Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 20, 2011

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Trusted partners quit, personal friends become enemies, and staff management becomes a huge burden. Stretch” goals in early-stage are not advised.

Advisory Board 232

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 232

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

I think you have to listen to the queue’s.” “…if you look at a lot of the early stage investors, whether it be Union Square Ventures or First Round or Jeff Clavier at Softtech or Dave McClure – we want to try the product, we want to experience the product, we want to get a sense of how the entrepreneur is thinking about it.

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

Transformify

SEPTEMBER 12, 2017

Post Brexit, many companies in the UK consider distributed teams overseas as an alternative to the shrinking talent pool and high recruitment costs in Britain. Commenced in July 2017, The Youth Enterprise Development Fund provides start-up loans to help young entrepreneurs fund their businesses at a very early stage.

Africa 75

Africa Benin Seychelles Nigeria 75

Gust

DECEMBER 22, 2011

Most of our early-stage startup clients fit this description. Copyright is the right to control reproduction and distribution of original works of authorship fixed in tangible forms of expression. This is often referred to in the creative community as a “ work-for-hire agreement.”.

Intellectual Property 149

Intellectual Property Technical Review Software Review IP 149

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

Who should you hire? Let’s start out with the basic functions of a tech company: 1) Engineering 2) Marketing 3) Sales 4) Business development 5) PR 6) Design 7) Product Management 8) HR 9) Operations 10) Finance Ok, that's just overwhelming. Getting people to join your company is a key goal of early PR.

PR 144

PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 144

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2010

There are unknowns at every turn, leading product development, attracting customers, managing cash, and dealing with human resources and office politics. Trusted partners quit, personal friends become enemies, and staff management becomes a huge burden. Stretch” goals in early-stage are not advised.

Advisory Board 125

Advisory Board Startup Forecast Early Stage 125

David Teten

JULY 25, 2017

We have lower AUM, therefore lower management fees. We have insight on the competencies of our companies’ personnel, and who is hiring or shrinking. We also have a better known brand than some of our early stage companies, so we can leverage that to help source talent. We use Asana internally at HOF.

Portfolio 60

Portfolio Technical Review Private Equity Database 60

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

In 2019, we’ll be doubling down on this effort as we are hiring a GM for our CXO Advisory Board & Network ( job description here ). While developers can now spin up applications faster than ever before, one of the downsides is the complexity of managing these distributed applications and technologies.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Berkonomics

JUNE 10, 2021

If sudden demand for a product takes management by surprise, having solved these key issues will remove the key barrier to ramping production and taking advantage of the opportunity. How about early-stage companies with unique problems? Hiring key talent should be top of the list.

Early Stage 62

Early Stage Equity Distribution Revenue 62

Rob Go

JANUARY 12, 2015

As an early stage investor, should you pay up for team or traction? When you are thinking about joining an early stage company, how should you be evaluating the risk of the overall company? How should you be weighing the presence of a great founding team vs. early signs of traction? The Case for Traction.

B2B 28

B2B Early Stage Distribution Software Review 28

Scalable Startup

JANUARY 15, 2015

I’ve found the best way to do this is to manage the projects daily. Hire them 8 hours at a time and review daily by skype, g hangout. Hire them 8 hours at a time and review daily by skype, g hangout. I’ve been acting as project manager/dev manager. Work directly with engineers, no company involved.

Offshore 20

Offshore Web Development Europe Web 20

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 6, 2022

Steve Hoffman (06:08): If you don't get the right people on board, you know, hire them really hard to succeed, marketing, getting your name out. They don't like managing people. That is the role of the CEO in an early stage company. John Jantsch (12:39): So I know in the book you talk a lot about managing people.

San Francisco 97

San Francisco Technical Review Incubator Silicon Valley 97

View from Seed

JANUARY 13, 2015

When you are thinking about joining an early stage company, how should you be evaluating the risk of the overall company? How should you be weighing the presence of a great founding team versus early signs of traction? Great teams fail to build a product and get early distribution all the time.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage B2B Distribution Early Stage 120

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

While a flood of new VCs came into existence during the late 90’s internet boom, many had difficulty raising new funds after the crashes of 2000-2001 and 2008 , and as a result significantly fewer fund managers exist now compared to a decade ago. and no, we didn’t. but the food was awesome, & the PR wasn’t bad either).

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

The best case I’ve seen is our portfolio company Osmo who had already built the product but used crowd-funding to handle inventory management, supply-chain logistics and perfecting the final version of the product. If you haven’t yet raised an A-round my recommendation would be that you not yet hire a big, well-known PR firm.

PR 319

PR Venture Capital Hiring Seed Capital 319

The Next Web

JANUARY 26, 2014

He mentors young startups at Singapore Management University and True Incube Thailand , a 500 Startups Partner. If a big corporation is pushing a new product, you might expect them to take out TV ads, online ads, maybe hire a PR agency and set up big distribution partnerships. Why does it work? Why do I know this?

Thailand 167

Thailand Social Network PPC Singapore 167

K9 Ventures

APRIL 9, 2014

Most of these funds are <$100M, with the majority of them being clustered around the $40M mark (that’s the point where the fund economics start to work in terms of management fee and ability to take a meaningful stake in portfolio companies). Top engineering talent today has a bimodal distribution.

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

www.geekwire.com

JULY 10, 2012

According to the Dow Jones research, 43 early-stage funds raised $3.1 Madrona’s new $300 million fund — while the largest in the firm’s history — certainly qualifies in the early-stage group. Manager, Test Engineering (Performance Team). billion during the first half of the year, up from $1.3

Venture Capital 42

Venture Capital Seattle Cofounder Software Engineering 42

www.instigatorblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Changing Equity Structures for Early Startup Employees Tweet Recently someone asked me for advice on how much equity they should give to their early employees. His company had just closed an early round of funding and he wanted to cement the employee relationships. But I also told him that I though the numbers were wrong. .&#

Equity 41

Equity Employee Startup Vesting 41

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

The path I went down after a few years was to hire more process driven people and devolved more daily operational ownership to people running individual functions such as product management, sales management, finance, etc. Unwillingness to devolve power is the bane of many management teams at startup companies.

Non-Compete 296

Non-Compete Sales Hiring France 296

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

The second is that the retailers were constrained by their high costs of local real estate and service staff relative to the costs of centralized warehouses where goods could be stacked high, sorted by robots, managed by RFIDs and then shipped via overnight to eager, cost-conscious customers across the US.

Technical Review 380

Technical Review Software Review Cofounder CTO Hire 380

Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2010

The customary vesting model has founders vest their stock over 4-years , and when the founding CEO gets in over their head the VC’s bring in professional management. The fallacy is believing that a founders value is evenly distributed over four years. They also know that most founding CEO’s don’t scale past the early stage.

Vesting 251

Vesting Liquidity Event Venture Capital Founder Vesting 251

The Next Web

DECEMBER 4, 2013

Traditional office working is losing ground as the “best way” to work, and managers supporting it are either of a generation where using social technologies is seen as lazy or timewasting, or they have the wrong team – i.e. a team that requires intense scrutiny to keep it working. . scaling distributed teams. management styles.

Management 152

Management SCRUM CTO Hire Distribution 152

Up and Running

JUNE 12, 2015

This week, we discuss the Bplans article, 12 Signs You Need to Hire a Manager. Listen: Show notes: 12 Signs You Need to Hire a Manager – (:31). QUESTION: Do you have a story about adding a manager to your team? QUESTION: Do you have a story about adding a manager to your team? Peter: I see.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Management Startup Hiring 60

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

I strongly believe that the first few hires of a startup should belong to the growth department, whether they’re marketers, community managers, or salespeople (selling your product is the best way to learn how to improve it). Jun-15: Community Manager (growth team). 1x hacker in charge of product/development.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Lightspeed Venture Partners

APRIL 13, 2015

As new distribution and pricing models emerge, and a younger workforce looks for modern software tools even in the most old school industries, some of the hitherto untapped areas are becoming ripe for SaaS to penetrate. What are the areas that haven’t seen a modern piece of software in years?

Sales Cycle 60

Sales Cycle Government Demand Distribution 60

The Equity Kicker

FEBRUARY 24, 2014

Why I have taken on this challenge now, at this moment in time, really boils down to 3 reasons; The VC model is changing and I believe that the approach that we are taking at Forward Partners will become the future of early stage tech investment. I’ve hired and built great teams. I constantly worried about money.

Partner 91

Partner Early Stage Business Model HTML 91

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. If your don’t have enough employees on the payroll, hire relatives, friends, or part-timers and train them. You’ll never have to do it again.) Trade Show Post Mortem Evaluate the experience. What didn’t?

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The people who are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup are earlyvangelists. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone How to Usability Test your Site for Free The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the tim.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

However, in private markets, there is more room to optimize across all 11 steps of the investing process: firm management , marketing, fundraising , origination , manage relationships, due diligence, negotiation, monitoring, portfolio acceleration , reporting, and. 1) Manage the firm . This is harder than it sounds.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US. But the larger funds usually have lower returns because they are often investing bigger dollars at later stages with less risk and therefore lower returns. It led to hiring Eric Schmidt. It is changing.

LP 374

LP Later Stage IRR Term Sheet 374

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. After that there’s a discussion of how the product will reach the customer and the potential distribution channel. None of mine did.)

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

To replace them, employers spend $11,500 average per healthcare employee acquisition cost (20% of the annualized salary plus hiring incentives is considered customary for acquisition cost). Distribution Channel for Product Companies. why not become a retailer of the same basket of products that he wants to distribute?

India 115

India Silicon Valley Bootstrapping Incubator 115

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

The single most important factor to raising capital for any tech startup is the management team. This is true for early stage funding as well as venture capital funding. Don’t hire people with skills and qualifications similar to yours. Hire based on functionality and avoid having too many C’s.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Agile VC

JULY 11, 2012

How do you deal with a severely uneven distribution of investment success between individuals or groups of partners? While this is a key driver to the downfall of great VC firms, there are also small handful of examples of firms that have managed generational succession sometimes many times over.

Silicon Valley 240

Silicon Valley Carried Interest Cofounder Boston 240

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

SolidWorks 2: The best VAR management program in the world? SolidWorks 3: The best VAR management program in the world? And this is before you factor in the failure rate (the percentage of sales people hired that don’t become productive). It is not too surprising that VCs are not aggressively pursuing these kinds of businesses.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103