View from Seed

JANUARY 13, 2015

“As a seed-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 versus early signs of traction?

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage B2B Distribution Early Stage 120

View from Seed

APRIL 2, 2015

” So it’s no wonder that one aspect of an early-stage startup’s existence can be perpetually up for debate: their graphic design. These all serve as doorways to different but important audiences that a founder needs to impress, ranging from investors to target customers or users to potential new hires.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Design Startup Early Stage 120

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. I have a very public seed stage investment policy and awe.sm ” So Reid set out to hire a CEO. I saw it first hand.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

View from Seed

DECEMBER 17, 2015

I recently chatted with Saurya about how he approaches hiring engineers at Google and what founders can learn. We hire generalists because the company wants to be able to dissolve one division one day if it’s not working, and then move those same people into something else that’s new or already working.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Engineer Software Review Founder 120

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

Below, we talk to Glen Mello , Managing Director of Silicon Valley Bank’s accelerator team in Boston. NVV: Let’s talk about the seed stage specifically. It’s not often a seed-stage company — usually it’s later — but the trends are going earlier and larger. first and foremost.

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

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

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

Almost two years ago, in a private/closed meeting with K9 Ventures’ LPs only, I claimed that: What was being referred to in the press as the “Series A Crunch” was not because fewer Series A deals were being done, but because there were too many Seed deals being done. Seed stage was super tough.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

Austin Startup

JANUARY 25, 2020

This was my time at a Wall Street firm that had hired me after I applied for their Junior Stockbroker position, a little while after I graduated from college. The manager of the promotion knew me from having worked on another promotion at the previous year’s SXSW festival for State Farm, and she liked my work. How did I get the gig?

Delaware 62

Delaware SEC New York City New York 62

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Brad Feld is a managing director at Foundry Group in Boulder, Colorado. David Cohen is the founder and Managing Partner of Techstars, the #1 ranked internet startup accelerator in the world. Hunter is a partner at Homebrew and previously led consumer product management at YouTube. Follow Mark on Twitter @msuster. Feld Thoughts.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Technical Review Silicon Valley Cofounder 60

View from Seed

MARCH 16, 2016

These companies have a long way to go until global dominance in many cases, but they are all growing, hiring, and strengthening the local community right now. This is true when it comes to early-stage funding, but also as it relates to support platforms being built by local firms to help Boston-based startups.

Boston 215

Boston Early Stage Artificial Inteligence Semantic 215

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

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). Instead, it was more of a result of over-funding at the seed stage.

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2017

Entrepreneurs, business owners, senior managers at large corporations. Perhaps you know a Marketer, a Developer or Sales Manager that could fill a gap in one of the startups you back. Do you have relationships with other investors at the next stage of the investment lifecycle? What could be improved? Creating a soft landing.

Pre-Money Valuation 187

Pre-Money Valuation Seed Stage IP Deal Flow 187

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

While it it may not feel that way, the data suggest that there is indeed too much capital in the system — especially so at the seed stage, with more and more individuals and larger funds trying to invest in companies at this stage.). This is because excessive capital becomes toxic for an early stage company.

Venture Capital 117

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 117

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

While it it may not feel that way, the data suggest that there is indeed too much capital in the system — especially so at the seed stage, with more and more individuals and larger funds trying to invest in companies at this stage.). This is because excessive capital becomes toxic for an early stage company.

Venture Capital 105

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 105

Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

What should an early-stage startup founder focus on if they want to implement PLG? But for early stage founders, I think there are two particular scenarios where PLG can be really helpful. So for early-stage founders, those are the two scenarios where PLG might be a great fit. That's the foundation.

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Startup Fractional CTO 78

Rob Go

MAY 18, 2014

The point of these are to: Take on topics that we often here as questions that are held specifically for early-stage companies in their first 12-24 months of life. It’s a form of marketing that we often hear a lot of questions about and can be effective for early stage companies. Interviewing and reference checking.

Early Stage 42

Early Stage Seed Stage Warrant Community 42

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

At seed-stage startups, especially companies with well-networked founders and investors, finding applicants who can do a job on paper is not overly difficult. To help you more effectively build your early teams, we asked a group of founders to share their favorite interview questions when they build new startup teams.

Founder 120

Founder Seed Stage Cofounder Boston 120

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. We’ll look at the model stage-by-stage. Product Development In stage two, product development, everyone stops talking and starts working.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Agile VC

JULY 11, 2012

While ownership and control of the management company matters , these stakes are rarely monetizable at least in the VC business (unlike the buyout world where huge firms like Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo have IPO’d to the great financial benefit of the founders). link] leehower. Thanks Healy.

Silicon Valley 240

Silicon Valley Carried Interest Cofounder Boston 240

Mucker Lab

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

The webinar delved into the crucial topic of company culture for early-stage startups. In the early stages of building a company's culture, founders often resort to mimicking what other successful companies do. With a keen focus on actionable takeaways, Emaus highlighted pitfalls as well as provided insightful strategies.

Early Stage 78

Early Stage Seed Stage Leadership Founder 78

Austin Startup

MAY 19, 2018

 —  @birsic So without further ado, here are my thoughts on some dos and don’ts for early stage investors. Most of the time we are being told no by somebody whether it’s prospects, investors, or hires who aren’t willing to take the risk at a startup. Wonder why that is ??

Founder 75

Founder Early Stage Software Review Deal Flow 75

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

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

A cap table will help you in the strategic management of business decisions. This can be helpful when you are hiring a COO for the company, and the candidate asks to get percentage ownership in the company. The popularity of convertible notes is increasing in the world of startup financing, especially in seed-stage companies.

Cap Table 112

Cap Table Pre-Money Valuation Stock Options Option Pool 112

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

And if trouble withinvestors is one of the biggest threats to a startup, managing themis one of the most important skills founders need to learn. Till now, nearly all seed firms have been so-called "incubators,"so Y Combinator gets calledone too, though the only thing we have in common is that we investin the earliest phase.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. And when businesspeople try to hire hackers, they cant tell which ones are good.Even other hackers have a hard time doing that. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called"angels." People What do I mean by good people?

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2020

If you make a mistake, you can make the test better or you can start a new company in the process of developing the product, and the people you hired, and the people that you trained, all those people have new skills. Should I do it under the management company of the fund?" I think that the only sure fire way to fail is to do nothing.

Technical Review 68

Technical Review Software Review Finance Technology 68

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

Eighty-two percent have global offices, and yet 91% are still run by Israeli CEOs, as opposed to foreign executives hired from the outside. In the old model of Israeli startups, many Israeli executive teams would hire a vice president of sales in the U.S. until the late-stage go-to-market phase may be too late.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

Hunter Walker

MAY 1, 2016

Anneke Jong: I’ve talked to and advised many seed stage startups, and I find they often have an awesome high-level pitch, but if you start asking questions just one layer deeper, most of the answers are, “Errrr, um….we As a hiring manager, what do you look for in new grads? AJ: Startups hire just in time.

New York City 48

New York City New York Los Angeles Startup 48

Hunter Walker

MAY 1, 2016

Anneke Jong: I’ve talked to and advised many seed stage startups, and I find they often have an awesome high-level pitch, but if you start asking questions just one layer deeper, most of the answers are, “Errrr, um….we As a hiring manager, what do you look for in new grads? AJ: Startups hire just in time.

New York City 48

New York City New York Los Angeles Startup 48

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 25, 2022

Recently in speaking with an engineering manager candidate who had been working at later stage/public companies, we got to discussing compensation. They should have this conversation prospectively with the founder/hiring manager just to understand the startup’s emerging compensation philosophy.

Salary 56

Salary Burn Rate Dilution Equity 56

VC Cafe

JULY 8, 2012

If there’s a fit, Chris McCann from StartupDigest will personally introduce you via email to the person who makes the hiring decisions there – no dealing with nameless email addresses, resumes, or recruiting bs. From “napkin” (seed stage) to profitable startups, this site will give you a good set of options.

Cofounder 149

Cofounder Founder Startup Seed Stage 149

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Seed Startups. VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Task Management. Project Management Tools. Subscription Payments / Management. Managing APIs. Customer Relationship Management. Contractor Management. Scanning / Document Management.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

We know this: As many as a thousand companies who’ve received seed rounds won’t be around in a year — maybe six months. There simply won’t be soft-landings and acqui-hires for all of them. The number of seed and angel investors has exploded in recent years, buoyed up by a number of factors.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93