David Teten

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

Blue Future Partners, a venture capital fund of funds, recently interviewed me on ESG in venture capital. For example, I’m an investor via ff Venture Capital in: – Plated.com is a meal kit company, delivering you the recipe and fresh ingredients to make a gourmet meal in your own kitchen. .

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Partner Technical Review Cofounder 60

David Teten

MARCH 14, 2018

. – Build out low-cost force multipliers such as scouts , Advisors, Entrepreneurs in Residence, Venture Partners, and so on. Typically these outside resources are paid only on a success basis, so the marginal cost is low. . – Create a franchise and license access to it , e.g., the Draper Venture Network.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Cofounder 60

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

The key to being able to run a business that isn’t yet profitable (on operating margin) is availability of capital to finance losses and preferably at a cost that isn’t too punitive to the founders and employees. CAC is often measured incorrectly and doesn’t often doesn’t capture the true costs of acquisition.

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 4, 2022

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capitalists) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. That includes estimating the money required to get to the revenue stage, and saving money to cover costs before you jump off the cliff.

Intellectual Property 261

Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator Bootstrapping 261

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Over the past month a colleague ( Chang Xu ) and I sifted through data on the venture capital industry (as we do every year) and made a bunch of calls to VCs and LPs to confirm our hypotheses. why the hell has seed financing declined so much in the past 3 years?? So What Impact Did the Drop in Tech Founding Costs Have on VC?

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage IPO 328

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

While the answers are somewhat semantic, the pre-seed funding round is making a comeback in 2024 startup financing. What’s the difference between an angel round and pre-seed round and why do I believe we’ll see more pre-seed rounds taking place in 2024? Pre-seed tends to be about developing an MVP and generating early traction.

Valuation 186

Valuation Software Review Generative AI Technical Review 186

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2022

Yet as I mentor entrepreneurs around the country, crowdfunding still seems to be one of the least understood approaches to startup funding, with more myths than accredited angels and professional venture capital investors combined. Interest on debt model.

Accredited Investor 352

Accredited Investor Startup SEC Equity 352

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

When I first read Paul Graham’s blog post on “High Resolution&# Financing I read it as a treatise arguing that convertible notes are better than equity. “A startup could also give better deals to investors they expected to help them most&# – That is a quote from Paul on the “high resolution financing&# post.

Finance 286

Finance Term Sheet Technical Review Warrant 286

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened? Until we weren’t.

Valuation 466

Valuation San Francisco Ratchet Liquidation Preference 466

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

VC Financings: 1. It seems the focus on “virtual&# goods has been both the demo of the consumer as well as the fact that by definition virtual goods have almost no marginal costs to the seller so giving a huge slice to the carrier (and Zong) isn’t a problem since actual costs are ~ $0. 15mm in Series A.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Steve Blank

JANUARY 11, 2022

Team Army Venture Capital. needs to reevaluate and improve its public venture capital relationship with companies with dual-use technologies. Final problem statement : Chinese adversarial venture capital investments in U.S. Original problem statement : the U.S.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Technology Taiwan Venture Capital 281

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

On the phone … Me: So, you raised venture capital? It’s like we need a finance 101 course for entrepreneurs. In finance they call it “terminal value” but the truth is the price is as arbitrary at your A round as it is at your seed round. I really just want to champion Finance 101 to entrepreneurs.

Venture Capital 417

Venture Capital Liquidation Preference Valuation Term Sheet 417

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 26, 2018

Most healthy businesses need business financing at some point. Startups have to deal with starting costs and ongoing businesses have to finance growth and working capital. Financing options depend on what kind of business you have. Don’t waste your time looking for the wrong kind of financing.

SBA 161

SBA Venture Capital Angel Investor Technical Review 161

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 4, 2023

In a perfect world, small businesses would have an endless stream of revenue coming in and there wouldn’t be need to worry about financing. Sometimes businesses have to get creative when it comes to their small business financing, especially when revenue is low. However, we all know that’s not the case.

Finance 110

Finance Revenue Small Business Bootstrapping 110

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2019

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capitalists) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. That includes estimating the money required to get to the revenue stage, and saving money to cover costs before you jump off the cliff.

Intellectual Property 219

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 219

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

The problem is that professional investors (Angels and Venture Capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. That includes estimating the money required to get to the revenue stage, and saving money to cover costs before you jump off the cliff.

Intellectual Property 309

Intellectual Property Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 309

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Others may not have the experience you want and they fill up a seat that makes retaining founder control more difficult if you ultimately raise large rounds of venture capital in the future. It’s not zero calories but with the right board the benefits should far outweigh the time and emotional costs. But it’s quite rare.

Venture Capital 236

Venture Capital Startup Angel Investor Silicon Valley 236

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 20, 2020

Yet as I mentor entrepreneurs around the country, it still seems to be one of the least understood approaches to startup funding, with more myths than accredited angels and professional venture capital investors combined. Interest on debt model.

Accredited Investor 324

Accredited Investor Entrepreneur SEC Equity 324

YoungUpstarts

MAY 17, 2017

Should you fall into this category, it’s important to lay as much of your startup’s groundwork as possible before you resign from your current position and venture off on your own. Furthermore, they] are usually small and initially financed and operated by a handful of founders or one individual.”. Venture capital.

San Diego 138

San Diego Venture Capital Startup Bootstrapping 138

Steve Blank

AUGUST 19, 2013

But what if we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently? Yet during those same 60 years, rather than decreasing, the cost of getting a new drug approved by the FDA has increased 80 fold. Pharma companies are staggering under the costs.

Venture Capital 301

Venture Capital Startup Lean Philadelphia 301

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

The problem is that professional investors (Angels and Venture Capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than the more risky research and development efforts. That includes estimating the money required to get to the revenue stage, and saving money to cover costs before you jump off the cliff.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 283

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

There has been much discussion in the past few years of the changing structure of the venture capital industry. The rise of alternative sources of capital (crowd funding and the like). Lower costs to start a business (95% reduction), many more companies created & funded by angels / seed. The iPhone was released.

Technical Review 398

Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 398

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Examples are Hollywood for movies, Milan for fashion, New York for finance and today, Silicon Valley for technology entrepreneurship. Venture Guiding Fund. In 2007 the Ministries of Science and Finance raised the stakes to get VC’s focused on funneling more VC money into growing startups – they set up a Venture Guiding Fund.

Programming 278

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 278

View from Seed

APRIL 14, 2020

This led to a number of repercussions that most VC’s have lamented during this time, including higher prices, larger rounds, shoddy due diligence, and many companies raising large sums of venture capital that probably aren’t suited to VC funding.

Early Stage 374

Early Stage Software Review Technical Review Due Diligence 374

abovethecrowd.com

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

Building a unique set of financials can be a reasonable way to use cost accounting to help drive key OKRs. The post Venture Capital Red Flag Checklist appeared first on Above the Crowd. There are also frequent claims of being “profitable” on some definition of “margin” that is specific to the company.

Venture Capital 113

Venture Capital Non-Compete Government Delaware 113

online.wsj.com

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

SIGNIFICANCE PROMINENT. --> The Venture Capital Secret: 3 Out of 4 Start-Ups Fail. An entrepreneur with a hot technology and venture-capital funding becomes a billionaire in his 20s. The National Venture Capital Association estimates that 25% to 30% of venture-backed businesses fail. NAME David Cowan.

Venture Capital 107

Venture Capital Software Review Rhode Island North Dakota 107

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than early projections and product development. That includes estimating the money required to get to the revenue stage, and saving money to cover costs before you jump off the cliff.

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

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

David Teten

MARCH 5, 2021

What can we learn from the best 40 venture capital investments of all time? Of course, one could rebut that by saying traditional VC is all about investing in outliers: Seth Levine analyzed data from Correlation Ventures (21,000 financings from 2004-2013) and writes that “a full 65% of financings fail to return 1x capital.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Technical Review 78

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2017

It was only a year ago that many in the Venture Capital industry were predicting that “winter was coming” and to be fair the author of this post was chief amongst them. With nearly 2/3rd of all VCs citing cost-cutting in 2016 as the norm — this is a clear indication that winter made an appearance. Baidu alone raised $3.2

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Saudi Arabia Kuwait Burn Rate 150

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

Since then, the space has only heated up (bad pun, I know) with more startups building and even more venture capital available to scale them. Now the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers many new incentives that may decrease the cost of climate tech by 40% – more room for innovation!

Green 78

Green Technical Review Distribution Software Review 78

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of Venture Capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. Today open source software has slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. After all, growth equals high valuations and loads of venture capital! It’s ok to raise venture capital and try to build a monster business.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Examples are Hollywood for movies, Milan for fashion, New York for finance and today, Silicon Valley for technology entrepreneurship. Venture Guiding Fund. In 2007 the Ministries of Science and Finance raised the stakes to get VC’s focused on funneling more VC money into growing startups – they set up a Venture Guiding Fund.

Programming 170

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 170

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

Scalable startups require risk capital to fund their search for a business model, and they attract investment from equally crazy financial investors – venture capitalists. When they find it, their focus on scale requires even more venture capital to fuel rapid expansion. They hire the best and the brightest.

Government 335

Government Silicon Valley Startup Venture Capital 335

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2016

In other words, it isn’t that VCs suddenly got smart, it’s that the costs of starting a company went down dramatically. These are extreme positions and often the deals settle in between but it can be U-G-L-Y and the financings are at times coupled with changing management teams. 3VCs agreed to fund an inside round and cut costs.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Burn Rate LP 150

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Also, the benefit of raising a pre-seed from great partners probably outweighs the cost. Pre-seed investing should be super simple, so any signs of pro-rata rights, tranched financings, charging the company for value-added services, etc. The challenge here is that inexperienced founders sometimes get the worst of both worlds.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149