article thumbnail

6 Tips for Coming Up With Your Million-Dollar Business Idea

Up and Running

With my third business, I didn’t even try to be original—I purchased a custom framing franchise and piggybacked to success on someone else’s name. David sold his recording equipment for $50,000 and they borrowed the rest of their seed money from a bank. What I’m saying is, I’m wholly unqualified to offer startup advice.

Detroit 156
article thumbnail

Top Startup Advisor Paul Graham Just Warned Against Taking Google's Money

www.businessinsider.com

15 Original Band Names Before They Were Famous. Advertising. These Spooky Cinemagraphs Will Radically Change Online Advertising. Google Ventures has made more than 100 seed investments, Maris said, including some past and present Y Combinator companies, and is making one to two new ones a week. Name (Required).

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, youll learn something importantabout business school. Because so little money is involved, raising seedcapital is comparatively easy-- at least in the sense of getting aquick yes or no. This is calledseed capital.

Startup 105
article thumbnail

Let's All Shed Tears For The Crappy Startups That Can't Raise Any More Money

readwrite.com

It’s Ben Parr of Mashable, whose background includes blogging and … blogging, announcing that he too is now a venture capitalist and is creating a “celebrity fund” that has a super cool name — #DominateFund. The kind of guy who makes up a name like #DominateFund. And who announces a fund before he’s actually raised the money.

article thumbnail

Do the Math

Austin Startup

We took an advisor named Howard out there. You want your valuation to keep marching upward; if you took in some seed money with the promised 10X venture return, you’ll hopefully be able to prove that you are proceeding on that trajectory. He visited for a while, then walked us outside and said: “This is an idea.

article thumbnail

Why you shouldn’t keep your startup idea secret

cdixon.org

Then again, there’s a difference between publishing a description of the idea on your website and simply announcing a name and perhaps a tag line. But it’s ultimately users who will determine if the market is ready for social media driven two way search and advertising. link] What’s the right amount of seed money to raise?

Stealth 68
article thumbnail

The Series A crunch is hitting now. Have we even noticed?

pandodaily.com

Firms like Accel and Greylock and Menlo Ventures announced discovery or seed funds, while other firms like Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz pioneered stealthy scout programs to give entrepreneurs their money, whether they knew it or not. A name like 500 Startups says it all. Entrepreneurs are survivors by nature.