Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2018

This process costs money, which professional investors are not willing to contribute, since their interest is in scaling a proven product and business model into a growth business. Acquiring seed-stage funding is admittedly tough, but a source that I find often overlooked is government grant funding, accessible in the U.S.

Early Stage 225

Early Stage SBIR Technical Review Seed Stage 225

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 1, 2020

The next reason is to establish a competitive advantage over your competition and quickly acquire a substantial market share. Let’s take an example – In the case of an internet or app business, the user traction and market penetration is a must. The third reason is to fund your short term operational expenses or working capital.

Startup 150

Startup Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Seed Stage 150

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Let’s face it, the rules for getting a startup funded at the seed stage aren’t very clear. Note: When I say “seed stage startup,” I’m specifically referring to software/app startups that are eitherpre-product or early product. TVR: The traditional way of raising seed funding. The New Way , called Traction.

Seed Stage 100

Seed Stage Silicon Valley Startup Venture Capital 100

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

That’s on average the time venture capital investors spend on a pre-seed pitch deck, according to the latest Dropbox/Docsend funding research report. These 10 slides should be part of every pre-seed deck: Company purpose – why do you exist? 2 and a half minutes. Why us”/ “Team Slide” unclear or non-existent.

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder Portfolio 166

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

Even if you work every day in the world of new-venture funding, as I do, the options are confusing, and their meanings seem to change on a regular basis. I challenge any entrepreneur, for example, to define the difference between "seed-stage" and "early-stage" financing. A seed-stage “super angel.”

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Seed Stage Finance Early Stage Startup 120

Women Entrepreneurs Can

NOVEMBER 19, 2022

A Venture Capital Firm is a firm that invests in startups and early-stage companies. However, not all firms are venture capital firms. Early-Stage Investments vs. Mid-Stage Investments. Investing in a startup company carries a high degree of risk, particularly at the early stage. Seed Rounds.

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital Early Stage Liquidity Event SEC 52

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

of venture capital deals. Those companies have garnered only about 2% of all capital invested. Chris Janz from Point Nine Capital wrote on Twitter: . 2) Business model-defined funds. For example, Point Nine Capital focuses on B2B SaaS and marketplaces at the seed stage, across many industries.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2023

The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. For example, if you have a proven product, real revenue, a big potential market, and are ready to scale up the business, every investor will be interested.

Angel Investor 313

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 313

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

Every year I teach classrooms full of students who leave class understanding the basics of how to search for product/market fit—and thinking their next goal is to “get funded.”. You (think) you have product-market fit with real customers and real revenue and need money to grow and expand. It’s sometimes called “product/market fit.”

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Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Austin Startup

MAY 11, 2017

645 Ventures 645 Ventures makes deeply-researched investments in institutional Seed to Series A rounds for exceptional companies who demonstrate stellar early results in the areas of market validation, product differentiation, team strength, and brand narrative.

Private Equity 48

Private Equity Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage 48

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

Similar to the explosion of seed funds in the past decade, we (and some limited partners too ) believe these Flexible VCs are on the forefront of what will become a major segment of the venture ecosystem. We detail below the major categories of VC: VENTURE CAPITAL TYPOLOGY. FLEXIBLE VC VS. OTHER VENTURE CAPITAL MODELS.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

Yesterday I wrote Part 1 of the series on the changes to the software industry over the past decade that has led to changes in the venture capital industry itself. This will continue while we’re in a tech bull market and I predict will wane when we’re not. In a bull market many players see drift in their activities.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 22, 2020

The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. For example, if you have a proven product, real revenue, a big potential market, and are ready to scale up the business, every investor will be interested.

Angel Investor 370

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 370

Mucker Lab

AUGUST 27, 2014

My partner Erik Rannala has had a similar experience, having worked as a VC at Harrison Metal before moving down to LA to co-found our seed stage venture firm. Not to mention that there are only a handful of active, institutional venture funds based in Los Angeles.). That number in the Valley might be closer to 10%.

Los Angeles 138

Los Angeles Southern California Silicon Valley Technical Review 138

thebarefootvc

JANUARY 27, 2014

From my perspective it’s a great time to be investing at the post-seed stage – lots of great entrepreneurs looking for smart capital to help them accelerate growth. Lower interest rates in developed markets and volatility in emerging markets have also made private company investment a more attractive option.

Technical Review 63

Technical Review Valuation Venture Capital Investment Bankers 63

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 6, 2014

By Dan Soha, Five Mill Ventures. I came of age with the digital revolution, and by applying my marketing expertise with the science of search, I learned how to start companies. Once I had a few under my belt, I realized I was a start-up junkie, and founded Five Mill Ventures in San Francisco before I was 30.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Business Model Silicon Valley Coder 154

David Teten

DECEMBER 12, 2017

In his white paper How Private Equity and Venture Capital Investors Are Eating Their Own Dogfood , PEVCTECH.com founder David Teten explored how private equity and venture capital investors are trying to automate more of their job. I’d expect a similar shift in venture over the next decade or two.”.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 60

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2018

The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. For example, if you have a proven product, real revenue, a big potential market, and are ready to scale up the business, every investor will be interested.

Angel Investor 184

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 184

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

Ann Miura-Ko is a founding partner at Floodgate , a seed-stage VC firm. I've been in venture now twice. I was in Boston, working for the first time in venture capital as an analyst for this guy who was incredible and an amazing mentor. How do you develop power within a venture capital firm?

Founder 68

Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

While it it may not feel that way, the data suggest that there is indeed too much capital in the system — especially so at the seed stage, with more and more individuals and larger funds trying to invest in companies at this stage.). For most venture capital funds money is a commodity. It is a tool.

Venture Capital 117

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 117

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

While it it may not feel that way, the data suggest that there is indeed too much capital in the system — especially so at the seed stage, with more and more individuals and larger funds trying to invest in companies at this stage.). For most venture capital funds money is a commodity. It is a tool.

Venture Capital 105

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 105

YoungUpstarts

MAY 8, 2018

If investors express a strong preference changing your business model, product, or team, think twice. Conversely, if your startup only needs $150,000 to validate the market and prove the concept, don’t accept millions because some VC offers it. It’s your vision, not theirs. Seek out investors who believe in your vision.

Seed Stage 133

Seed Stage Due Diligence Cofounder New York 133

View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2023

Time to set real goals, iterate through real product pushes, craft real go-to-market strategies, make real introductions to downstream investors, the list goes on and on. Our kickoff day will be hosted in New York and will focus on establishing inter-cohort relationships while commencing our pre-seed tailored programming. Who You Are.

Programming 156

Programming Sacramento San Francisco Founder 156

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 4, 2014

The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. For example, if you have a proven product, real revenue, a big potential market, and are ready to scale up the business, every investor will be interested.

Angel Investor 232

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 232

Gust

DECEMBER 28, 2011

In the “good old days,” angels invested in seed-stage startups and teed up promising companies for subsequent venture capital financing. If the company was successful, this quickly led to an IPO – a very happy ending for the entrepreneur, the angels, and the venture capitalists. My, my…how the world has changed.

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IPO Venture Capital Entrepreneur Angel Investor 153

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2016

The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. For example, if you have a proven product, real revenue, a big potential market, and are ready to scale up the business, every investor will be interested.

Matching 120

Matching Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers 120

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). Seed Startups. VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Updated Business tools for Startups. Also includes the most popular platforms, based on a year of data on business buy and sell marketplace, Flippa.com.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Professor VC

JANUARY 27, 2011

I strongly believe (at least for very early stage technology ventures) that you will get diminishing returns and arguably negative returns once you get past an initial threshold of team, product, market and financial diligence. The Most Important Venture Capital Statistic. work at home. ► July. (1).

Technical Review 31

Technical Review Due Diligence Silicon Valley San Jose 31

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Contact Us Submit News Contact Us Write for Us Spark of Genius Series Mashable | The Social Media Guide Business Mashable on Facebook Join Us! This dynamic births serial entrepreneurs and motivates angels and venture capitalists to pull their friends into investment deals. What follows is the best advice and tips from these interviews.

Angel Investor 80

Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

BeyondVC

FEBRUARY 12, 2014

Our founding team has led first rounds in market leading enterprises such as LivePerson (LPSN), GoToMeeting (sold to Citrix), Greenplum (sold to EMC), and 24/7 Media (TFSM). BOLDstart helps founders at the seed stage accelerate their growth from idea/ alpha phase to product market fit and successful Series A round.

Seed Stage 110

Seed Stage Agile Viral API 110

Early Growth Financial Services

JANUARY 20, 2014

As an early-stage venture capital investor with a keen emphasis on the seed stage, I spend a lot of time at startup accelerators working with first-time entrepreneurs. The quick answer is market, team, business model, projections, and the ask…prioritized in that order of importance.

Seed Stage 52

Seed Stage Venture Capital Limited Partner Early Stage 52

Hearpreneur

MAY 4, 2019

What I’ve learned from my experiences as a four-time entrepreneur and an angel investor in more than thirty startups is that while it often looks as if world-altering business opportunities emerge by accident, they can, in fact, be discovered and scaled in a methodical way. How did you come up with your business name?

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Founder Entrepreneur Venture Capital 66

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Up and Running

MARCH 29, 2017

See Also: What Do Venture Capital Firms Want? I focused on the product—making something better than anything else available on the market. At the same time, I was starting to realize that both the elegance of cloud-based software and the business models it enabled were what really got me excited.

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Term Sheet Venture Capital Liquidation Preference Valuation 60

K9 Ventures

JULY 19, 2012

K9 Ventures started investing in 2009 with our first fund, K9 Ventures, L.P., which was a $6.25M fund designed to be deployed over 3-4 years, making initial investments between $100K – $250K in concept and seed stage technology companies located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not interested in me-too businesses.

Technology 132

Technology Seed Stage San Francisco Limited Partner 132

K9 Ventures

JULY 19, 2012

K9 Ventures started investing in 2009 with our first fund, K9 Ventures, L.P., which was a $6.25M fund designed to be deployed over 3-4 years, making initial investments between $100K – $250K in concept and seed stage technology companies located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not interested in me-too businesses.

Technology 132

Technology Seed Stage San Francisco Limited Partner 132

www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Home About Press IA Capital Partners Archives After 17 years in M&A, Derivatives and Trading, Im spending my time with young entrepreneurs in and around financial technology and digital media. And from my perspective as an engaged seed stage venture investor, this makes them unfundable.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Founder Cap Table Vesting 40