing accurate information influences the behavior of investors in exactly the same way that Yelp influences the behavior of restaurants.

In an opaque market in which influencers can control access to people and information, you can reap the benefits of being an asshole without facing many of the costs. Today, the transparency brought about by modern tools and networks has made the costs of bad behavior 10x higher. Technology makes technology investors ‘nicer’ by opening up access to accurate information on market players. Knowledge is power. 

Improving Local VC. Accessing out-of-state VC. 

Thinking of this issue broadly with the above concepts: improving transparent access to accurate information, removing friction in expanding networks, increasing competition, I think we can arrive at some useful ideas for both improving the local investor environment in non-SV markets, and in increasing the flow of capital between markets; beyond the “great companies attract great capital” truism that rightfully causes eye-rolls among founders.

1. Founders/management need to talk to each other more, in places that aren’t controlled by the investor community. 

Information flows most freely when the consequences of sharing it are minimized. You better believe that in some markets where key players serve as gatekeepers (see: Gatekeepers and Ecosystems) the threat of being black-listed somehow for speaking honestly is real. You will never get accurate market information on blogs, on twitter, on panels, or in highly public events where anyone and everyone is watching.

To use Brad Feld’s categories: there are entrepreneurs, and then there are “feeders,” which sort of means everyone else. Events and communities where the whole ecosystem is invited are great. But that entrepreneur v. feeder divide is crucial, and there need to be ways for entrepreneurs to share information with each other, confidentially and alone.

That is the best way to create the following causal chain: (1) bad market behavior -> (2) information shared to broader entrepreneurial community -> (3) adverse selection for bad market player -> (4) correction to behavior.  You get along much better with the VC community when, instead of moralizing about their tactics and behavior, you try to understand their goals and their incentives; and find ways to align them with yours.

2. Outreach to foreign capital needs to come from people who don’t benefit from a scarcity/opacity environment.

Do not expect for a second that market players who benefit from scarcity of local capital and opacity of information will improve the environment for you. In a variety of ecosystems, I have seen circumstances in which local capital deliberately tries to keep out-of-state capital off of a cap table if it is not willing to enter on their terms. If a founder team builds local support and then themselves builds independent relationships with out-of-state capital (directly or via local relationships), that will create very different dynamics relative to a situation in which their local capital syndicates with its own existing out-of-state syndicate partners.

Is building those out-of-state relationship easy? Of course not. But it needs to start early. The companies that successfully receive out-of-state participation in their Series A round often were building those relationships at seed.  And the best intro to a particular investor is through a founder that they already invested in, so local founders who’ve accepted out-of-state capital are vital to encouraging that capital to engage more local companies. Once a foreign VC has made an investment in a city, it is a lot easier for them to look at others.

The angel v. institutional capital divide, highlighted somewhat in “Protect Your Angel Investors” is important here too. True angel investors – not the ones that behave essentially like micro-VCs, but the ones who are playing with their own money and who are really in it for more than just a return – typically behave very differently from institutional capital. They are usually more patient, more attached to the founder team, and usually aren’t laser-set on a “10x or bust” mindset that institutional investment often brings. Angel investors with broad networks can play a huge role in encouraging out-of-state capital to enter new ecosystems.

Just please for all things holy ignore any set of lawyers pretending to provide ‘special access’ to out-of-state investors. There is a hierarchy of paths to investors. If lawyers are even on it, they are near the bottom.

3. De-risk long-distance investment by improving communication.

If I’m an investor deciding whether to invest locally or make a bet on a team 1,000 miles away, I see substantial additional risk in the latter simply because of the added friction in communication. This is particularly important at seed/Series A, where feedback loops between investors and founders are more important. Think of ways to signal to long-distance investors that you will actively remove that friction.

Videoconferencing, well-done regular investor updates like through AngelSpan, committing to flying to meet-up in person regularly, are a few ways to do this. If entire companies can run with remote teams, leverage similar mechanics/tools to make long-distance startup investment seem natural and logical.

4. Reduce search costs. Successful curation is king. 

Finally, while communication issues often make long-distance investment at least seem difficult, you should never ignore the fact that to any investor, simply vetting out-of-state companies is much harder than vetting local ones. Most institutional investors build in various filters and qualification mechanisms into their pipeline/deal flow, and they often break down when looking at companies that are mostly outside of their usual network.

So creating credible, successful curation mechanisms to reduce the ‘search costs’ of institutional investors exploring non-local markets is essential. The obvious answer here is, and has been, accelerators; at least to the extent that accelerators aren’t beholden to particular local funds (in some markets, they are). The most prominent accelerators are playing extremely important roles in connecting companies in one market to investors in other markets, because those investors trust that the accelerator has done a significant amount of pre-qualifying for them. In fact, this curation dynamic is part of the core value proposition of accelerators in the first place.

Another obvious answer is angel investors with prominent personal brands. As angel investors develop broader reputations for selecting winners, out-of-state institutional capital can leverage them to reduce the search costs of exploring other markets.

So, is raising a Series A outside of Silicon Valley and NYC really hard? Absolutely. Then why the reason for optimism? Because every single variable/dynamic mentioned above is improving, and at an accelerated pace. Founders are finding each other and communicating directly, sharing accurate information about the investor community and other market players; aided by modern networking and communication tools. Local angels and entrepreneurs are actively using those same tools to expand their networks far beyond their local ecosystem. Tools for long-distance communication and investor relations are maturing. And accelerators and prominent angels are increasingly becoming curation mechanisms leveraged by institutional investors to reduce search costs and explore new markets.

We are certainly seeing all of this happening at an increasing rate in our work in the market. As additional funds that are more comfortable operating in the new environment pop up, and as geographic barriers are reduced for capital flows, the more established players are increasingly more concerned with their brands and reputation. Instead of a “scarcity culture,” an open, transparent market culture favors investors that deliver real value and build durable, authentic brands.

Raising local and out-of-state institutional capital, and ensuring you’re working with good people, is still extremely hard if you’re not in a top-tier ecosystem. And speaking as ‘just’ a lawyer, I don’t want to minimize that fact in any way.  But the truth is that it’s also never been easier, and the core trends suggest it will keep getting better.