Up and Running

NOVEMBER 5, 2018

What will it cost to start that business? Many people underestimate startup costs and start their business in a haphazard, unplanned way. Estimating realistic startup costs is one of the key elements of your financial plan. What are startup costs? And it interferes with the estimates and dilutes their value.

Cost 150

Cost Balance Sheet Startup Intellectual Property 150

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

You’re not allocating enough costs to gross margin or the cost to acquire a customer. Find and focus on one reliable distribution mechanism before diluting your time diversifying. Either you haven’t hired great talent, or you have but you’re disempowering them. Priority depends on your goals (e.g.

Restful 202

Restful Founder Revenue Acquisition 202

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2010

How much dilution should I take for it?&# My friend’s company was pre-revenue. Me: “Zero dilution. But to be clear the overwhelming majority of deals involve one company driving the cultural integration, establishment of uniform processes, hiring / firing decisions, etc. how to cut redundant costs. -

Merger 276

Merger Technical Review Early Stage Dilution 276

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 6, 2020

Growth entrepreneurs quickly find themselves removed from day-to-day operations, and become more and more occupied by transactions with lawyers, investors, and potential acquisition partners. Personal income is related to operations versus equity. With major investors, your equity and return is diluted and delayed.

Small Business 311

Small Business Small Business Administration SBA Equity 311

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 12, 2024

However, scaling up too quickly can lead to hurried hiring decisions. Failure to do so can lead to operational inefficiencies, like a dam struggling to hold back a flood of issues. The Brand Identity Balancing Act While chasing growth, there’s a risk of diluting what made your brand special in the first place.

Intellectual Property 121

Intellectual Property Dilution Security Government 121

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business 6 months. If you don’t have a strong balance sheet and can’t hire more people that’s fine — but understand this may lead to slower growth.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

Benefits: Non-dilutive, flexible credit offerings that fit SMB or enterprise SaaS. Repaid 12-36 months with ability to prepay at reduced cost. The average monthly operating expenses is $70,335. The mode purpose for funding is (in order of frequency) Sales, Marketing, Market Expansion, Product Development, and Hiring Employees.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 13, 2011

The 54 companies in the study operated product and service businesses, had been in business on average 9.6 They end up trying to do too much for too many, which dilutes their focus and often the quality of their product or service. Hiring smart. The problem is that too many entrepreneurs never learn to say ‘NO!’

Indianapolis 219

Indianapolis Minneapolis Kentucky Virginia 219

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

Many startup CEOs hire COOs or launch companies with a co-founder carrying the title. When should founders hire one? For most of my career, I’ve served startups and early-stage companies as an operating executive or advisor. Suffice to say, if you’re hiring a COO at your startup, you’re about to make some tough tradeoffs.

Hiring 336

Hiring Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder 336

Up and Running

JULY 14, 2015

You hire more staff than you need, become inefficient with operations, or move to bigger offices. Operating lean should be the mantra of all businesses. They could be making a senior hire, developing your product, or achieving a certain number of users for your product. Should you ever raise more than you need?

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Valuation Due Diligence Finder 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 26, 2019

In fact, studies have shown that the long-term value of coaching has a return of at least 2x to more than 100x times the cost. You need healthy conflict to get people to face their limitations, and to fully understand customer and operational issues. Only hire and partner with people who have a positive outlook.

Dilution 229

Dilution Agile Developer Demand 229

The Startup Magazine

JULY 15, 2023

Smart software is revolutionizing the way security firms operate, changing everything from shift scheduling to camera monitoring. Most firms hire staff prepared to deal with the challenges of two years ago, but fewer have individuals who can respond to those occurring in real-time, let alone ones coming down the pike.

Security 140

Security Artificial Inteligence Differentiation Dilution 140

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

For many businesses you should keep your costs low & your capital raises low until you discover whether you are really on to a big idea where there is market demand. If you are able to raise money from credible sources at a reasonable dilution percentage then I personally favor getting the round done now and building your business.

Pre-Money Valuation 303

Pre-Money Valuation Dilution Valuation PR 303

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 7, 2014

Avoid accidents in the workplace at all costs. The starter may feel that outside assistance somehow dilutes the stand-alone nature of the operation, but this isn’t really the case. Advice For The Young At Heart building a team hiring outsourcing' Going it alone can be an abstract concept.

Dilution 202

Dilution Early Stage Hiring Employee 202

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

VCs also operate in a limited time window that is determined by the duration of their funds. Founders typically get their equity in a company once — at the time of founding and then get diluted with each subsequent round of financing. The rush to hire results in a relaxation of “hire only A players rule.”

Venture Capital 117

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 117

Austin Startup

JUNE 30, 2017

in exchange for a price: usually 6–9% of equity, with (sometimes) heavy anti-dilution rights, and pro-rata rights. A founder who gets into a top accelerator, however, gains access to a vast, well-curated network of other founders, mentors, potential hires, etc. It feeds on itself, at least when it works.

Curation 48

Curation Startup Cofounder Equity 48

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

VCs also operate in a limited time window that is determined by the duration of their funds. Founders typically get their equity in a company once — at the time of founding and then get diluted with each subsequent round of financing. The rush to hire results in a relaxation of “hire only A players rule.”

Venture Capital 105

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 105

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Office and Operations. Back in 1997, Randy Parker was staring at a blank whiteboard, wondering where hed find the money to hire the employees and consultants he needed to build his new product. "We That cost him accounting fees, legal fees, and time because the financing round couldnt close until the arrangements were formalized.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO Equity Iowa Technical Cofounder 40

The Startup Magazine

JULY 4, 2018

Companies that successfully navigate this pitfall often rely on technology to keep their operations efficient as their customer base and staff get bigger. A cloud infrastructure also makes it easy for you to expand to other locations or hire remote workers without needing to create additional on-premise IT centers. Source: Pixabay.

Artificial Inteligence 70

Artificial Inteligence Azure Cloud Campaign 70

Haystack

AUGUST 18, 2019

Those employees and operators, who often have some book wealth now (or are running syndicates on AngelList or acting as a scout for another fund) can easily dump $50K-$100K into one of their ex-colleague’s new startups, or put this money into their friend’s new startup, or their friend’s new hot deal.

Seed Stage 108

Seed Stage Cap Table Early Stage Malaysia 108

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

Your identity and your marketing messages get so diluted that they don’t resonate with anyone. Since I operate my business in a number of niche markets, I do this exercise for each one of those. If you can show him that you can help him overcome that obstacle, it will be hard for him not to hire you.

Dilution 168

Dilution Green SEO Search 168

The Next Web

MARCH 2, 2014

This process included several rounds of financial forecasting to understand the cost of achieving where we wanted the business and brand to be, and whether we could pay for that cost ourselves. For us, because we chose to finance with debt, we gave up almost no equity in the company, and therefore almost no dilution of stock options.

Liquidity Event 139

Liquidity Event Equity Finance Stock Options 139

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

For example, imagine a team operating in a traditional waterfall development system, without continuous deployment, test-driven development, or continuous integration. Who will ultimately bear the cost of their mistakes? So we need to find solutions that operate at the systems level to break teams out of this pincer action.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Up and Running

APRIL 24, 2018

For example, having flexible work hours means you can hire talented candidates from different time zones, which will increase your productivity while keeping the costs down. Hiring an in-house legal counsel or consulting with an experienced law firm specializing in healthcare law is probably the best solution.

SBIR 73

SBIR Startup Artificial Inteligence Intellectual Property 73

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

My original post was directed at hiring managers. It said that I didn’t believe it was a good idea to hire job hoppers. My view still stands – for many hiring managers a large factor in looking through resumes of somebody who is 30+ and has never worked somewhere for more than 18 months will be the job hopping element.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Hiring Software Review Stock Options 285

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

Jonathan Bragdon , CEO, describes Capacity as “a team of founders-turned-funders making non-dilutive, founder-aligned investments of $50-$300k in post-startup, post-revenue businesses planning to 2X revenues in 12-24 months. Versatile has built out a suite of no-cost portfolio acceleration services to help its companies succeed.

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 7, 2022

Marcel is the CEO & Co-Founder of Parakeeto, a company dedicated to helping agencies measure and improve their profitability by streamlining their operations and reporting systems. And that's mostly gonna be the labor cost of the work that we do for clients. Cost-based accounting on projects in your accounting tool.

Cofounder 73

Cofounder Hosting Networking Software Review 73

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 16, 2021

These are usually characterized as owner-operated, with five employees or less, and less than $250,000 in sales. With the low cost of e-commence entry, and powerful Internet technologies, they require minimal capital to start, perhaps as little as $500.

Entrepreneur 304

Entrepreneur United States Dilution .Net 304

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

Yes, the infrastructure is cheap (to start), but the human costs have gone up dramatically. Unless every aspect of product development is covered by founders who are only receiving equity, there are other parts of building a product that will require hiring highly qualified people. Q: What are some Pre-Seed funds operating today?

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Occam's Razor

MAY 2, 2017

The very best analysts distill, rather than dilute. The very best analysts are comfortable operating with ambiguity and incompleteness, while all others chase perfection in implementation / processing / reports. The very best analysts focus, when most will tend to gather. It won’t be perfect, but that is the entire point of this post.

Metrics 141

Metrics Acquisition eCommerce Analytics 141

Austin Startup

MARCH 26, 2019

You just spent a few thousand dollars on advertising and your paid customer acquisition cost (CAC) numbers tested well relative to your best guess for customer lifetime value (LTV). All else being equal, the incremental cost of acquiring the next customer will always be higher than the last. What happens at 3X?

Technical Review 49

Technical Review Software Review China Acquisition 49

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 12, 2018

These are usually characterized as owner-operated, with five employees or less, and less than $250,000 in sales. With the low cost of e-commence entry, and powerful Internet technologies, they require minimal capital to start, perhaps as little as $500.

United States 244

United States Dilution .Net Small Business 244

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

portfolio operator VCs, e.g., Andreessen Horowitz, ff Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Google Ventures. At the same time, a direct equity investment (one where the dev shop acquires a share in the company immediately) puts the founders in a potentially uneasy position of having to dilute their company before a product is built.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

Most startups operate close to themargin of failure, and the distraction of having to deal with clientscould be enough to put you over the edge. Whatkind of anti-dilution protection do they want? And we think its better if startups operate out of their ownpremises, however crappy, than the offices of their investors.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2016

These are usually characterized as owner-operated, with five employees or less, and less than $250,000 in sales. With the low cost of e-commence entry, and powerful Internet technologies, they require minimal capital to start, perhaps as little as $500.

United States 242

United States Dilution .Net Small Business 242

YoungUpstarts

MAY 31, 2016

Oliver, author of “ Mantra Design ” and “ Mantra Leadership “ Successful businesses are not a result of chance, but are the by-product of an effective and evolving strategic plan, complimented by an equally effective operating infrastructure, and supported by exceptional human talent.

Technical Review 100

Technical Review Leadership Early Stage Initial Public Offering 100

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 26, 2013

These are usually characterized as owner-operated, with five employees or less, and less than $250,000 in sales. With the low cost of e-commence entry, and powerful Internet technologies, they require minimal capital to start, perhaps as little as $500.

United States 246

United States Dilution Startup .Net 246