YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. Most early stage startups tend to do well in this area because entrepreneurs generally launch their startups believing they have a great product idea. What does this mean for their early stage investors?

Framework 113

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 113

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 27, 2022

Every startup needs financing in order to get off the ground, but maintaining a stream of income is also crucial for staying in business. While you don’t have to be a financial professional, understanding the basics of business finance is still important for tracking your budgets and overall financial performance. Project planning.

Startup 109

Startup Australia Web Development Forecast 109

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Hopefully, by bringing on strong partners early, you will get great advice and support to minimize your overall dilution down the road. They find weak pre-seed investors or angels who are almost predatory in their early stage pricing and add no value. should be avoided. Experienced founders: Consumer.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Eric Friedman

JULY 19, 2019

Many early stage investors look for financial models for 3+ years from founders to make an investment. I can’t remember an early stage team putting together a model that has been accurate for 3 years. In fact, for early stage companies you are usually wildly wrong.

Early Stage 114

Early Stage Startup Framework Revenue 114

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Set expectations accordingly. Solicit funds from friends and family.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 283

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Set expectations accordingly. Solicit funds from friends and family.

Product Development 177

Product Development Cost Developer Product 177

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

None of that can compare with being the CEO of a startup facing a rapidly diminishing bank account, your best engineer quitting, working until 10pm and rushing to the airport and catching a redeye for a “ Hail Mary ” close of a customer, with your board demanding you do it faster. How to Become a VC. Startups are hard. Does it Matter?

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review Startup 332

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Set expectations accordingly. Solicit funds from friends and family.

Intellectual Property 309

Intellectual Property Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 309

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Nevertheless, it’s an option that doesn’t cost you equity. Solicit funds from friends and family.

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 22, 2013

Crowdfunding, the new in-thing in micro-financing that’s taken the world by storm thanks to the likes of Kickstarter , takes a twist with new crowdfunding site CrowdIt. We think the business networking possibilities alone can transform crowdfunding into a true economic engine that is ready to jumpstart new enterprises of all kinds.”.

Networking 228

Networking Missouri Early Stage Cofounder 228

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

The functions of an early-stage board are pretty obvious and well understood: Providing introductions to customers, biz dev partners, recruits, the press, other investors, etc. And somebody who isn’t thinking necessarily thinking about how to maximize their ownership in your next round of financing. Experience.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As an early-stage VC I love this phase. what your product & engineering thought they cared about and you adapt your offering. We have well financed competitors whom despite competing with we respect deeply and when you see your competition launching in many markets it’s tempting to follow suit.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Chad is the CEO of thoughtbot, a consulting firm that makes web + mobile apps for early-stage startups. I shared a link to Code Climate with a number of CTOs/VPs of Engineering in my network, both inside and outside the NextView portfolio, just asking for their quick opinion. It’s indispensable.”

Software Review 191

Software Review Chad Ruby PHP 191

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Nevertheless, it’s an option that doesn’t cost you equity. Solicit funds from friends and family.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 120

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. Sustaining short-term losses is all predicated on ability to finance the losses through venture capital or other means.

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Gust

FEBRUARY 22, 2014

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, Gust’s long-term goal is to serve as the infrastructure platform for the entire global, early stage finance industry. Instead, it is our eight years of indefatigable relationship and customer building with large segments of the world’s early stage finance industry.

Belarus 107

Belarus Kazakhstan Portugal Accredited Investor 107

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

After seeing the process work so well for scientists and engineers in the NSF, we hypothesized that we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently. identify financing vehicles before you need them. identify financing vehicles before you need them.

Lean 269

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 269

YoungUpstarts

MAY 7, 2019

If followed, we believe it can help startup teams navigate the critical early stages of development – and avoid joining a majority of early stage companies that end up on the entrepreneurial scrap heap. Read on to discover why successfully traversing the Traction Gap is critical to early stage companies.

Cleveland 217

Cleveland Early Stage Framework Startup 217

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

There was a lot of consumer internet activity again…resurgence of things, but it was still mysterious, venture capital was still kind of closed, 1st time entrepreneurs had a lot of questions that were unanswered, and there was still some sort of hand waiving around all the financing stuff and so we took it on….”. That is a personality type.

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

What I love about my job is getting to see teams of super-early-stage companies develop ideas that while raw have potential to make an impact on the market. A great finance leader is on top of your numbers with such precision that you don’t have to worry about it. It literally can put you out of business.

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

Seed-stage compatible: Like traditional equity VC investors, Flexible VCs accomodate early-stage investment risk within their portfolios better than a traditional RBI funder. Early-stage: Cofounder with engineering/ product background from top-tier university or major technology company. Short track record.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

View from Seed

APRIL 21, 2015

On the heels of our research on HBS entrepreneurs , NextView’s Dimitri Dadiomov (HBS ’15) interviewed several top founders on the early stages of their companies. On Launching and Finding Early Traction. Talking to any engineer who was willing to try it out and give us feedback was very helpful.

Founder 120

Founder Las Vegas Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 25, 2023

3- Investing both time and finance Photo Credit: Jonathan Hussey The biggest thing for me is to understand what you're undertaking before you start. While platforms like Instagram offer a great starting point, the key to differentiation lies in the age-old strategy of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

eCommerce 133

eCommerce Omaha Entrepreneur SEO 133

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Growth like this, this early in a company’s lifecycle rarely happens. In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. You may know how much to pay in cash or equity for your new VP Engineering.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. Here’s the punchline: if you run your company as if you have closed a VC equity financing round even though you actually closed a convertible debt round, you’ll be in much better shape when it comes time to raise your Series A financing.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2018

It’s the engine that has powered companies including Amazon, Alibaba, and Google. As Hoffman has put it, if starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down, scaling is like “assembling that plane faster then strapping on and igniting a set of jet engines, while still building the wings.”

Lean 103

Lean Las Vegas Cofounder Startup 103

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 3, 2010

There's a thriving geek culture in Paris, and no lack of software development expertise, thanks to superior universities that produce superior engineers. OSEO validation in turn makes early-stage startups eligible for a variety of support services and funding options. But these barriers are showing some wear and tear.

France 163

France Technical Review Incubator Early Stage 163

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

I recently wrote a post on angel financing covering the topic of convertible notes but I realized I was thinking about the issue more from investor perspective and a very narrow topic of how to price the round. So if you’re casually reading and don’t really care about angel financing – abort now! It creeps people out.

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Ireland Technical Review Valuation 291

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

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. Ready to start simplifying?

PR 144

PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 144

Austin Startup

AUGUST 10, 2017

Although we were studying finance, we were always more interested in tech. Before graduating, I decided to forgo the finance path and instead dove into engineering and later sales and product management roles at VersaSuite (health IT) in Austin. But we never lost the finance bug. We were infatuated with tech.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Austin 48

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 19, 2010

Well, I have coached early stage entrepreneurs for a couple of years now - diligently, patiently - and have learned a few things. As you may know, 99% of the entrepreneurs who seek financing, get rejected. The first step is to develop some reference customers, something all early-stage startups should do.

Silicon Valley 114

Silicon Valley Technical Review Startup Early Stage 114

Version One Ventures

DECEMBER 14, 2016

This can set up a perfect storm if early-stage companies don’t manage their expectations and reality properly. Likewise, early-stage investors may not appreciate just how much follow-on support their portfolio companies will need. We expect that the financing scene in 2017 will look very similar to 2016.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Early Stage Portfolio Valuation 60

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Bottom line, early stage equity is very, very expensive. So at any point, if you are trying to raise money, and you are hearing from investors that you are too early and have too little validation, it may be a good thing. Then Liana Thompson pitched Trendy Loot , a very early stage deal site for low-end jewelry.

Valuation 119

Valuation Silicon Valley Pre-Money Valuation Bootstrapping 119

Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

Until you have product-market fit, hire builders: engineers, designers, and growth and product people. The anxiety is growing so intense that CB Insights is now charging $6,895 for its own “List of Early-Stage Tech Startups Running Out of Cash (Dying).” Honestly, we don’t know.”? Be trigger shy about hiring.

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 9, 2010

Jacqueline asked an important question: how do you mitigate your working capital challenges in an e-commerce company at the very early stages without raising financing? First, there are two primary aspects that have to be managed: inventory financing and customer acquisition costs.

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Malaysia India China 117

www.entrepreneur.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Entrepreneur Homepage Startups Starting a Business Home How-To Guides Startup Basics Business Ideas Business Planning Startup Financing Success Stories Home-Based Business Starting a Business Play Video How to Take a New Product from Just an Idea to a Business (Video). Financing Some Jobs Act Proposals Make Headway.

Sweat Equity 55

Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

I call it drip-financing. Most entrepreneurs have no choice but to avail of this sort of financing along with the mentoring and the contacts that could come with it (doesn't always come along, though). In 1M/1M, our preferred financing strategy is customers. Because customer financing equals revenue, not equity.

Cloud 115

Cloud Silicon Valley Incubator Finance 115