View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

Traction is a biweekly podcast where founders share the creative or unusual things they did during the seed stage to make early progress. Founders from LinkedIn , DraftKings , General Assembly , The Muse , Behance , InsightSquared , and more have appeared on the show. You can subscribe here. TractionPodcast.

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View from Seed

MAY 3, 2016

Today’s guest, Jesse Middleton, is a co-founder of WeWork Labs, the company’s global startup incubator, and currently the head of WeWork X, which includes Labs and also the new WeWork investing and M&A activities. Jesse was also among the first to join the co-founders of WeWork when it started.

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BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Thanks to all of the amazing founders, advisors, co-investors, corporate partners, and others that helped make 2018 an amazing year. To that point, we are most excited when our founders are able to go from slide deck to product-market fit and Series A and beyond. We are truly grateful for your support. First check to Series A?—?congrats

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Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Agile VC

JANUARY 4, 2012

Founders Hardi Meybaum and Indrek Narusk originally started building the company in their native Estonia before moving to Boston to join the hub of SaaS / CAD software companies located here. In addition to compelling founders, we were drawn to the company by their vision for a professional community for mechanical engineers and designers.

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Community Estonia Syndicate Syndication 100

David Cohen

AUGUST 29, 2013

We arrived at the address only to find that it is a co-working space. It is coming from a seed stage VC and suddenly the amount of that investment has a range. A month later, we’d seen or heard from the founders of the top-billed startup exactly zero times and there had been exactly zero sessions for learning.

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View from Seed

JUNE 10, 2020

of teams’ online pitch decks and recorded videos, as well as loved the dozens of second-round video conversations which we had with Founders working on quite compelling startups. Many of these Founders we wouldn’t have had an opportunity to connect with if we hadn’t launched this program.

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Cofounder Syndicate Syndication Alabama 177

Hearpreneur

MAY 4, 2019

Conversely, the integrated mindsets, mechanics, and methodologies of entrepreneurship and venture capital are designed and calibrated to discover new customer needs and devise innovative and new-to-the-world solutions. My ID Magazine win in college was a big deal for me and for my university in terms of our place on the world stage of design.

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Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Many assume it was a cakewalk, based on the success LinkedIn has enjoyed over time and the current stature of our founder/CEO Reid Hoffman (now Chairman). Yes… he was a very successful PayPal exec and previously co-founder & VP Product of SocialNet. But keep in mind at this point Reid’s a first-time CEO.

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Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

David Teten

JULY 10, 2019

Ideally we’re looking for the Magical Founding Team Mix For Web Startups : Developer; Designer / UI / UX person; Inbound Marketer; Sales Person; and in addition, ideally a data analytics person. See Should you co-found a company with your friend? This work is unpaid, as with any other startup at the pre-seed stage.

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America Technical Review Advisory Board Due Diligence 60

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 6, 2017

by Jason Mendelson and Brad Feld, co-authors of “ Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist “ So, you’ve got a brilliant idea and you’re ready to launch a company. For example, assume you are a seed-stage company that needs $500,000 but you go out looking for $1 million.

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Venture Capital Term Sheet Technical Review Due Diligence 100

View from Seed

AUGUST 5, 2014

This is a guest post from Ben Rubin , co-founder and CEO of Change Collective , which offers courses for behavior change with world-class experts. For seed-stage startups, when resources are tight, trying to consciously build startup culture can feel wasteful. My co-founder Derek had the opposite communication style.

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Cofounder Startup SCRUM Seed Stage 307

Genuine VC

AUGUST 3, 2012

One Jackson is a new online children’s clothing retailer which is surprisingly fresh – all of its designs were created by independent designers and then curated with love from its community of parents. Her co-founder and CTO Yee Lee worked with both my partner Lee Hower and myself (at PayPal and Venrock, respectively).

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View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

Founders laud their own “end-to-end” thinking. He’s dubbed the approach “ pretotyping ,” and it shares many of the same principles as both its similar-sounding (if later-stage) cousin, prototyping, as well as the more well-known lean startup movement. ” Take the example above.

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Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

View from Seed

JANUARY 26, 2016

In the next post, I’ll talk about how we think about pre-seeds at NextView. It’s become increasingly common for startups to raise several seed rounds, and this has led to a bifurcation in the seed stage between what are known as “pre-seed” (or “genesis”) and institutional seed rounds.

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Seed Stage Early Stage Cofounder Finance 120

techcrunch.com

APRIL 26, 2013

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. This is just the next phase of AngelList’s evolution into a one-stop shop for seed-stage companies and their backers.

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Ben's Blog

JANUARY 31, 2012

That excitement took a sharp downhill turn when one of the top partners said to me, in front of my co-founders, “When are you going to get a real CEO?”. As we set out to design a venture capital firm that would enable founders to run their own companies, we began by asking: In what ways are professional CEOs superior to founder CEOs?

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Venture Capital Portfolio Cofounder Partner 78

YoungUpstarts

JULY 29, 2013

by Meng Weng Wong, co-founder and social engineer at JFDI Asia. Some founders stay at hostels. We spend tremendous energy recruiting between 100 and 200 angels and seed-stage investors who may invest in your business. Each founder who owns shares in the startup and has attended JFDI will be invited.

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Asia Singapore Cofounder Incubator 207

Genuine VC

MARCH 4, 2013

The endless scroll of Pinterest , Polyvore , The Fancy , Behance , Tumblr , are just a few mainstream examples of a broader trend towards graphically-rich design , but this aesthetic carries to longer-tail sites like foodgawker which have embraced this paradigm. Today Triple Lift announced their $2M seed round financing.

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The Equity Kicker

JUNE 26, 2014

Our model of backing entrepreneurs and then also investing heavily in a team and co-working space to support them is new. We invest in 1-2 companies per quarter that join us for a year long programme, and we invest in late-seed stage companies too. I like that about us. Examples include Mint Digital and Neverbland.

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eCommerce Partner Incubator Early Stage 98

Jeff Hilimire

AUGUST 30, 2013

and The Coca-Cola Co., attract graphic design, animation and digital media talent to the city. The region’s schools, including the Savannah College of Art and Design , Art Institute of Atlanta and Creative Circus, churn out new talent. A cluster of media and marketing companies, including Turner Broadcasting System Inc.

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Atlanta B2C Georgia Los Angeles 77

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Seed-stage investors are learning the metrics of traction, and are getting better at identifying those companies that are really achieving validated learning about customers. Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and what. We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2020

You may know him as the founder of Soylent, the nutrition company he started in his kitchen and scaled nationwide. Many of you will know Robert as the founder of Soylent, which he started out of his kitchen and then grew into a nationwide phenomenon. We can't change the past, but we do have a say in the future if we're willing.

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Technical Review Software Review Finance Technology 68

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. In addition to off-the-shelf products, many VCs talk about their own proprietary systems.

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Early Stage Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 60

Ben's Blog

APRIL 7, 2021

The modern form of the venture capital firm — dating to American Research and Development Corporation and JH Whitney & Co. Later-stage capital of course ultimately matters, but that capital can be “borrowed” from players in other states at the right time (and even countries; capital is global after all). Federal government The U.S.

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Silicon Valley Non-Compete San Francisco Government 36

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

And since a startup thatsucceeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies gettingrich is doable too. A lot ofwould-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is theinitial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute.Venture capitalists know better. Ideally you want between two and four founders.

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Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Agile VC

JUNE 25, 2012

The company has been in stealth mode for the last couple months but I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about NextView’s investment in the company and our enthusiasm to be working with co-founders Dan Foody and Alex Cote. I first met co-founder/CEO Dan Foody a little over six months ago. Read More ».

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Cofounder Stealth Silicon Valley Mobile 140

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 2, 2011

Facebook Co-Founder’s Startup Asana Launches Publicly. 13 Halloween-Themed Facebook Timeline Designs [PICS]. Joshua Baer is the co-founder and CEO of Otherinbox , a prolific angel investor and the director of Capital Factory , Austin’s seed-stage incubator. Dev & Design Highlights.

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Social Media Startup Angel Investor RSS 80

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 5, 2015

Although pitch decks are well-trodden territory online, we tried to introduce decks that were specifically designed for how they would be used in practice. What distinguishes this deck is that we think it’s designed for the way most seed stage fundraising conversations actually happen. Usually, this leads to a conundrum.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Startup Seed Stage Warrant 120

Agile VC

APRIL 13, 2012

I describe this in part as the “Social Network” effect… not just the movie itself but the example of Mark Zuckerberg and many other high profile young founders as role models ( who can forget this image? ) A hacker ethic is compatible with an urban setting just as design oriented one is compatible with a suburban one.

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www.paulgraham.com

AUGUST 1, 2008

In the last batch of startups we funded, we had several founders who said theyd thought of applying before, but werent sure and got jobs instead. In essense, let the market design the product. This is a problem for founders, because it makes raising money take longer and cost more in legal fees.

Web 54

Web Startup Silicon Valley Technical Review 54

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

For the first-time entrepreneur or founder looking for seed stage funding, this circle can be especially difficult to penetrate. Mashable Mashable reached out to angels, seed stage investors and VC firm partners and asked them to share their wisdom with the rest of us. and Path Intelligence.

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Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

Agile VC

JUNE 12, 2012

Both are building on top of the existing credit card infrastructure because as Swipely Founder/CEO Angus Davis points out, millions of people are walking around with a mobile payment device in their pocket… it’s called a credit card. I’d be happy to co-author with you. Any thoughts? link] leehower. Read More ».

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Mobile Disintermediation SMS Government 250

grasshopperherder.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

« Thanks but No Thanks – Things to Avoid When Recruiting Co-founders Why is Cyber Squatter a Bad Word? Some have been as co-founder, most have been as a consultant with the possibility of becoming an paid employee, “as soon as we close our funding round.” The founder is very generous.).

Sweat Equity 41

Sweat Equity Equity Cofounder Non-Compete 41

Rob Go

FEBRUARY 5, 2015

Although pitch decks are well-trodden territory online, we tried to introduce decks that were specifically designed for how they would be used in practice. What distinguishes this deck is that we think it’s designed for the way most seed stage fundraising conversations actually happen. Usually, this leads to a conundrum.

Startup 28

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage Warrant 28

www.currentlyobsessed.com

MAY 28, 2010

Deals come in all shapes and sizes, and seed stage funds like First Round Capital and programs like TechStars provide flexibility Explosive growth companies and multi-time successful founders get atypical deals The other terms (besides valuation) matter too! For example, liquidation prefs. Read Terms that Hurt (Venture Hacks).

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Valuation Channel Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 42

VC Cafe

JULY 8, 2012

So how do you go about finding co-founders and early members of your startup? VC Cafe took a look at the most promising sources for finding co-founders, both in the “real world” and online. . From “napkin” (seed stage) to profitable startups, this site will give you a good set of options.

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Cofounder Founder Startup Seed Stage 149

techcrunch.com

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Today, AngelList is debuting Docs, which lets seed-stage startups close their round online. As CEO and co-founder Naval Ravikant tells me, when he and co-founder Babak Nivi started VentureHacks a few years ago, their goal was to educate companies on how to negotiate venture term sheets. Keen On… B.J.

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Term Sheet San Francisco Technical Review Seed Stage 70