ithacaVC

DECEMBER 13, 2013

When raising money from investors (angels or VC), it is critical to have a presentable and clean cap table. Let’s assume that Founder X owns 800,000 shares of common stock and Founder Y owns 1,300,000 shares of common stock and that the option pool in total has 356,758 shares allocated (to make the total stated above).

Cap Table 67

Cap Table Pre-Money Valuation Option Pool Liquidation Preference 67

Hearpreneur

AUGUST 20, 2023

#4- Find the right relationships Photo Credit: Mike Pio Roda “Never leave money on the table” might seem tempting, but it's not always the wisest path for founders and business owners. 5- Hire the experts Photo Credit: Rachel Eigen “You can do it all starting small” — B.S.

Entrepreneur 77

Entrepreneur Cap Table Dividend Cofounder 77

OnlyOnce

DECEMBER 1, 2021

Sometimes a founder or a founder’s spouse even steps in on this front. As startups scale, they are likely to hire a more senior accountant, maybe an AR/AP/Collections staff member, or even a Controller or VP Finance. Another sign that you need to hire a full-time CFO comes in the form of things you can’t answer.

Hiring 117

Hiring Cap Table Finance Equity 117

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Why Pairing Junior Executives With External Mentors Can Accelerate Your Hiring and Their Professional Development Often at a startup it’s better to hire for talent, ambition, and commitment, than years in role or ‘did they have the job already somewhere else.’ What should your relationship (as a founder) be with this person?

Hiring 60

Hiring Cap Table Equity Dividend 60

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

While at the company — and especially once she departed — Claire became one of the people I always hoped to add to a cap table or startup board. For example: On her viral ‘ Working With Claire ’ guide I think that founders should write a guide to working with them. When do I want to hear from you?

Cap Table 74

Cap Table Hiring Viral Valuation 74

Up and Running

JULY 2, 2014

We had personally invested $70,000 of our own money at this point, and we were hoping to raise at least another $250,000 to help us hire a team, launch our company, and begin to build our product. This should be clearly spelled out in your Capitalization Table , or “Cap Table” as it’s commonly called.

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Angel Investor Due Diligence Dilution 118

Hunter Walker

MAY 13, 2023

Especially in the early days of mobile/iOS engineering, if you hired strong technical talent into your early stage company, you basically created an acquisition outcome floor. I was on both sides of these transactions – buying startups for Google/YouTube and angel investing in high quality technical founders.

Early Stage 117

Early Stage Cap Table Acquisition Sales 117

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Other than starting to build, hire, and take over the world, there are a bunch of mundane things to do right away. The following is a first pass at a checklist of items for Founder CEOs to take care of in the first couple weeks after they’ve closed their initial round of seed funding. You’ve just closed your seed round.

Founder 156

Founder Cap Table Stock Options PR 156

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Hiring is a chapter unto itself, but it deserves to lead off any discussion of context. Compensation decisions obviously affect hiring and retention. You can’t be too careful in determining comp packages for your new hires. Your Cap Table is something that deserves constant care and attention.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 1, 2021

Some of the founders we backed in Homebrew’s first fund have realized — or will soon realize — outcomes that will net them hundreds of millions and perhaps even billions of dollars. And I’m thrilled for them and their teams. It’s not about scarcity, it’s about abundance.

Silicon Valley 123

Silicon Valley Cap Table IPO .Net 123

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 20, 2019

On the other hand, some people try and pad the cap table with a bunch of big names or industry vets, even if their check size is small, just to build the network. The reality is that the last thing most founders will have time for is writing up investor updates. People can have pretty random networks, especially around hiring.

Cap Table 107

Cap Table Later Stage Hiring Founder 107

www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Main February 23, 2010 Advice for CTO Founders: Dont Let Business Kill the Business Founding a technology company is an amazing thing. Too often, however, I have found CTO / Founders paired with business people who not only don't add value, but frequently detract from the value of the business. So my advice to CTO / Founders?

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Founder Cap Table Vesting 40

Hunter Walker

JUNE 25, 2022

And it’s with your first hires that your intended culture will be solidified, evolved, mutated, or challenged. But in talking about culture with founders, I’m very deliberate when I characterize what I believe is a “good” culture vs a “bad” one. Code can be rewritten. Products can be built, modified, sunset.

Cap Table 96

Cap Table Matching Hiring Business Model 96

Altgate

JUNE 25, 2012

. —————– Dead equity — equity held by employees and founders no longer working at the company — is a large and growing problem. One who attracted much attention is David Choe, the graffiti artist hired to paint the company’s first headquarters. A Significant – and Growing – Problem.

Equity 44

Equity Vesting Cap Table Technical Review 44

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

Your historical trading information including financials and a “customer file” which shows the history of your transactions so that investors can run “cohort” analyses Customer reference, personal references, key team members, compensation, cap table, stock option plan, etc. So how does this work in practice? Entrepreneur : “Sure.

Cap Table 336

Cap Table Due Diligence Forecast Churn Rate 336

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

This is all incorporated into a document called a Cap Table. . A cap table will help you in the strategic management of business decisions. Wondering what a cap table is, its importance, and how you can maintain it to expand your business? What is a cap table? Let’s dive in.

Cap Table 112

Cap Table Pre-Money Valuation Stock Options Option Pool 112

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance. For background, see Revenue-Based Investing: A New Option for Founders who Care About Control. Decathlon Capital.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Altgate

AUGUST 25, 2012

. —————– Dead equity — equity held by employees and founders no longer working at the company — is a large and growing problem. One who attracted much attention is David Choe, the graffiti artist hired to paint the company’s first headquarters. A Significant – and Growing – Problem.

Equity 28

Equity Vesting Cap Table Technical Review 28

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

So, rather than try and fill time unnecessarily and create a lengthy deck just because you’re “supposed to,” Rob — and we’d guess many other VCs as well — will often suggest that a founder create a simple one-sheeter that might start small and build over time. Note that “housekeeping” doesn’t mean “not important.”

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 4, 2017

What happens when a founder has that rare wealth of riches when they're choosing who they're going to allow onto their cap table? The tables turn and the one being pitched to becomes the one pitching. The reputation you create off of each 1:1 interaction with a founder is like a rainy day fund.

Reputation 67

Reputation Cap Table Term Sheet Green 67

Hunter Walker

JUNE 14, 2018

Information, relationships, pattern matching for marketplaces, SaaS, financial services, agriculture, media, etc etc – our backgrounds and/or portfolio suggest that we might have ability to help the founders move faster and with greater accuracy in testing their market hypotheses. Who support them as people and their growth.

Cap Table 81

Cap Table Portfolio Vertical Reputation 81

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

He had made some structural mistakes in NextMedium that meant the Cap Table and leadership team was a bit wacky. For starters they has asked him to hire a CEO (Hamet was a first timer) and that person lived in Seattle even though NextMedium was based in LA. Mark, why wouldn’t you fund him? I stayed close.

Partner 340

Partner Los Angeles South Africa Cap Table 340

keen.io

FEBRUARY 5, 2013

The founders had been dropping hints that they wanted me to join them. This book was written to help founders negotiate financing with investors, but it really helped me understand Keen’s financial situation, and I highly recommend it to anyone joining a startup. So I knew a little bit. I knew enough to know I wanted to join a startup.

Salary 50

Salary Equity Startup San Francisco 50

techcrunch.com

APRIL 26, 2013

That way, startups only have one entity in the cap table, which simplifies documentation and structure. Co-founder Naval Ravikant explains that 18 pilot companies in the program, including Transcriptic, Double Robotics and Tred, received $6.7 Investors included Founders Fund, 500 Startups and Marc Cuban.

SEC 61

SEC Accredited Investor San Diego New York City 61

The Startup Toolkit

AUGUST 29, 2012

If you’ve never done a tech startup before , it’s helpful to have someone who has ticked the boxes (raised money, built something people hate, built something people loved, hired someone, fired someone, made money, lost money). You’ll need to keep hiring tech guys. And sometimes it’s super ambiguous.

Technical Review 38

Technical Review CTO Hire Cap Table Software Review 38

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 26, 2022

I tried to get hired at Better Place and failed. I had gone to high school with the founders in the Seattle area, and we had recently reconnected. When I learned they were hiring a community manager, I threw everything I had at the interview process. Enter Box. Box and Glossier feel like two very different industries!

IPO 91

IPO Cofounder Early Stage Portfolio 91

BeyondVC

NOVEMBER 17, 2016

We each independently fell in love with enterprise software 20+ years ago as seed investors (cos like gotomeeting/Citrix, greenplum/EMC, livperson/IPO LPSN) and founders (workmarket, onforce/Adecco, spinback/buddymedia/salesf0rce) and are now benefiting from the ecosystems, knowledge and network that we’ve collectively developed.

Cap Table 60

Cap Table Cofounder Dividend Institutional Investors 60

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 3, 2020

The partner at the fund, the VC, gets to do the fun part—the meeting with founders, vetting deals, negotiating, helping, etc. One way to measure that is to imagine the theoretical $500-$1mm angel round that a founder is looking to raise. Less than that and you need something else to bring to the table. So what’s the point?

Portfolio 134

Portfolio Syndicate Syndication Deal Flow 134

OnlyOnce

FEBRUARY 9, 2022

In our prior lives, the Bolster founders worked together to scale up a business called Return Path and also. worked as advisors and mentors to numerous early stage founders and startups. Brad’s visceral response in this conversation was a very clear, “you should hire Jenny.” We needed another senior leader to join our team.

Silicon Valley 62

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Cap Table Early Stage 62

adamac.blogspot.com

MARCH 9, 2010

Adam MacBeth Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10 Startup Red Flags Ive worked on a number of startups: from seed-stage through IPO, as a founder, employee, advisor, and consultant, as well as evaluating a bunch from the outside, so Ive seen my share of screw-ups. This means there MUST be a technical founder in a startup. Adamac Attack!

Technical Review 41

Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup 41

Feld Thoughts

JULY 5, 2015

There was one construct that bothered me – Geis’ use of the phrase “acqui-hire” and his effort to categorize acquisitions as acquihires, ACQUI-hires, acqui-HIRES, and ACQUI-HIRES. Dodgeball.com: But really…When a public company with a market cap of $64.1

Acquisition 70

Acquisition Cap Table Framework Retention 70

Haystack

AUGUST 18, 2019

You lose influence as larger investors come into the cap table and start throwing their weight around. Many of these new data-driven funds are hiring experienced VCs across early stages and building outposts in the Bay Area. You lose way more than you win. You wait the longest for liquidity. It is where most people start out.

Seed Stage 108

Seed Stage Cap Table Early Stage Malaysia 108

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

On the other side of the table: FundAmerica , iDisclose , RegisteredTransferAgent , VStock Transfer , and Wealthforge helps companies (as well as funds) who are crowdfunding manage the process in a legally compliant way. Signal is a fundraising tool for founders run by NFX Guild, which identifies the most relevant VCs for you. .

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Eric Friedman

JUNE 27, 2016

This is the classic “hire people smarter than you” which is harder said than done. I have seen what I call “predatory advisors” come in and really mess up a cap table by promising big intros and sales contracts only to disappear after the first 6-12 months. Think about the things you DON’T know.

Equity 98

Equity Vesting Cap Table Common Stock 98

genylabs.typepad.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

I wont bother going into details on start-up financing terms ( see this post for an overview of typical VC terms) except to say if you dont know and understand: the firms cap table and valuation. what rights and preferences the founders and the other investors have. Should You Hire People With Graduate Degrees for Your Startup?

Equity 40

Equity Technical Review San Jose Stock 40

Ben's Blog

APRIL 1, 2011

Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. I remember when I first became CEO, an investor asked me to send him the “cap table.” —The Geto Boys, Mind Playing Tricks on Me. Great CEOs face the pain.

Management 78

Management Cap Table Balance Sheet Bankruptcy 78

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 20, 2015

There’s appropriate debate around whether the concept is true enough to turn into a hiring principle and if the concept celebrates the individual at the expense of the team. 0x Angels forward every TechCrunch article about a competitor to the founder with note “Should we be worried?” That’s a good thing.).

Cap Table 48

Cap Table Warrant Syndicate Syndication 48