Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

” Sean is somebody widely respected in Silicon Valley (although he now lives in SoCal) for having helped many early-stage companies go through major growth periods by quantitatively testing features with audiences to help diagnose what led to growth. I recommend hiring or appointing a growth hacker.”

Technical Review 384

Technical Review Hockey Stick SEM Channel 384

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2010

It meant that the management teams hadn’t figured out a product / market fit for their own businesses. They often involve big hugs on stage. But to be clear the overwhelming majority of deals involve one company driving the cultural integration, establishment of uniform processes, hiring / firing decisions, etc.

Merger 276

Merger Technical Review Early Stage Dilution 276

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies. ” So I did want any rational person who wants to improve does – I hired a coach. We focused together on improving our sales methodology, our training and our comp plans through a larger than life ex country manager from PTC named Kai Krickel.

Sales 382

Sales Startup Technical Review Matching 382

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

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. For a well-funded seed company I have controversially recommended hiring a great office manager that doubles as an administrative assistant.

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2013

If you’re at a startup and new to sales & sales people you might want to read my basic primers: Why hiring seasoned reps at a startup might not work. Or thinking about how much capital you have and therefore how many people you can hire – you rigorously prioritize. Managing C deals is called “nurturing.”

Customer 324

Customer PR Marketing Technical Review 324

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2010

As your company develops multiple offices, hires a larger number of sales people or increases product complexity over time this kind of tacit knowledge doesn’t scale. The new hires that you pick up will use your same sales decks created by marketing but will have less impact and you often don’t realize it’s happening.

Sales 286

Sales PR Forecast Technical Review 286

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

My internal compass has always steered me strongly toward the belief that founders who can scale with their startup companies are better to back that founders who eventually need to hire a CEO. The truth is I have never enjoyed running team meetings, managing processes & procedures and deciding HR policies, promotions and org structures.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies. So I did want any rational person who wants to improve does – I hired a coach. Back then it was a larger than life ex country manager from PTC named Kai Krickel. Most technology startups seem to be funded by product people or business people.

Sales 316

Sales Technical Review Matching Hiring 316

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

I know he’s smart but you wouldn’t hire a Javascript developer to do your database design – would you? They want to lock in future clients at an early stage. So I tell you this because if you build a strong relationship with an early-stage VC they can be a great source to help you with your funding.

Southern California 318

Southern California Silicon Valley IP Stock Options 318

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

You Manage What you Measure. One of the things I discuss the most with the portfolio companies I’m involved with is that “you manage what you measure.”. Or they go in the opposite direction and spend too much time capturing & measuring data that isn’t used to make management decisions. On measurement.

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

Over funding often produces bad behavior in early-stage companies. You hire people too fast, you over build your products, you try to force market adoption and you do PR blitzes before your product is really ready for prime time. I was management. You can’t get 5 years into one. What did he know? He was tech.

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Bulgaria Lean 374

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 1, 2009

I know this is unconventional thinking but if you want to understand more I cover my rationale on this post about The Most Common Early Stage Startup Mistakes and again in this post covering how to implement startup prenuptials. You might be great at networking and leading but bad at planning and managing. Take your inventory.

Hiring 289

Hiring Cofounder Dilution Startup 289

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

Quick caveats: having fewer investors (3-5) is better than many investors (10-15) and PLEASE make sure you hire a great lawyer who has experience in doing start-ups to avoid pitfalls that will make VC harder down the line. Make sure these people understand the nature of early-stage angel investing. Take them for a coffee.

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Ireland Technical Review Valuation 291

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2016

They hire their initial co-founders and early employees and everybody has a sense of “mission.” We want to invest in early-stage technology enabled startup businesses – upfront in the funding cycle. You can’t let every team hire as many team members as they want. A Sense of Purpose.

Leadership 150

Leadership Southern California San Diego Hiring 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

When I was running startups I felt like a horse with blinders on because I was super focused on the content management market and ignored many other markets. My job doesn’t involve the daily grind of customer complaints, product outages, business partner / channel problems, hiring / firing, etc. You get the good and the bad.

Technical Review 312

Technical Review Due Diligence Spain Warrant 312

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. Erin’s main points: “As a former tech sales executive, I agree with many of [Mark's] lessons — when applied to later-stage, post-traction point startups.

Startup 319

Startup Early Stage Sales Cofounder 319

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2016

I joined Upfront Ventures in 2007 and took over as co-Managing Partner in 2011 along with the founder, Yves Sisteron. I laid out the following goals: Hire investment partners with operating experience combined with investment experience and deeply committed to LA Tech, but with strong relationships in SF, NYC and beyond.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Early Stage LP Partner 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

They scooped up none other than David Hernand who will join the practice as managing partner. ” I met with him several times and had tried to bring him onto deals I was working on but his practice wasn’t yet geared up to handle the earliest-stage deals. And I know that Mike agreed. Invest they have. There’s more!

Los Angeles 299

Los Angeles Early Stage DC Silicon Valley 299

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

Side Note : Upfront has hired Kerry Bennett as a member of our executive management team to run marketing – please follow her on Twitter here ]. As a starting point you have to realize that investment firms (which a VC is) have management needs. There is no right or wrong – these are the three basic models.

Portfolio 150

Portfolio PR Partner Early Stage 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 2, 2014

And it’s why many early-stage companies blow up. We spend all our time as an industry talking about “growth hacking,” “design principles,” or “product/market fit” and not enough about the most important skills for success – people management. Foursquare?

Startup 385

Startup Stock Options Cofounder Campaign 385

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I started as a programmer, and then a database designer, and then a project manager, and I led conversion teams. You’ve got entrepreneurs and founders who are really – a lot of them are in the very early stage of their startup. Should I hire or not hire this person? We’re not hiring now.

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Technical Cofounder San Diego Startup 337

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2013

In part one I covered the need for early-stage enterprise software companies to build up professional services staff to ensure successful implementation projects. That’s a real risk so you have to manage expectations carefully. This is my third post in a series on Enterprise Software. That’s why I like deer.

Egypt 297

Egypt Early Stage Mexico Wiki 297

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

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2010

It’s not uncommon for incredibly smart and talented Phd’s or CS majors from Stanford to raise $10 million on an early-stage “platform&# that if it succeeds it will be huge. LA generally doesn’t have an appetite for this kind of investment at early stages. LA investors are more pragmatic.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Technology Los Angeles Southern California 290

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

JUNE 5, 2015

In the old days there usually weren’t convertible notes on early-stage deals and there weren’t party rounds with 20 angels or 6 seed funds. So how DOES a VC think about financings at early stages? Pre-money ($8m) + investment ($2m) = Post-money ($10m) and the investors now own 20% of your company $2m / $10m.

Pre-Money Valuation 150

Pre-Money Valuation Option Pool Post-Money Valuation Dilution 150

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

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 19, 2009

So can all of the constant hiring & firing – the natural churn of an early-stage business. You want to hire a crack team of developers but you haven’t raised enough money yet. Some readers of this blog also pointed out that “pivoting&# can be disruptive on the employees of an organization.

Entrepreneur 288

Entrepreneur Early Stage Leadership Salary 288

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 1, 2010

There is a structural reason that VCs are investing at early stages, 2. The investor strategy is really determined by the management team. The obvious positive is that there is a lot less time spent raising money and more time spent on building the business at a critical stage in the company’s development.

Post-Money Valuation 298

Post-Money Valuation Term Sheet Warrant Partner 298

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

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. As you can see in this Cambridge Associates data, early-stage investing beat later stage investing in returns in 70% of the past 30 years. It is changing.

LP 374

LP Later Stage IRR Term Sheet 374

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

When you’re an early-stage startup that hasn’t raised any institutional money you end up doing almost every job function of the company yourself. I had an MBA, had done a few years of strategy consulting and knew all of the management theory. We hired people to run the UK and Germany. We raised just $500k.

Founder 299

Founder Technical Review Startup Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 28, 2011

I’ve thought a lot about team construction of early stage companies. 1 CEO who doubles as head of product management. Who do you hire after you have a product built & shipped and being used in the market? Who do you hire when you raise that first $2-3 million? My ideal team is simple: Assuming 6 people.

Hiring 325

Hiring Early Stage Valuation Engineer 325

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

You put some update slides on things like key hires or biz dev deals being negotiated and you didn’t plan to talk about them. I recommend that the the first two slides in your deck be the two most important strategic topics your management team is grappling with. Don’t let that be you. Send it three days in advance.

Startup 331

Startup Balance Sheet Forecast Early Stage 331

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

It’s as though we forgot the management mantra of the 90′s about “core competencies&# or the most common VC advice to entrepreneurs: Focus. With new micro VC entrants into to early-stage investing plus increased competition from angels, incubators and the like – traditional VCs have taken notice.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

Your highest priority right now is hiring the 1 or 2 people that are going to join your company and make a difference. Chris Devore & Andy Sack have created Founder’s Coop with the goal of funding, incubating & launching more early-stage ventures in Seattle. There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder.

Seattle 317

Seattle Silicon Valley Technical Review Los Angeles 317

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

Cincinnati has had the accelerator The Brandery for several years, which caters to the great strengths of design and brand management that are dominant in this city. While the costs of starting a tech company have plummeted it still does take money to hire a team, launch products and market oneself. Angels & Recycled Capital.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Kansas City Startup Venture Capital 390