Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2017

Boards are fiduciaries to represent the interest of all shareholders — big and small — and this includes employees who bet with their careers and with reduced pay in order to have equity they hope will be valuable.

Cofounder 217

Cofounder Stock Options Equity Technical Review 217

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 19, 2013

What did I learn from nearly a decade of doing system integration projects at Accenture early in my career? That it is non-dilutive financing? Professional services = higher quality implementation. Your Best Eyes & Ears. Your most successful sales people are the people who are on the ground doing the implementations.

Technical Review 403

Technical Review Software Review Startup API 403

Up and Running

JULY 2, 2014

of our company in exchange for the $300K, and my business partner and I each diluted from 50% ownership down to 33.3% ownership and never dilute. When fundraising for a startup, all investors dilute as additional investors join in on the deal. The deal we made with him was he’d get 33.3%

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Angel Investor Due Diligence Dilution 118

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 4, 2014

Anybody who follows this blog knows that my mom was the most influential person on my entrepreneurial career. I have seen it first-hand in my VC career many, many times. I learned these lessons at a very young age and they etched permanently into my psyche. And, yes, it is politics at its purest. We sat down the three of us.

Founder 340

Founder Sacramento Cofounder Technical Review 340

View from Seed

AUGUST 17, 2021

But it’s getting harder and harder as I advance in this career, and I really need to keep reminding myself that it’s still day one. at exit due to dilution. It creates dilution, and investing in these rounds increases your effective post-money. It’s a gift to be in a market with massive change, so embrace it.

IRR 136

IRR Dilution Founder Portfolio 136

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2020

Every startup needs to start their funding search looking for grants, with no equity dilution, as well as contests and foundations. Visibility to startup job opportunities and career guidance. Other project and research reports in their library are a rich source of new ideas, if you are still looking for a place to start.

Arizona 310

Arizona Intellectual Property Accredited Investor Dividend 310

Up and Running

JULY 1, 2020

Throughout my 25-year career, I’ve written business plans or have been a part of teams developing plans for business expansions. Will marketing for the expansion dilute marketing of your brand or other products? Here are some best practices you can implement, that I have learned first-hand.

Business Plan 152

Business Plan Forecast Operations Dilution 152

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 6, 2020

In one stage of my own career, as an executive with a large corporation, I found myself almost totally occupied with managing personnel and organizational issues, including hiring and firing, which kept me away from the products and customers that I loved. With major investors, your equity and return is diluted and delayed.

Small Business 311

Small Business Small Business Administration SBA Equity 311

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 1, 2010

Hanging your hat on just one advantage that you can own completely is stronger than diluting your message across many advantages. Oh, and besides the catastrophic expense, what's the effect on your personal career? Don't dilute your message. And it's not just in face-to-face sales calls either. Obsessed with Quality.

Open Source 239

Open Source Dilution Software Developers Software Development 239

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 10, 2019

The research from Wasserman and others outlines the following top ten dilemmas that every founder needs to deal with sooner or later in their career as an entrepreneur: The make money or serve humanity dilemma. The right time to jump is a function of favorable career, personal, and market circumstances. The right time to start dilemma.

Hockey Stick 243

Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event Startup 243

thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

Should founders have anti-dilution rights? You would want to check and see if your shares can be diluted. Yes, you could be diluted from 10% down to 1% and there’s a number of reason why that could occur. Dilution should occur across the board. What is the equity I should expect (protected from dilution)?

Equity 62

Equity Employee Founder CTO Hire 62

The Next Web

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Startup is a Career Move : It may sound lofty, but a startup is your life’s work. It’ll fail because after year two, you’ll start to get antsy and want to move on with your career, and you’ll realize you never cared about the startup mission in the first place.

Cofounder 155

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 155

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 26, 2019

They need to know that helping is appreciated and beneficial to their career and performance feedback. People need coaching to weather setbacks and surprises which can dilute their confidence, and take away their ability to experience their full potential. Reward team members who take the time and effort to share.

Dilution 229

Dilution Agile Developer Demand 229

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

For most of my career, I’ve served startups and early-stage companies as an operating executive or advisor. So when founders lose focus, they dilute their power and effectiveness, which diffuses the force of their impact. But what do COOs actually do for startups? When should founders hire one? Based on what criteria?

Hiring 336

Hiring Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder 336

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2014

The research from Wasserman and others outlines the following top ten dilemmas that every Founder needs to deal with sooner or later in their career as an entrepreneur: The make money or serve humanity dilemma. The right time to jump is a function of favorable career, personal, and market circumstances. The right time to start dilemma.

Hockey Stick 268

Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 268

YoungUpstarts

MAY 31, 2016

The single biggest reason that the average company struggles or even fails is due to their lack of focus and dilution of their greatest resource, which are people. Any start-up or entrepreneur has already made the single most important decision of their careers, and that is to step outside the norm and take a chance on something greater.

Technical Review 100

Technical Review Leadership Early Stage Initial Public Offering 100

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Startups need to pose crucial questions: Which tasks are absolutely vital to our brand ethos, and which ones can be safely outsourced without diluting our unique value proposition? Distinguishing Task Priorities At the heart of cost-effective outsourcing for startups lies the ability to discern between essential and non-essential tasks.

Cost 139

Cost Startup Non-Compete Dilution 139

Occam's Razor

APRIL 15, 2019

There is no hope for your career (or emotional positivity). They dilute the analysis with non-facts. This, in turn, means that your demonstrated sophistication will open up new career options, for example becoming a business line leader or moving on to the strategy side of the house. You might think it would be the Attacker.

Leadership 79

Leadership Non-Compete Analytics Software Review 79

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2017

The research from Wasserman and others outlines the following top ten dilemmas that every founder needs to deal with sooner or later in their career as an entrepreneur: The make money or serve humanity dilemma. The right time to jump is a function of favorable career, personal, and market circumstances. The right time to start dilemma.

Hockey Stick 144

Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 144

Austin Startup

JUNE 30, 2017

For some, it’s about preparing for a successful career, including building a network that you can leverage for your career. in exchange for a price: usually 6–9% of equity, with (sometimes) heavy anti-dilution rights, and pro-rata rights. to help sort out who the good candidates are from the bad. Those are the pragmatists.

Curation 48

Curation Startup Cofounder Equity 48

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2013

The research from Wasserman and others outlines the following top ten dilemmas that every Founder needs to deal with sooner or later in their career as an entrepreneur: The make money or serve humanity dilemma. The right time to jump is a function of favorable career, personal, and market circumstances. The right time to start dilemma.

Founder 245

Founder Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event 245

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

Now you’ve got to convince your peer group to quit their respectable jobs and career arcs and join you. Dilution / valuation. I hate when companies publish too much information about the total stock option allocations, the company valuations, the dilution faced in every round, etc. But so far this is the easy bit.

Startup 417

Startup Dilution San Diego Stock Options 417

Up and Running

MARCH 19, 2015

Students whose plans involve business careers are not interested in abstract rules, referencing standards, confusing legal language, and other materials presented in those classes. Instead of writing long sentences that dilute the information, aim for shorter ones that contain more essence in fewer words. Know your audience.

Email 60

Email Dilution Business Plan Audience 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2016

Every startup needs to start their funding search looking for grants, with no equity dilution, as well as contests and foundations. Visibility to startup job opportunities and career guidance. Other project and research reports in their library are a rich source of new ideas, if you are still looking for a place to start.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Accredited Investor Entrepreneur Incubator 120

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 12, 2017

You reached a conclusion that this ought to be better for you personally as a founder even though you will suffer some dilution of ownership and authority. You got some feedback from the market or investors that was favorable. You’ve taken the baby steps.

Term Sheet 48

Term Sheet Technical Review Due Diligence Merger 48

99u.com

DECEMBER 22, 2012

Assuming no dilution (which is not a good assumption), this means you need to sell for $200 million. If tenths of a percent of options for an advisor causes too much dilution, then youve failed anyway. Career Development. A large turkey walking on the ground is more likely to show up on the radar than an offer like that.

Turkey 40

Turkey Dilution Portfolio Exit Strategy 40

Haystack

JULY 8, 2018

While folks will feel sympathy for line employees at startups who don’t make any gains in a sale, no one will feel sorry for early-stage investors who get washed out.

Early Stage 95

Early Stage Dilution Private Equity Common Stock 95

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 15, 2016

Social benefit companies also have access to impact investors which can provide 6 & 7 figure zero-dilution grants, which are an early stage secret weapon. HW: If you were just starting your career in tech, would SF still be where you chose to settle? I thought you said the questions were going to be easy Hunter?

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Startup Cofounder SMS 48

Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 11, 2023

But what the dilution, if you bring it down to it that even creator entertainers and educators have in common is it's this human element. So it seemed like that just kind of teed it up for us. So talk a little bit about the primary point you were trying to get across in that article.

B2B 80

B2B Marketing B2C Community 80

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

What works for first-time customers might have less of an effect on (and be diluted by) people who are returning to buy again. Tim Stewart discusses some testing problems he’s encountered in his career: “Also common is a device split, sometimes with potentially valuable insight being dismissed because of prior accepted ‘knowledge.’

Chad 112

Chad Mobile Technical Review Aggregator 112

keen.io

FEBRUARY 5, 2013

If the company is pre-funding or only has a small friends-and-family seed round, then the numbers should go up from there, based on expected dilution and greater risk.” Assumption: The pre-dilution amount prior to Series A should be approximately double the amount in this post-Series-A chart. Result: A fair offer would be between.8

Salary 50

Salary Equity Startup San Francisco 50

The Next Web

JANUARY 31, 2014

But if it’s you, your product or your business that’s on the receiving end, it can feel like you’re on a runaway train careering toward the edge of a cliff. Admitting your failings in plain English – not corporate speak – will go a long way to help dilute the situation. The way in which you say sorry matters.

Social Media 143

Social Media Media New Zealand Dilution 143

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 28, 2013

However, in this moment, I think one''s career in venture capital depends on changing your perspective. The classes got too big and quality was diluted because, by PG''s own admission, YC " grew too fast.". Well, maybe he should do that. Stop--AND think. That''s less than 10%.

Venture Capital 152

Venture Capital Cofounder IRR Dilution 152

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 7, 2020

Nearly every business uses email marketing services, but selling to ‘every’ business will dilute your message. You may be able to find a talented freelancer who is just starting their career. Say you are selling email marketing services. As the saying goes, “a dog that chooses two rabbits catches neither.”.

B2C 78

B2C B2B Architecture Dilution 78

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

Service as a bridge to a product business - One of the best ways for young startups to finance their business without any dilution is what I call “customer financing,&# which is mostly only possible in businesses that target businesses rather than consumers. There are at least two types of tech services businesses in my mind: 1.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley IP Dividend Finance 332

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 14, 2015

My sincere hope is that they’ll gain the empathy they need to be great entrepreneurs and the practical experience to have good judgment when they make tough calls later in their careers. They give up balance, which leads to dilution of focus, in favor of an “all in” and committed attack. Market and Timing Matter Most.

Entrepreneur 100

Entrepreneur Dilution Chicago Partner 100

Haystack

AUGUST 18, 2019

When more capital is chasing the same set, entry prices go up and returns are likely to go down. On this dimension, most seed funds can’t even compete on network, brand, or the cost of capital.

Seed Stage 108

Seed Stage Cap Table Early Stage Malaysia 108