Hall Martin, Austin-Based Super Angel Investor - Plan the Exit Before Investing

<p>Sponsored by Peter Fasse of Fish & Richardson, Patent Attorney: <a href= "https://www.fr.com/team/j-peter-fasse/">https://www.fr.com/team/j-peter-fasse/</a></p> <p>Austin-based super angel Hall Martin has an intriguing approach to investing in technology startups that can benefit investors and founders. He’s also done quite a bit of equity crowdfunding. This interview was rich in lessons for me. I recommend you listen.</p> <p><strong>“…</strong><strong>my conclusion after looking at it 20 years, it's not that I'm investing in the wrong deals. I'm investing with the wrong deal structure.</strong><strong>”</strong></p> <p>Highlights:</p> <ul> <li>Sal Daher Introduces Hall Martin, Super Angel from Texas</li> <li>“Put my money in. In about six months, lost all of it. I started to realize this is harder than it looks and decided I needed to join a group to invest in, rather than do it by myself.”</li> <li>“In Austin, we didn't have an angel network until about 2006. When they started it, I was the first member to sign up for it.”</li> <li>“We got about 5 million invested in 20 deals and got a 40x return out of one of the deals.”</li> <li>“We were in the home of Whole Foods. We started accelerator incubator and we started doing angel investing as well into food and beverage deals, mostly.”</li> <li>“I found is that it's very hard to make a return in angel investing. You're in these deals a long time.”</li> <li>"Half the deals that are coming through here are good businesses, but they're not really venture businesses. They're not going to sell for 40 or 50x."</li> <li>“I came up with a model called Define the Exit, where I came up with my own term sheet, I discovered that was a key factor of success with angel investing is you don't sign someone else's term sheet; you sign your own.”</li> <li>Built in Option to Exit at Year Three</li> <li>“When they go on to market-rate salaries, what they're basically saying is we're not eating ramen noodles anymore, we're going to take our exit out of the salary. You, unfortunately