Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 11, 2021

As an angel investor to startups, I’m still surprised to find entrepreneurs who expect investors to give them money, and assume no strings attached. If the entrepreneur wants total control of their own venture, with no one looking over their shoulder, they should work within the limits of their own resources, a process called bootstrapping.

Term Sheet 433

Term Sheet Advisory Board Liquidation Preference Startup 433

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2011

The challenges stem from the simple fact that every entrepreneur is starting something new, where things are predictably unpredictable. Add an advisory board or experienced mentor to reality-check your financial projections, timeframes, and milestones before you publish them. Strategically timid and haphazard marketing.

Advisory Board 232

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 232

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. Build qualified advisory board. If you can convince a couple of domain experts, or a couple of experienced executives to join your board and be your advocate, that’s traction.

Intellectual Property 260

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 260

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

We are purpose-built to not only invest pre-product but also to help accelerate your path to product-market fit with our decades of entrepreneurial and investing experience along with our active CXO advisory board. In startup board rooms all across the United States, founders and investors are asking how do we keep scaling our teams?

Advisory Board 79

Advisory Board Stealth Cloud Virginia 79

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. Build qualified advisory board. If you can convince a couple of domain experts, or a couple of experienced executives to join your board and be your advocate, that’s traction.

Intellectual Property 253

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 253

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. Build qualified advisory board. If you can convince a couple of domain experts, or a couple of experienced executives to join your board and be your advocate, that’s traction.

Intellectual Property 222

Intellectual Property CTO Hire Fractional CTO Sweat Equity 222

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2010

The challenges stem from the simple fact that every entrepreneur is starting something new, where things are predictably unpredictable. Add an advisory board or experienced mentor to reality-check your financial projections, timeframes, and milestones before you publish them. Strategically timid and haphazard marketing.

Advisory Board 125

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 125

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 28, 2012

The naïve entrepreneur thinks he can relax, after he finally cashes the check from a professional investor, but in reality that’s when the work and the pressure starts. Your startup is now part of someone’s portfolio, and here are a few of the ways in which you should expect to be monitored by your investors: One or more seats on the Board.

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Advisory Board Entrepreneur Venture Capital Angel Investor 241

BeyondVC

JANUARY 6, 2018

We built out our CXO advisory board and further cemented our Fortune 500 relationships to help our portfolio cos scale from “founder-market” fit to product market fit in an accelerated timeframe ( meet our advisors ). Our partners include IBM and one unannounced Fortune 50. That is why we are also so excited about Mstate.

Cloud 60

Cloud Cofounder Portfolio Advisory Board 60

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 31, 2010

The naïve entrepreneur thinks he can relax, after he finally cashes the check from a professional investor, but in reality that’s when the work and the pressure starts. Your startup is now part of someone’s portfolio, and here are a few of the ways in which you should expect to be monitored by your investors: One or more seats on the Board.

Advisory Board 231

Advisory Board Entrepreneur Venture Capital Angel Investor 231

thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

The part that I’d like to zero in on is when you’ve got a high growth company what are some of the best practices out there to distribute equity to the founders, advisors, and employees? Equity for Board of Directors and Advisory Board. Board Member 1. Equity for Founders. Responsibilities 6 0 0 6 36.

Equity 62

Equity Employee Founder CTO Hire 62

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

Flexible VC creates early liquidity which can be either reinvested or distributed to LPs. See Why Are Revenue-Based Investors Investing in Women & Diverse Entrepreneurs? 83% of all entrepreneurs haven’t, and in many cases can’t, raise capital from traditional venture capitalists and banks. Early liquidity. Sometimes.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 5, 2018

In my experience with technical entrepreneurs, they work hard on creating an innovative and elegant solution, and assume that customers will flock to them (“if we build it, they will come”). This is not just a product pitch, but must include all elements of your pricing, marketing, distribution and support.

Product 137

Product Advisory Board Business Model Cofounder 137

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2018

As an angel investor to startups, I’m still surprised to find entrepreneurs who expect investors to give them money, and assume no strings attached. If the entrepreneur wants total control of their own venture, with no one looking over their shoulder, they should work within the limits of their own resources, a process called bootstrapping.

Term Sheet 140

Term Sheet Advisory Board Liquidation Preference Portfolio 140

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 3, 2014

As an Angel investor to startups, I’m still surprised to find entrepreneurs who expect investors to give them money, and then disappear into the sunset. Finally, entrepreneurs should never forget that investors really believe that they are there to help (not like “I''m from the IRS and I''m here to help”).

Term Sheet 237

Term Sheet Advisory Board Liquidation Preference Startup 237

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 5, 2014

As an entrepreneur, you are the brand, so your visibility is as important as your product or service. Mentoring and shared advisory board opportunities. Networking events with other entrepreneurs. Your business team may be small but distributed. entrepreneur small business startup success'

Small Business 251

Small Business Advisory Board Silicon Valley Boston 251

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 20, 2019

Often entrepreneurs and business owners create their daily, weekly, quartely or yearly goals around their business. We asked entrepreneurs to share their BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and here are the insightful responses. #1- A lot of great entrepreneurs who start here almost never end here. Photo Credit: Paige Arnof-Fenn.

Papua New Guinea 65

Papua New Guinea Hawaii Advisory Board Churn Rate 65

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Even startups that are dominated by technical risk have the customer validation risk of finding positive ROI distribution in a large market. Slightly off-topic, there’s a good example of an entrepreneur going through the “Discovery/Validation&# process for a web business that charges for its product here. As for #3.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 16, 2015

As an angel investor to startups, I’m still surprised to find entrepreneurs who expect investors to give them money, and assume no strings attached. If the entrepreneur wants total control of their own venture, with no one looking over their shoulder, they should work within the limits of their own resources, a process called bootstrapping.

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Advisory Board Liquidation Preference Angel Investor 120

Small Business Force

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Now is when you really become an entrepreneur! In fact, if you can, set up an advisory board of three or four folks, who you respect, who've been to the same dance you're at right now. Entrepreneurs, small business owners, call them what you will. Welcome to our fraternity, new entrepreneur. It's a scary time.

Early Stage 32

Early Stage Advisory Board Technical Review Employee 32

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 19, 2012

We have a straightforward meeting – a dinner for our advisory board the night before, drinks after for all LPs, our advisory board meeting first thing in the morning, and then the full meeting until lunch time. I had a call yesterday with another entrepreneur running a company that we passed on the seed round.

Advisory Board 133

Advisory Board Vertical New York Community 133

pandodaily.com

JULY 18, 2012

Next → Why Content Favors the Old (Entrepreneur). And getting to know entrepreneurs for fifteen years– seeing what worked or didn’t for them– has certainly been helpful too. It’s funny: Many people argue young entrepreneurs are so effective because they can blow up industries. Get Tickets.

Entrepreneur 45

Entrepreneur San Francisco Silicon Valley Technical Review 45

Small Business Force

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Now is when you really become an entrepreneur! In fact, if you can, set up an advisory board of three or four folks, who you respect, who've been to the same dance you're at right now. Entrepreneurs, small business owners, call them what you will. Welcome to our fraternity, new entrepreneur.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Advisory Board Technical Review Employee 20

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Establish a customer advisory board. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone How to Usability Test your Site for Free The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the tim.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

I am both an avid entrepreneur and book worm but must admit to having not read most of the books on your list. Github - Free public repositories, collaborator management, issue tracking, wikis, downloads, code review, graphs Pivotal Tracker – Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration. Keep up the great work!

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Lightspeed Venture Partners

MAY 5, 2016

At Lightspeed we invest in the entrepreneur and the first thing we do is install a Batphone. What I mean is we strive to be the entrepreneur’s first call. And the importance of not just thinking like an entrepreneur, but rolling up our sleeves and being an entrepreneur — to be builders of great companies with great founders.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Advisory Board Flash Pennsylvania 60

Gust

DECEMBER 8, 2011

I urge all entrepreneurs to consult and develop a good working relationship with a qualified startup lawyer. Advisory board agreements. Strategic partnership or distribution agreements. Caveat entrepreneur ! Independent contractor or consulting agreements. Small-dollar-amount, routine commercial agreements.

Intellectual Property 139

Intellectual Property Non-disclosure Agreement Delaware Stock 139

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

A group of Seedcamp entrepreneurs started a startup tools wiki for that purpose, and we thought it would be well suited here. free, distributed source code control management system. List of Angel/SuperAngel Investors for entrepreneurs. Executive / Advisory Board Compensation. Walker Law:Â Tips for Entrepreneurs.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write and 9 Tips To Get Started - OnStartups , September 27, 2010 "The best part of blogging is the people you will meet"- Hugh MacLeod repeating wisdom from Loic Lemeur to me at the Big Pink at 2 am in South Beach after the Future of Web Apps 2008. Advisory Board. Carpe Diem.

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2009

And thanks to these entrepreneurs for sharing their story. And thanks to these entrepreneurs for sharing their story. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Most people were quite receptive and encouraging.

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San Francisco Customer Wiki Lean 144