johnsechrest_headshotI got connected to John through Kristjan Freyr Kristjanson, CEO of Innovit+Klak and who runs Startup Weekend in Iceland. I had always felt that what we lacked in Iceland was broader participation of investors and mentors in the Startup community. John has been solving that problem in Seattle and in the greater Washington state. I am excited to hear about how he has been able to get new Angels to invest into the startup companies. I am also really excited by the philosophy that John has put into practice through his Seattle Angels Network. Startup companies need a lot of due diligence and investors need to play a role in actually helping the startup get off the ground. I believe strongly that Investor group has to work as hard as the Entrepreneur to make the startup a success. I have been writing about Brad Feld, Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson, in my opinion the successful venture investors work much harder than any entrepreneur I know. Check out the documentary “Something Ventured“, it is obvious how much effort the early VCs started to invest much like Angel investors and how much effort they put into each of the companies that they invested in. I think the advent of the Investment Management profession has killed the spirit of each and everyone to become an investor and entrepreneur. I think we have some really smart people working in the Investment management and Asset management business but I don’t think Investment is something that we should outsource. By getting involved with early stage companies with the partnership of experienced angel investors and investor mentors I believe anyone and everyone can invest in Startups and be successful. Don’t believe the fear mongering that your Financial Advisor gives you, Risk is misunderstood consistently by everyone so Investment or Fund managers are no different or better than any of us.

Anyways, I have digressed enough. The post was about John, John Sechrest is the founder of the Seattle Angel Conference and the Willamette Angel Conference, each providing a venue for new angel investors to explore the process. He is a co-organizer of the Lean Startup Seattle, helping entrepreneurs get focused on stronger company processes. As a global facilitator for Startup Weekend, he has worked with several communities take a step forward on entrepreneurial ecosystem development. The motivation to get John to visit Iceland and participate in Startup Iceland is to bring some knowledge on how we can create an Effective Angel Investor community here. I want to expand on the idea that John and other successful Angels have created. Maybe we will launch as I had wrote about before an Accelerator for Investors so young and new investors can get started early and participate in building an Antifragile Startup Community in Iceland.

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