#opnaskanangel - Scott Garber - Communicating how your product is better than the competition

Talk Takeaways
Scott Garber got his entrepreneurial streak early on as a kid. From being a storm chaser, founding his first successful venture, and then becoming an investor – Scott shares fantastic insights on lean startups, the benefits of releasing MVPs, and establishing a continuous feedback loop as a way to build a great product.

Scott also shares the process he takes as an investor, his investment terms, his preferred verticals, and the characteristics he looks for in a founder.

About
Scott has always been an entrepreneur at heart – from beanie babies and Pokemon “businesses” in high school, to two actual startups in college. Puppystock (2005–2007) was an online marketplace with customized pet products that grew to tens of thousands of customers across six continents and was eventually acquired in 2007. FriendTones (2007–2008) disrupted the way content could be shared across nearly any network and device.

Since his ventures, Scott has directed large software development and deployment projects for Government clients (2008–2011), served as a strategy consultant for the deputy director of an intelligence agency (2009–2010), and operated an international family office (2011–2014). More recently, Scott was the deputy head of corporate strategy and corporate development for Serco, a multi-billion government services company (2015–2017) an entrepreneur-in-residence at AARP Foundation, and the operations director for Baltimore Angels.

Scott is currently the Managing Partner at Early Light Ventures, an enterprise software fund that is disrupting the normal venture capital model — and hopefully on it’s way to transforming the way startups are funded in the Mid-Atlantic region.