Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

This includes seed funding Automattic (who produce WordPress, the blog I use for this website) and investing in formspring.me, stickybits, Thing Labs (producer of Brizzly), KissMetrics and many others including Quantcast. So how is Mike able to do this at a time where others have warned against taking seed money from VC funds?

San Francisco 230

San Francisco Los Angeles Cofounder SMS 230

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2011

By John Williams Fast Company magazine recently reported that PayPal founder Paul Thiel is giving away $100,000 to twenty-four young men and women to finance startup businesses. But when your only capital is your hard-earned seed money, every penny that goes out will be scrutinized painfully. You can keep overhead low.

Sweat Equity 231

Sweat Equity Startup Angel Investor Seed Money 231

Scott Edward Walker

OCTOBER 28, 2014

This week, we present legendary angel investor Ron Conway (commonly referred to as the “ Godfather of Silicon Valley ”) and Marc Andreessen , a brilliant entrepreneur and co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. So you raise seed money to peel away the first two or three risks.”

Cap Table 67

Cap Table Cofounder Silicon Valley Venture Capital 67

Gust

OCTOBER 2, 2014

You’d imagine that every founder was getting rich. Actually, positive outcomes for founders are quite rare. As a startup founder you rarely have much money in your bank accounts. Think about it – most entrepreneurs who manage to raise seed money or venture capital usually raise enough money for 12-18 months maximum.

Monaco 122

Monaco Cofounder Chicago Mexico 122

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2009

This posting was inspired by an email from Rajat Suri who wrote me an email in response to Chris Dixon’s blog post (link below) from August, which recently re-ran on Business Insider and has generated much Twitter chatter. A few years ago it became fashionable for large VC’s to do seed funding. What gives?

Software Review 283

Software Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Southern California 283

cdixon.org

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

link] My email list for “unbloggable” thoughts and ideas – Venture Sprout. [.] link] What’s the right amount of seed money to raise? Dividing equity between founders » Home. Watson. [.] 4:32 pm on September 3, 2009 Reply Tags: business (100) Why you shouldn’t keep your startup idea secret. § [.].

Stealth 68

Stealth Startup NDA Cofounder 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

The reality today is that capital is more available than ever and entrepreneurs have become more sophisticated, so founders are looking for more than just cash from their venture backers. I’ve seen many founders not fully grasp how the venture capital business works and what incentives investors have.

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

Rob Go

MARCH 20, 2013

What can founders do in advance to make the trough as shallow as possible? . If you are in the pre-product launch stage and want to ask random people what they think of your idea or product, don’t say “hi, I”m the founder of XYC company, can you tell me what you think of this product?”. Rob Go] This is a great question!

Bootstrapping 46

Bootstrapping Finance Dividend Vesting 46

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

A typical startup goes throughseveral rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take justenough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the nextgear. I think it would help founders to understand funding better—notjust the mechanics of it, but what investors are thinking. Few startups get it quite right.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

www.paulgraham.com

AUGUST 1, 2008

In the last batch of startups we funded, we had several founders who said theyd thought of applying before, but werent sure and got jobs instead. This is a problem for founders, because it makes raising money take longer and cost more in legal fees. Founders and investors have different attitudes to risk.

Web 54

Web Startup Silicon Valley Technical Review 54

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 6, 2014

A founder will raise one party round worth of seed money and they''ll go teach a class on how to raise venture capital. I ran a viral email campaign that signed up a person a minute for the week preceding launch, and then generated a firestorm of media coverage when the product opened for business. Growth hacking?

Startup 147

Startup Venture Capital IPO Viral 147

www.businessinsider.com

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Enter you email address and zip code to set up customized email alerts. Email Sent! You have successfully emailed the post. Top Startup Advisor Paul Graham Just Warned Against Taking Googles Money. So ultimately, setting the cap has become a proxy for what founders and investors think a startup is worth.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup Valuation Venture Capital 54

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

It’s just getting easier to raise early rounds and harder to raise later rounds,” says Y Combinator’s Paul Graham over email, hewing to the latter view that this has merely become startup life in the Valley. “That’s independent of how much money VCs have or how many companies funded. Sarah Lacy.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93