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How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

Most of this advice boils down to an argument in favor of basic planning before starting a company or raising money. In many ways the fact that it has become so cheap to start a company and relatively cheap to raise angel/seed money that we as an industry have gotten lazy on basic planning. Incumbent Strengths & Weaknesses.

Startup 150
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6 Tips To Tell Your Story Effectively

YoungUpstarts

by Adam Witty, Founder and CEO of Advantage | ForbesBooks. As a business book publisher who’s been working with entrepreneurs and CEOs for over a decade, I can tell you that there are stories I heard in 2005 that have stayed with me and some from last week that I’ve all but forgotten. Without one, it fades into the background.

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How the Seed-Stage VC Trend Began, The Downsides of Unicorns & Much More

Both Sides of the Table

If you are a 20-something tech entrepreneur you could be forgiven for thinking that seed-stage investors, Angellist Syndicates and widely available angel money always existed. Let me take you back just 10 years ago to 2005 in Silicon Valley where I returned after 11 years of living in Europe.

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Should Founders Be Allowed to Take Money off the Table?

Both Sides of the Table

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. Not FU money, but “feed the family&# money. He’s been at it since 2005.

Founder 329
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How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard ComputerSociety.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start withgood people, to make something customers actually want, and to spendas little money as possible. Ideally you want between two and four founders. Want to start a startup? Thatdepends.

Startup 105
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How to Fund a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

November 2005 Venture funding works like gears. A typical startup goes throughseveral rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take justenough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the nextgear. It wasnt because they werent accredited investors that I didntask my parents for seed money, though.

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From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

techcrunch.com

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like.