Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Company Lawyer

MARCH 14, 2010

Founders Institute Plain Preferred Term Sheet (by WSGR – disclaimer, I represent the Founders Institute and was involved in drafting this document). I suspect that this seems reasonable if there is basically no due diligence due to the early stage of the companies. (By Co-sale rights. Legal fees.

Finance 70

Finance Software Review Term Sheet Liquidation Preference 70

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Today, when I talk to startup founders, the most common answer I get to the question "do you talk to your customers?" The people who are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup are earlyvangelists. Most of the people building our product werent themselves target customers. Dont confuse passion with volume. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

View from Seed

JANUARY 24, 2018

The concept our Guilds is simple: We want to bring together small groups of Product and Go-to-Market experts to lend their time to support our portfolio company founders and key operators. Pierre Valade, Co-Founder of Sunrise & Mobile Designer at Microsoft. Brian Balfour, Founder & CEO of Reforge. Product Guild.

Operations 177

Operations Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 177

Agile VC

JULY 11, 2012

The names of these once great, now defunct firms may not be terribly familiar today but here are just a few examples: American Research & Development [Boston] –> Founded by George Doriot and depending how you count it, either the first or second formal VC firm in the US. they generate $400M in proceeds from that $100M).

Silicon Valley 240

Silicon Valley Carried Interest Cofounder Boston 240

Hippoland

JULY 6, 2018

I think we are *on our way down* as an early stage startup hub unless we start to fix some of our problems around here. 1) Silicon Valley / San Francisco is too expensive With the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area these days, a lot startup capital must now go towards founders’ rent. This is absolutely insane.

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley San Francisco Portugal Ireland 48

Hippoland

JULY 6, 2018

I think we are *on our way down* as an early stage startup hub unless we start to fix some of our problems around here. 1) Silicon Valley / San Francisco is too expensive With the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area these days, a lot startup capital must now go towards founders’ rent. This is absolutely insane.

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley San Francisco Portugal Ireland 48

Ben's Blog

APRIL 7, 2021

As companies and cities wrestle with the future of work, future of cities, and future of tech made possible in a post-COVID future, the question is whether it also impacts — and presents an opportunity to address — one of the greatest problems of our time: the unequal distribution of economic opportunity across the United States.

Silicon Valley 36

Silicon Valley Non-Compete San Francisco Government 36

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

The reality today is that capital is more available than ever and entrepreneurs have become more sophisticated, so founders are looking for more than just cash from their venture backers. I’ve seen many founders not fully grasp how the venture capital business works and what incentives investors have.

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

View from Seed

MAY 27, 2015

On the show, we’ll explore and share the stories of all the creative, unusual, and clever ways that entrepreneurs find early results. We’ll talk to founders as well as executives, investors, and journalists, all of whom did something smart or sneaky or downright brilliant to go from zero to one in an important area of their business.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 120

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2018

The Food+City Challenge Prize is an international competition among early stage business startups encouraging innovation in the urban food system. Finalists addressing issues such as storage, distribution, packaging, waste, and more, will compete for up to $50,000 in prizes. Date: Tues March 13, 2018 Time: 9:30 AM?

Mexico 48

Mexico Silicon Valley Texas Austin 48

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The number one question you all asked after reading my last blog post about starting a business from scratch was “how do I find my co-founders?&# And therein lies the problem in finding co-founders for that startup you’re dying to launch. Having trouble meeting folks you think would be good co-founders?

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 66

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

This post was co-authored with Omri Stern and originally appeared in Harvard Business Review. The founders have started companies before. More recently, Israeli founders are themselves moving to the U.S. So how early should the founders pack their bags and ship out to the U.S.? American VCs are critical.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

Rob Go

MAY 27, 2015

On the show, we’ll explore and share the stories of all the creative, unusual, and clever ways that entrepreneurs find early results. We’ll talk to founders as well as executives, investors, and journalists, all of whom did something smart or sneaky or downright brilliant to go from zero to one in an important area of their business.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 28

Rob Go

MAY 27, 2015

On the show, we’ll explore and share the stories of all the creative, unusual, and clever ways that entrepreneurs find early results. We’ll talk to founders as well as executives, investors, and journalists, all of whom did something smart or sneaky or downright brilliant to go from zero to one in an important area of their business.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 28

Hunter Walker

MAY 1, 2016

Anneke Jong: I’ve talked to and advised many seed stage startups, and I find they often have an awesome high-level pitch, but if you start asking questions just one layer deeper, most of the answers are, “Errrr, um….we That wasn’t the case when I met with Greg Hong and Joe Marchese, the co-founders of Reserve. we don’t know.”.

New York City 48

New York City New York Los Angeles Startup 48

Hunter Walker

MAY 1, 2016

Anneke Jong: I’ve talked to and advised many seed stage startups, and I find they often have an awesome high-level pitch, but if you start asking questions just one layer deeper, most of the answers are, “Errrr, um….we That wasn’t the case when I met with Greg Hong and Joe Marchese, the co-founders of Reserve. we don’t know.”.

New York City 48

New York City New York Los Angeles Startup 48