Yesterday was the second annual Angel Bootcamp in Boston. It brought many of the best and brightest investors out to share their knowledge and experience on angel investing.  It also brought out quite a few great entrepreneurs as this year's move to the Tang center allowed for more attendees than the previous year.  Many notables like Bijan, Dharmesh, and Ty Danco shared their thoughts on Angel investing. I'd like to share a few of the key takeaways I saw.

Fred Wilson is one of my favorite venture bloggers. Over at AVC, he wrote a post a little while ago entitled What a CEO Does. Speaking on a panel this weekend at Harvard College on careers in finance, I had to describe what I do and realized that people still view VC as something of a "black box." The intent of this post is to give entrepreneurs (and the rest of you) a bit of a peak inside.

All too often I hear people mutter, “It’s just so tough to get funding here,” or “Our startup is doing well, but people just don’t ‘get it’ here,” or “We’re going to have to move to Silicon Valley if we want to ever make it.” Most of the time, they’re wrong. Here is my un-scholarly perspective from my experience after seeing over 400 new startup ventures launched in over 40 cities. 

As a young entrepreneur, it’s not easy to understand how venture capital really works. There are tons of horror stories that spread through the community like urban legends and phrases like “Term sheets” and “Down Rounds” can sound foreign.  Amidst all of these questions is an aura of uncertainty about how the whole system really works. Fortunately, there’s Jeff Bussgang’s book, Mastering the VC Game to help. 

This book should be a must read for any young entrepreneur who thinks they may ever want funding. It’s that good. Here’s a few reasons I love the book:

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve highlighted initiatives underway by members of the Boston entrepreneur community trying to make this a better place to start a company. These solution are coming from people both young and old and everything in between.  I’m excited for these efforts and believe they will all contribute to an improved ecosystem, but there is more to be done. I’d like to highlight some issues that still need work:

Traditionally, every Entrepreneur ran from one Venture Capital firm to the next with their pitch book, power point presentation, and objective of raising between $1 to $2 million to get their company off the ground. Their plan was to hit all the milestones and objectives, raise another $5 million, ramp sales and waited a few years to get acquired or go public.