A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 10, 2012

Almost no startup founder values her time properly. Supposing this client is an early-stage startup — even if funded — the most likely event is that they stiff you! Consultants know exactly what their time is worth: their hourly rate. As they say, it’s how much “the market will bear.”

Founder 291

Founder CPA Startup Early Stage 291

Up and Running

AUGUST 18, 2014

In comparison to traditional business ventures, startups are expected to grow rapidly, at a rate of between 5% and 7% per week in their initial stage – Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator. This is why many startup founders launch with exit strategies that focus on a buy-out. Is a startup business right for you?

Small Business 154

Small Business Exit Strategy Cofounder Angel Investor 154

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

I’ve decided to take all of my private conversations and subjective points-of-view on the topic and make them public in a keynote speech at the Founder Showcase in San Francisco on June 15th. It was early 2000. They get a cheaper price, they wipe out much founder stock value and they reissue you new options.

Pre-Money Valuation 336

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Stock 336

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

An investor called the founder, spoke for 30 minutes on the phone and committed to funding having never met the team. Great seed investors like Bryce Roberts / OATV (and other great ones like Floodgate , Founder Collective , Information Arbitrage or Rincon Ventures ) still get all the dealflow the need. Isolated incident?

Southern California 267

Southern California Angel Investor Early Stage Silicon Valley 267

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 17, 2015

These days most startups need only a fraction of that to launch – our idea stage partners get to significant traction within a year on a £250k investment – which means there isn’t much money to hire a team and the founders have to cover a lot more of the bases themselves.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Venture Capital San Francisco Silicon Valley 60

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 20, 2014

is the CEO and co-founder at ShoutEm , a self service mobile website and mobile apps creator, a ‘Wordpress for mobile apps.’. 2 nd decade (early 2000): The First Content Management Systems (CMS). Viktor Marohni? If you wanted a website, you had to pay someone a lot of money to set it up for you.

PHP 143

PHP Management HTML Framework 143

K9 Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

What everyone can agree on, though, is that there are definitely more seed and early stage funds now than ever before, and more people willing to give money to young companies looking to make it big. Manu Kumar is Founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures. But just who are these funds and venture capitalists that run them?

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Early Stage Portfolio Software Engineering 48

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

I believe the middle isn’t being “gutted” but rather is being supplemented by “opportunity funds” and “growth funds” that sit side-by-side “core funds” allowing the firms to stay small and nimble while still being able to grab prorata rights of their best early-stage investments.

Valuation 309

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Later Stage Non-Compete 309

SoCal CTO

MARCH 5, 2007

► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh. However, Elgg could power 100,000 networks and it would make no difference - there is no revenue stream as we give everything away under a GPL license.

Open Source 150

Open Source Business Model Technical Cofounder Southern California 150

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

When I started out in VC, there was a strong consensus around early stage investors that the “right” level of ownership was 20%. One of the tactical moves that I observed USV employ during the mid 2000’s was targeting a relatively lower percentage than their peers. Pretty much every firm was targeting at least 20% ownership.

Dilution 136

Dilution Early Stage Business Model Founder 136

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

Dave Kerpen, founder and CEO of Likeable Local , just published an interview with me on Linkedin, which I’ve included below. Angel investors are generally former entrepreneurs and/or executives, who invest in privately-held, early-stage companies. Enter Dave: Angel investing is a great way to make a lot of money.

Angel Investor 114

Angel Investor Technical Review Venture Capital New Hampshire 114

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Many assume it was a cakewalk, based on the success LinkedIn has enjoyed over time and the current stature of our founder/CEO Reid Hoffman (now Chairman). I thought I’d revisit it and share the story… First, you have to rewind mentally to early 2003. Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). Thanks Lee.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

While a flood of new VCs came into existence during the late 90’s internet boom, many had difficulty raising new funds after the crashes of 2000-2001 and 2008 , and as a result significantly fewer fund managers exist now compared to a decade ago. In the past ten years there have been several dramatic changes in venture capital.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Version One Ventures

JULY 22, 2014

At the same time, funding opportunities have expanded for early-stage start-ups. AngelList makes it easier for founders to reach angels and there are hundreds of accelerators and incubators to choose from. More money is flowing in from a new crop of angels, newly wealthy from a number of tech IPOs.

Finance 167

Finance Seed Money Bootstrapping Angel Investor 167

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Early stage startups have to survive one day at a time and are often presented with limited choices of the moment that enable them to continue. At early stages you probably don’t have an assembly line and can’t clearly define any particular job. Kalanick, former investor BFF turned highly disappointed by founder behavior.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

When you’re an early-stage startup that hasn’t raised any institutional money you end up doing almost every job function of the company yourself. million which closed the first week of March 2000 – a week before the market crashed. This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. True story.)

Founder 299

Founder Technical Review Startup Venture Capital 299

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 18, 2012

Singapore-based early-stage technology seed fund Golden Gate Ventures has announced investments into cloud-based inventory and sales management SaaS solutions provider TradeGecko , online grocer RedMart and mobile payment provider Coda Payments. This marks Golden Gate Ventures first investments since its founding in February this year.

Singapore 137

Singapore Asia China India 137

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

These two trends had a major impact on the computing industry from 2000-2005 but the effects weren’t yet felt by the VC industry. They built industrial-scale funds dedicated to backing early-stage startups with $500k rather than $5 million. The Emergence of “Open Cloud&# Infrastructure.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software PHP Open Source 334

socialmatchbox.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

If you post up an ad to an online job board asking for someone to join your very high risk early stage startup company the odds of getting someone who decent are slim to none. The generally accepted hourly wage calculation used by the staffing industry is Annual Salary divided by 2000 Hours.

Part-Time VPE 41

Part-Time VPE Sweat Equity DC Washington 41

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let the founders take money off of the table. A friend of mine is a serial entrepreneur and is running a high-profile, early stage company in NorCal.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329

View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2017

I was an early employee at PayPal and back in the 2000-2001 timeframe, and we ended up taking a fairly significant amount of strategic investment (tens of millions of $) from various banks in the US, Europe, and Asia. All things being equal, seed and early stage startups are not usually well suited to take strategic investments.

Strategic Investors 120

Strategic Investors Post-Money Valuation Seed Stage Cofounder 120

The Next Web

OCTOBER 10, 2013

Juan Pablo Cappello is an investor in more than twenty early stage companies. He is also the co-founder of Idea.me, Sauber Energy, and the LAB Miami. In 2000, there was a total of 18 million Internet users in Latin America. In 2000, the U.S. His blog can be found at www.jpc.vc. Consumer growth throughout the years.

America 164

America Canada Brazil Mexico 164

Feld Thoughts

JULY 31, 2014

In 2007, when we set out to raise our first Foundry Group fund, early stage tech VC was in the shitter. No one believed that you could make any money as an early stage VC and when we went out to raise our first fund, we heard over and over again that we were on a fools errand. But is wasn’t always this way.

LP 155

LP Advisory Board Venture Capital Early Stage 155

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Last spring, Dave Graham , founder of software consulting firm Arizona Bay, learned that a major client, Jumpstart Automotive Media, had been acquired for more than $80 million. Jumpstart was one of Grahams first clients; it signed on shortly after he founded Arizona Bay, in 2000. It should have been a cause for celebration.

Arizona 40

Arizona Equity Iowa Venture Capital 40

Eric Friedman

FEBRUARY 3, 2016

I have been working with a number of early stage teams going through various stages of fundraising and using this diagram to help explain my thoughts on some of the questions they will come up against. There was also no hardware to make small videos at the same pace as the mid 2000’s. The Right Technology.

Technology 60

Technology Flash Early Stage Cofounder 60

Agile VC

JULY 19, 2012

Back in the 2000-2001 timeframe, a flood of LP capital was coming into the VC asset class given the strong returns of the mid-late 90s tech boom/bubble. In the midst of the internet & telecom meltdown at the beginning of the 2000s, as a firm CRV realized there were insufficient opportunities to profitably invest $1.2B.

Cofounder 193

Cofounder Limited Partner Early Stage LP 193

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 23, 2011

Being an entrepreneur isn’t exactly rocket science, but in the case BlogFrog ‘s co-founder Rustin Banks, he literally is one. With the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, risk-averse investors wanted to invest in more than just a business plan – they wanted to see real customers and real revenue before they stumped up the money.

Community 162

Community United States Colorado Social Media 162

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

Who Uses a Consulting CTO I’m going to focus on the needs of the founders of startup companies: Founders of startups use a consulting CTO when they have business vision but limited knowledge of the technology needed to launch their company. Though after the dotcom collapse of 2000-2001, there are many more than there were!

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE 40

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

We spent the first 45 minutes or so talking about industry trends (in this order): The history and background of True Ventures, one of my favorite early-stage VC’s (and the one with whom Om is a venture partner). Founded in 2000 in New Brunswick, NJ. The strategy of GigaOm and where they differentiate in the market.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Non-Compete Vertical Europe 225

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

He is the founder of Mirasee, the host of the Business Reimagined Podcast, and the best selling author of multiple books including one we’re going to talk about today, Teach and Grow Rich. ” And that turned into, at its culmination, the $2000 course kind of paradigm. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Danny Iny.

Bandwidth 36

Bandwidth Cost Audience Video 36

The Equity Kicker

JULY 8, 2019

From around 2000, and perhaps coinciding with the need to work harder to win deals as opportunities dried up after the internet bubble burst, individual partners at VC firms began adding ‘helping CEOs win’ to their job descriptions. . This trend accelerated through the emergence of VC and operator blogging in the early 2000s. .

Portfolio 84

Portfolio LP Venture Capital Partner 84

The Equity Kicker

FEBRUARY 24, 2014

He’s been COO of some amazing businesses, including HouseTrip and LiveBookings, and will now help our founders succeed just as he helped the founders of those companies. I’ve worked in digital businesses since 2000 as Product Manager, ECommerce Operations Director and most recently as Chief Operating Officer (3 companies).

Partner 91

Partner Early Stage Business Model HTML 91

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But the larger funds usually have lower returns because they are often investing bigger dollars at later stages with less risk and therefore lower returns. As you can see in this Cambridge Associates data, early-stage investing beat later stage investing in returns in 70% of the past 30 years. It is changing.

LP 374

LP Later Stage IRR Term Sheet 374

Hippoland

JANUARY 22, 2017

Check out my side project Rejectionathon (discount code: EYFRIENDS), which helps founders get over their fear of rejection. Unconscious biases in how investors assess founders can be tied to gender or race, but it extends much further than that. If a female founder gets dinged, is it because she didn’t get a fair shake?

Framework 48

Framework Silicon Valley Founder Early Stage 48

Scalable Startup

DECEMBER 15, 2011

when many vaporware and vapor-businesses crash or fade away they leave damage, possibly fueling the recession (remember 1999-2000? However, the fallout from all this will set us back a few years again … many misled, unsophisticated angels will get burned and sour to good investments (not sophisticated angels, they know the risk).

Angel Investor 24

Angel Investor Startup IPO Software Developers 24

David Teten

JANUARY 28, 2013

AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant concludes , “The real winners here are going to be the seed funds and early stage VCs that can write a $1 million to $2 million check. All exits occurred between 1990 and 2007—the vast majority after 2000. Those firms are only going to do a few Series A deals a year.”

IRR 114

IRR Angel Investor Angel Groups Cofounder 114

Spencer Fry

APRIL 17, 2017

Long story short, it’s just not 2000's anymore. As a bootstrapped startup, the only accountability you have is to yourself and to your co-founder if you have one. But as an early stage startup, accountability is so important. The quality bar has never been higher. Having great accountability.

Bootstrapping 63

Bootstrapping Cap Table Liquidation Preference Harvest 63