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Flexible VC, a New Model for Companies Targeting Profitability

David Teten

From RBI, Flexible VCs borrow the ability to reap meaningful returns without demanding founders build for an exit. Every Flexible VC structure allows founders to access immediate risk capital while preserving exit, growth trajectory, and ownership optionality. . Flexible VC 102: Variations.

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Make No Little Plans – Defining the Scalable Startup

Steve Blank

A lot of entrepreneurs think that their startup is the next big thing when in reality they’re just building a small business. A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. The question was: what did the founders want to do? The question was: what did the founders want to do?

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Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. They are busy too, but they are not creating value for the company.

Customer 167
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The #1 thing successful founders think about for their next startups

Hippoland

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. Marketing first.

Founder 48
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The #1 thing successful founders think about for their next startups

Hippoland

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Forget about traction and hockey stick growth. Marketing first.

Founder 48
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Webinar Recap: 14 Tips on How to Pitch and Get Funded

Up and Running

” Our featured speaker was Caroline Cummings, the VP of Business Development at Palo Alto Software. As the former co-founder and CEO of two technology companies, Caroline has experienced both start-up failures and successes, and has raised close to $1 million in investment capital. Where do you look?

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CXL Live 2019 Recap: Takeaways from Every Speaker

ConversionXL

Go beyond standard sources of voice of customer data ; better options are: Interview founders (the original “customers”); Thank-you page surveys; Usertesting.com; Mine sales calls; Mine support tickets; Mine Facebook comments ; Mine online reviews. Founder interviews can find the story, the value proposition , and the big idea.