Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Defense and Intelligence organizations drove the pace of innovation in Silicon Valley by providing research and development dollars to universities, and defense companies built weapons systems that used the Valley’s first microwave devices and semiconductor components. Third, venture capital has now become Founder-friendly.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

If you have a technical background and you are focused on product development, consider a co-founder with a sales and marketing background that can focus on selling your world class product. Rather, give titles such as VP of Engineering, Product/Technology, Sales, Marketing, Finance, etc. Early Stage. Series A to Series B.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 19, 2019

CargoX has developed a decentralized platform based on the Ethereum network, and their Blockchain Document Transaction System (BDTS) technology, and it has a pipeline of future products for the supply chain industry?—?among among them the Smart L/C and other trade finance solutions, and Smart Air Waybills for the air freight industry.

Slovenia 62

Slovenia Technical Review Startup Seed Capital 62

David Teten

MAY 7, 2019

By developing innovating technologies and taking a new approach, we believe that we can find alignment across various institutional and individual stakeholders with the means to leverage their networks and effectively push for progress. Once we’ve executed all the steps above, we go to VCs and raise seed capital of $1-2m.

America 60

America Technical Review Advisory Board Due Diligence 60

David Teten

JULY 10, 2019

By developing innovative technologies and taking a new approach, we believe that we can find alignment across various institutional and individual stakeholders with the means to leverage their networks and effectively push for progress. This work is unpaid, as with any other startup at the pre-seed stage. We’re off to the races!

America 60

America Technical Review Advisory Board Due Diligence 60

Feld Thoughts

JULY 29, 2011

Finance Friday’s gets off the ground with today’s post by introducing you to an imaginary startup, the entrepreneurs that we’ll being following throughout the series, and their first challenges: splitting up the founders’ equity and addressing the case where one of the founders provides the initial seed capital for the business.

Equity 137

Equity Finance Pre-Money Valuation Denver 137

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

The first post described how China built a science and technology infrastructure to support advanced weapons systems development. This post is about the rise of Chinese venture capital and how it helped build the countries entrepreneurial ecosystem. This helped the startups qualify for funding from banks and venture capital firms.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 271

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

This notion of founder/market fit is incredibly important for pre-product companies who are out raising seed capital or pre-seed (aka genesis rounds) — both of which we invest in. But there’s also a great deal of importance placed on another, more common idea: Product/Market Fit. (If and, “Is this a good market?”.

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Product Startup Early Stage Seed Capital 120

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

A few weeks ago, we launched two startup pitch deck templates for raising seed capital — part of NextView’s platform of exclusive startup resources. The “what” and “how” are still being developed, though you will obviously include some of those details in the deck. Not so fast.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Seed Stage Boston Startup 120

Genuine VC

MARCH 24, 2014

A couple years ago, my partner Lee penned a blog post about the milestone benchmarks for startups raising a Series A round of financing. The four winning strategies for startups to go from Seed to A are: Build Scale/Momentum. Craft a Small-Scale Machine.

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Seed Capital Metrics Cofounder Revenue 212

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

billion 2013 figure) have been massive financings at Honest Company ($70mm), JustFab ($85mm), ZipRecruiter ($63mm) and lord only knows how much SnapChat has actually accumulated. Over the past 4 years LA’s tech fundings have growing at a 30% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) which is > 4 times the US average VC CAGR (7%).

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Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Once a startup has raised seed capital, plenty of theories and advice exist on how to successfully raise a Series A. Recently, we looked at our own portfolio at NextView Ventures to dig a little deeper on how startups actually raise that next round of financing. They are: 1. Build Audience Momentum.

Syndicate 333

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Startup 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

The first post described how China built a science and technology infrastructure to support advanced weapons systems development. This post is about the rise of Chinese venture capital and how it helped build the countries entrepreneurial ecosystem. This helped the startups qualify for funding from banks and venture capital firms.

Venture Capital 163

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 163

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

A company that can successfully raise money in an ICO may never need venture capital again. Most of those companies will still require seed capital to assemble their team and fund a year or two of initial development and experiments. In short, token sales allow early stage companies to skip the series B round and beyond.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

A company that can successfully raise money in an ICO may never need venture capital again. Most of those companies will still require seed capital to assemble their team and fund a year or two of initial development and experiments. In short, token sales allow early stage companies to skip the series B round and beyond.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Procuring venture capital funding or business angels who put up with seed capital or expansion capital can be helpful and exciting. As an entrepreneur, you should have a handle on how much resource (in terms of money, people and time) you can expend on developing the product and how it would impact profitability.

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Vietnam Venture Capital Seed Capital Exit Strategy 171

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 12, 2011

When we were last with Dick and Jane on Finance Fridays, our fearless entrepreneurs were figuring out how to split up their founders equity and account for an investment from Jane. Tie each round of funding to a set of key milestones in the development of your product/business. as a C-Corp in Delaware.

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Balance Sheet Forecast Cap Table Early Stage 136

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. Switching from venture capital to startup founder required a different mindset, Ajay said: All day in a VC firm, you’re saying ‘no’. Steven : Nope, hubris.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. Switching from venture capital to startup founder required a different mindset, Ajay said: All day in a VC firm, you’re saying ‘no’. Steven : Nope, hubris.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 26, 2012

If your business is beyond the seed capital stage, there’s still good news for you. This increase in seed/startup stage and first sequence investing is promising, and this renewed interest in seed and startup financing is an encouraging development for our nation’s entrepreneurs,” he says.

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New Hampshire Early Stage Seed Capital Angel Investor 120

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Here’s an overview: Mitch Kapor: Kapor is founding partner of Kapor Capital , a firm that invests in seed and early stage startups. Kapor is the original designer of Lotus 1-2-3 and former CEO of Lotus Development. He also sits on the board of the Mozilla Foundation and created Second Life.

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Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

Business Plan Blog

DECEMBER 10, 2013

When raising pre-seed capital from friends, family, and founders (FFF) you’ll want to consider the milestones that Angel investors care about and be sure to raise enough capital to reach those milestones. Below are the milestones that you will need to achieve in order to attract seed investment from Angels: Business Plan.

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Angel Investor Intellectual Property Seed Capital Advisory Board 55

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

US-based seed VCs rarely invest outside of the country (500 Startups is one exception) leaving a potential gap in the market for folks with international expertise. Instead of doing increasing financings every 12-18 months, what if a company took a smaller amount of money, went back to their investors infrequently and got to profitability.

Syndicate 99

Syndicate Syndication South America Seed Stage 99

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Contrary to popular opinion I actually believe crowd-funding is best used after seed capital or venture capital. The reality is you must be great at HR, PR, finance AND product. It super charges a business that is closer to product delivery. ” Many CEOs act like VPs of product or CFOs. It’s a continual process.

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PR Venture Capital Hiring Seed Capital 319

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

Seed Funding 3. Mezzanine Financing Most companies that raise equity capital and are eventually acquired or go public receive multiple rounds of financing first. No right or wrong answer here, but if this is your vision then it's important to consider when negotiating deal terms on earlier stage financing rounds.

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Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

Feld Thoughts

JULY 14, 2015

A company raises $1m of seed money from angels in a convertible note with a $6m cap. Assuming equity is raised at or above that cap, the total dilution, before the new money, is 16.6% (equivalent to an equity financing of $1m at a $6m post money valuation. And developing a reputation for recapping seed rounds is, in my book, silly.

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Recapitalization Pre-Money Valuation Post-Money Valuation Angel Investor 70

Business Plan Blog

JANUARY 2, 2014

In September of this year, the SEC voted to overturn the ban on “general solicitation” that made it illegal for companies to publicly advertise that they are raising capital. As this funding vehicle develops, experts anticipate that many of the best crowdfunding rounds of investment will be “led” by angel groups or seed stage funds.

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Angel Groups Accredited Investor Angel Investor Due Diligence 51

The Startup Lawyer

OCTOBER 28, 2010

If someone wants you to help your startup get seed capital only if they get a cut, you need to run far away. You may think raising capital will take up an obscene amount of time at your startup (it does) and/or you don’t know any investors (you probably don’t), but your startup can not outsource or delegate this task.

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Finder Private Placement SEC Seed Capital 72

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

In that presentation, I said that Seed is not the first round of financing any more and that K9’s investments were mostly “pre-seed”. As it happens almost every few years there was a new normal developing. A re-jiggering of deal stages and sizes had begun in 2013.

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Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 25, 2021

So, I was really interested in programming, design development, but I didn't realize the kind of business aspect for a very, very long time. I think that's actually an incredible positive development. We had to raise some seed capital. I thought these were just websites built by some amateur hobbyists.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Turkey Los Angeles California 60

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 20, 2019

And unlike other fintech companies that are primarily equity-financed, we raise capital by offering a best in class savings product to consumers (a 1 month renewable CD that pays 6% APY), which in turn allows us to meet our short term capital needs required for loan origination. 12- Raising $500,000 in pre-seed capital.

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Papua New Guinea Hawaii Advisory Board Churn Rate 64

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Tweet View Comments Sarah Lacy Feb 19, 2010 Pepperdine has a new study out that attempts to shed some light on the clubby, shadowy world of private finance. Researchers polled experts in lending, mezzanine capital, private equity, venture capital and private businesses themselves. Think Again. Translation?

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

what are the most crucial steps to be taken by a new tech startup when outsourcing major part of the tech to IT firms or outsourcing “product development” eg new social media website project? Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing. The way I do it.

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Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44