FAQ

It is never too early to start a conversation with us. However, in some cases, it can be too late. It’s great to get to know founders and their companies at the early stages where they have not raised any capital before meeting us, or are at the pre-seed and seed stage level. If companies are looking for a Series B round or later, then it’s too late for us to get involved.

Tycoon Venture Partners focuses on Technology, Consumer, and Healthtech.

We focus on early-stage investing, typically at the seed rounds. Although, we also partner at the pre-seed and Series A rounds.

We aim to move as quickly as possible to provide a decisive answer, as well as some feedback.

The founding team is going to be a big factor in our decision-making process. We want to know how much passion you have for your company, how resourceful and innovative you are, and why you believe you will prevail where others won’t.

Typically, our initial investment in a startup ranges from $250k to $2 million, but we will go higher or lower in some cases.

“An entrepreneur can be defined in many ways, but in our opinion, it is a person who makes sacrifices for the greater good and the people around them. It is a battle of wits, ingenuity, hard work, commitment, and passion. This is not something everyone can do. It takes a unique individual to become an entrepreneur. We commend you.”

Tycoon Venture Partners looks for founders who understand, and truly live, the quote above. They have conviction and tenacity. They map out a strategy while executing and continuously testing at the same time. They are willing to do what it takes to keep things moving forward.

We like to provide value at critical moments within a company’s business lifecycle. From the ideation phase to the growth phase, we are here to help companies achieve success.

Although we like to lead most of the time, we’re not always the lead investor. We have a track record of partnering with outstanding seed-stage VCs and angels. However, what we want to make sure of is that we are aligned with founders and that we have a meaningful stake in every company. This allows us to spend meaningful time trying to help the company succeed.

It’s important for a startup to have a lead investor. If there isn’t an active lead investor, then this will create a party round, where you have a group of investors without a leader. This may invite all sorts of trouble.

When we lead an investment, we are ready to roll up our sleeves alongside the founder, to help them get the job done.

In some cases, we do. We will be very active in helping you build your company, and be as hands-on, or off, as you would like. We may take a board seat at first and then give it up to a new investor after later rounds. This allows founders to manage the size of their boards as they grow.

We tend to focus mainly on companies based in the U.S. Since our experience is mostly within North America, we feel this allows us to provide the most value to our partners.

Although we have made a few exceptions for companies outside of the U.S., the management teams have typically been located within the U.S.

No.

Guy Kawasaki said  it best,

“Before you even start addressing the hard stuff, never ask a venture capitalist to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). They never do. This is because at any given moment, they are looking at three or four similar deals. They’re not about to create legal issues because they sign an NDA and then fund another, similar company–thereby making the paranoid entrepreneur believe the venture capitalist stole his idea.”

He actually had one last sentence in there that was a little too harsh to post. So we have purposely omitted it.

With that said, here are some other real reasons why we don’t sign NDA’s:

1. Even if we were inclined to sign an NDA, we would have to go through the process of having legal review the whole thing, and then decide on whether or not there were any issues with it (most of them do). Then we have to get our legal team to make the necessary revisions and send it back to you, so you can spend time with your lawyer to accept or reject the changes.
2. We would then have to keep track of all the NDA’s we signed.
3. If we review 2,000 potential deals per year, this becomes an impossibly expensive and onerous task.