View from Seed

OCTOBER 21, 2014

As the seed-stage startup fundraise process has received more transparency in recent years, ranging from published advice on how to raise seed capital to increased availability through AngelList, Funders Club, and various accelerator programs, I’ve noticed another trend emerging. Lower-Than-Market Value.

Valuation 336

Valuation Founder Seed Stage Angel Investor 336

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. We’re staring to get the hang of how to divide the show up into talking about deals but also talking about issues for entrepreneurs during funding.

Stealth 285

Stealth SEC Advertising Accredited Investor 285

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

Springboard aims to help early stage startups. The program offers seed capital, office space, and "most importantly - that magical ingredient of 'smart-community' with mentors and other entrepreneurs." It's a 13-week program, based at Cambridge University's ideaSpace.

Early Stage 113

Early Stage Programming Seed Capital Incubator 113

VC Cafe

JULY 5, 2010

A s venture funds struggle to raise money in Israel, seed capital, one of the earliest and riskiest stages of investment, is becoming harder and harder to secure. based Angel capital with early stage technology companies in Israel, and do so in a way that substantially mitigates the risk of seed stage investing.

Technical Review 106

Technical Review Software Review Seed Stage 106

crowdSPRING Blog

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

Good perspective fon how long it takes for entrepreneur to know if their idea might succeed – crowdspring.co/1cNRjk2. Books that Shape Common Early Stage (Startup) Culture – crowdspring.co/1fLefAN. The Founders Guide to Surviving Startup Life – crowdspring.co/1eYfYis. 1gBDzfA. – crowdspring.co/1fkwYB1.

Social Media 95

Social Media Small Business Design Media 95

The Next Web

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Andrew is the co-founder and CTO of Parse.ly , a technology startup that provides big data insights to the web’s best publishers. He wrote: When startups die, the official cause of death is always either running out of money or a critical founder bailing. Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Andrew Montalenti.

Cofounder 155

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 155

View from Seed

DECEMBER 1, 2015

The NextView podcast Traction explores the clever, creative, and atypical things entrepreneurs do to make initial progress against the odds. Past episodes include stories from founders of LinkedIn , DraftKings , General Assembly , Mattermark , Duck Duck Go , InsightSquared , and more. Raising seed capital. (In

Seed Capital 120

Seed Capital Early Stage Startup Channel 120

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

I still wanted K9 to be the first institutional money in a company and work with “frighteningly early-stage” companies. So in this post, I present the epilogue to The New Venture Landscape that highlights my take on what I think the venture landscape looks like today and what the implications are for founders, for GPs and for LPs.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

View from Seed

DECEMBER 10, 2014

He is currently a second year student at Harvard Business School and will be focused on supporting the early-stage startup community in Boston and its schools. This is his first post to The View From Seed. And done well, local seed capital can be the catalyst for the new Harvard engineering campus in Allston.

Boston 328

Boston Seed Stage San Francisco Startup 328

Rob Go

MAY 14, 2012

I also tend to be attracted to founders who do are also contrarian. But it’s much easier to identify authentic entrepreneurs going after non-obvious opportunities. And on balance, I think those types of businesses have a deeper technical component, and tend to lend themselves a bit more to founders that are more experienced.

Technical Review 74

Technical Review Seed Capital Early Stage PR 74

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

I had witnessed a number of early-stage tech startups in LA raise seed capital from the Bay Area and relocate. Sam is an uber-networker, savvy, helpful, product-oriented leader who had a great eye for young entrepreneurs and a passion about helping them. So we went for it. We announced Fund I in 2011.

Early Stage 290

Early Stage Venture Capital Los Angeles Coder 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

For many entrepreneurs “raising money” has replaced “building a sustainable business” as their goal. Entrepreneurs need to think about 1) when to raise money, 2) why to raise money and 3) who to take money from, 4) the consequences of raising money. Not all that glitters is gold. William Shakespeare. That’s a big mistake.

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

But theres no denying the level of support for entrepreneurs that we enjoy. The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. They take common stock, not preferred, a fact that the entrepreneurs mentioned to me many times.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 12, 2016

by Anand Srinivasan, founder of LeadJoint.com. What stops a majority from moving ahead to the execution stage is funding. Most businesses – online or offline, need seed capital to get established and without access to these funds, launching a business can seem like an improbable dream.

Cofounder 100

Cofounder Sweat Equity Startup Seed Capital 100

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

For many entrepreneurs “raising money” has replaced “building a sustainable business” as their goal. Entrepreneurs need to think about 1) when to raise money, 2) why to raise money and 3) who to take money from, 4) the consequences of raising money. Not all that glitters is gold. William Shakespeare. That’s a big mistake.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

Gust

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

The most successful serial entrepreneurs in the world may found three or four, perhaps even eight or ten venture-backed startups over the course of their careers. It should therefore come as no surprise that an asymmetry of information exists, mostly gleaned from experience, between founders and investors in a venture financing deal.

Finance 178

Finance Term Sheet Preferred Stock Bridge Financing 178

View from Seed

OCTOBER 22, 2015

One of the things we frequently discuss with founders is how to interpret and manage their dialogue with VCs when raising capital. We’ve written before on how to research partners , how to pitch the right investor at a given firm, and how to raise seed capital , generally speaking.

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Due Diligence Seed Stage Seed Capital 120

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

This dynamic births serial entrepreneurs and motivates angels and venture capitalists to pull their friends into investment deals. For the first-time entrepreneur or founder looking for seed stage funding, this circle can be especially difficult to penetrate.

Angel Investor 80

Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

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. Feeling overwhelmed, Dick emailed his friend Josh, the CEO of an early-stage startup in Boulder, to see how they figured out all of this stuff.

Balance Sheet 136

Balance Sheet Forecast Cap Table Early Stage 136

Feld Thoughts

JULY 14, 2015

But instead of adding it on to the note or doing an equity round with a price, which could still be an early stage price but below the cap, they make the argument that since the company couldn’t raise a round, the company is worthless. So the new investment gets 60%, the founders get 39.9%, and the $1m of seed money gets 0.1%.

Recapitalization 70

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

Software By Rob

JANUARY 8, 2019

Hundreds and hundreds of tweets, re-tweets, likes, Hacker News upvotes, email responses…it was immediately obvious that there is pent up demand for this kind of alternative early-stage startup funding. In general I'm eager to see people explore new ways of supporting entrepreneurs. 2: We Focus on Early Stage SaaS.

Early Stage 46

Early Stage Valuation Seed Capital Revenue 46

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

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

When seeking equity investments, the source of capital is, for the most part, tied to the stage of capital being raised. You see, equity capital is raised in stages or rounds. The five main stages include the following: 1. Pre-Seed Funding 2. Seed Funding 3.

Equity 88

Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

Scott Edward Walker

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

I’ve been helping entrepreneurs raise capital as a securities lawyer for 17+ years, and there are certain fundamental mistakes that I’ve seen entrepreneurs repeatedly make. Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to share three basic tips for entrepreneurs in connection with raising capital. How is this done?

Preferred Stock 45

Preferred Stock Angel Investor Entrepreneur Common Stock 45

Gust

OCTOBER 5, 2011

Last week , we gave some attention to the “why” behind convertible note financing for early stage startups. In most cases, an early stage startup will raise seed capital from more than one investor. In this installment, I’ll dig into the “how” by dissecting an example term sheet based on a real deal.

Finance 79

Finance Preferred Stock Term Sheet Early Stage 79

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Been there Done that This is very depressing for all future founders, or even currently early stage founders. link] valto This will be very interesting to see, if entrepreneurs as “investors” will be different than “traditional investors”. It’s a small sign, but still a sign. Printed from: [.] Translation?

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 16, 2012

At their heart, seed accelerators are defined length programs (usually 3 months) where early stage startups are provided seed capital, mentorship, co-working space (though not always) and other services in the hope of removing the barriers to startup success… or failure.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Australia Cofounder San Francisco 118

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Errol Arkilic , former program director for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps), now founder of M34 Capital. Venk Shukla , president TiE Silicon Valley and general partner, Monta Vista Capital.

Government 120

Government Channel Southern California Lean 120

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

If you’re an Entrepreneur, you can do it from any place in the world. How important is education when I know I want to be an entrepreneur? Whats is the best way to find a co-founder for your startup? I’m part of an early startup made up of four friends, we’re all motivated and really dedicated to our startup.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Austin Startup

APRIL 23, 2010

The company was founded with seed capital from Austin Ventures. The amount of capital committed is described as “in the low millions,&# and the only reason it is that substantial is because the company acquired some intellectual property from other companies (including FiveRuns) to help accelerate the development of the product.

Intellectual Property 79

Intellectual Property Austin Early Stage Agile 79

thebarefootvc

JULY 10, 2010

“Our country should strive to attract the most talented and highly skilled entrepreneurs,” Lugar says. Under the proposal, a foreign-born entrepreneur who has secured at least $250,000 in funding from qualified U.S. based start-ups. investors would be permitted to stay for two years.

Startup 45

Startup Incubator Seed Capital Venture Capital 45