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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.

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JUNE 7, 2016

But more so, these decks are about one thing: upping your board game as a founder. Some founders hesitate to spin up a board early, maybe due to the perception that investors would try to control the company, maybe out of a concern of putting too many balls in the air at once. PowerPoint | Keynote | PDF | SlideShare.

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DECEMBER 17, 2015

I recently chatted with Saurya about how he approaches hiring engineers at Google and what founders can learn. We also talked about how he’d want to be interviewed if approached by a non-technical startup founder. (I’ve How do you position yourself as the latter if you’re a seed-stage startup founder?

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JANUARY 5, 2016

At the beginning, a startup team is typically just a couple of co-founders. What we suggest at this juncture is that founders get acclimated to the tactics of scaling beyond the founding team. What to Address During Genesis Team Building: How do we divide and conquer responsibilities as co-founders? Below, I take a look at each.

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MARCH 1, 2016

Then, also in the 1880s, some clever American entrepreneurs decided to market a “fast growing, shade generating” plant to the overly warm citizens living the waltz-dancing climate of the south-eastern United States. Trying to recruit a co-founder or key-employee? million acres of land. Above all else, tell a good story.

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JULY 8, 2020

Over the intervening years, we’ve heard continued and consistent feedback about the value of it for seed stage Founders in providing both strategic thought and tactical help in assembling their post-financing investor communications. Again, we’ve put together the full template here for founders to utilize.

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MAY 5, 2020

One of the core reasons for creating this accelerator was to expand the aperture of the founders we have a chance to interact with. One of the tendencies in fearful markets is to only back proven entrepreneurs in one’s own network, which has a particularly negative effect on founders who are under-represented in the startup-ecosystem.

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MAY 14, 2019

A number of blog posts recently have mentioned this, but we seem to be experiencing a rise in repeat founders starting new businesses and raising seed capital. We’re also seeing a wave of folks who were not founders, but were star players among the first 25 folks at a unicorn company also starting new companies.

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APRIL 27, 2020

Founders do not have this luxury. Most founders are going through hell right now, and that is not going away any time soon. I’m reading letters (public and private) every day from relentless entrepreneurs who have been forced to make some of the hardest decisions of their lives as they fight to keep their companies going.

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OCTOBER 11, 2022

Through all of this, what has been obvious is her hunger to serve founders and desire to work with entrepreneurs to bring about the kind of world changing impact we seek to be a part of at NextView. We have a model that allows us to be very flexible in how we engage with founders and co-investors. Thank you for reading this.

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OCTOBER 21, 2014

In short, more and more entrepreneurs are signaling their price expectations earlier in their seed fundraise process. In theory, there are three levels of pricing for an entrepreneur to potentially signal to a prospective investor: 1. Lower-Than-Market Value. This approach is almost never a good idea. Above-Market Value.

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JUNE 16, 2015

Extraordinary companies can’t be built without extraordinary entrepreneurs , especially at the earliest stages. I’d argue that successful founders must actually possess a superpower to make the nearly impossible task of getting a startup off the ground become a reality. Just like missiles, some entrepreneurs follow heat.

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DECEMBER 4, 2014

Editor’s note: Understanding how to divide founder equity at a startup can be tricky, even to the point of reaching emotional riffs between founders. I like to say that “there are only co-founders” — it’s extraordinarily rare for a successful business to have just a sole founder.

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JUNE 23, 2022

Founder: Dennis Chim. Get to know the founders. RH: Founders, please introduce yourselves. . RH: What’s your favorite thing about being an early-stage founder? DC: My thoughts: Love him or hate him, Kanye West has a fascinating and highly inspirational life story that every entrepreneur could relate to.

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MARCH 24, 2021

7 Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make in VC Pitches and How to Fix Them “Different partners in a VC firm are different. Entrepreneurs should know their audience, and most importantly, how savvy it is about the company’s particular market segment.” ” (Lee Hower). ” (David Beisel). This is not always easy to do.

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OCTOBER 5, 2016

Whether an entrepreneur is raising a smaller (pre-)seed round entirely from individuals or she has a seed-stage or larger VC firm involved in (leading) the seed syndicate, it’s somewhere between necessary and optimal to have multiple individual angel investors involved. First and foremost, angels can provide capital. Affinity by degrees.

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JANUARY 15, 2020

This made me think a bit about what it’s like to be “a pro” as an entrepreneur and as a venture capitalist. Are present with founders. Don’t’ share private information or gossip about founders and companies. Treat founder’s time as costly, not costless. Pro Founders: Are always recruiting, selling, and raising capital.

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SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

This is a guest post from Stephano Kim , former co-founder of Web 1.0 success story Blackboard and veteran entrepreneur who’s held several COO and president roles at various startups. Many startup CEOs hire COOs or launch companies with a co-founder carrying the title. When should founders hire one?

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DECEMBER 6, 2018

As a seed stage VC, I have a unique privilege of confidentially spending time with a number of entrepreneurs throughout their company formation and initial product development process. And it’s amazed me how many times I’ve seen two or more entirely separate groups of founders?—?without Entrepreneurs credit where it’s certainly due?—?

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MAY 31, 2023

For example, a 2009 study conducted by Paul Gompers and David Scharfstein, “Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship”, found that failed founders have the same chances of success¹ as novice founders, but prior success does increase the odds of future success. I reached out to a dozen founders using the criteria of: 1.

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AUGUST 9, 2016

Theirs is a tremendous organization coaching and counseling entrepreneurs through the ups and downs of building a startup. They’ve recently expanded to working with investors too, as our own Rob Go joined Reboot founder Jerry Colonna, fellow VC Brad Feld, and several others at their very first VC Summit. ( Thanks for listening!

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JANUARY 5, 2021

I’ve had the privilege to work with many great entrepreneurs, both in my operating days at the start of my career and over the last decade plus on the VC investing side. In my experience founders usually fall into one of three types: mercenaries, missionaries, and crusaders. The Mercenary.

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JANUARY 27, 2021

Activities will include but not limit to: Planning and producing small- and large-scale events with entrepreneurs and high-level technology executives. You will also spearhead internal initiatives to help support the success of our 100+ exciting existing portfolio companies. A Final Note.

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SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

After 12 years of hearing startup pitches, my favorite first 5 minutes came from John Katzman, the founder of 2U. He was a repeat founder looking to do something ambitious, but he was months away from launch, raising $5M out of the gate. What does your company actually do? Often, this happens because of one of two reasons.

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NOVEMBER 8, 2023

In generations past, organizations like YPO (Young Presidents Organization), Rotary Clubs, and local Chambers of Commerce helped entrepreneurs, execs, and other business leaders connect and thrive in their careers. You can hear from them directly as to why they started Forum and why it’s important to them to build this company today.

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SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Most of these rhyme with what we’ve said in the past, but some have also evolved to fit the changing landscape and our own convictions about what really matters for founders and their investors at the seed stage. Instead, it’s more of a Manifesto about the core beliefs that shape our strategy. Belief #1: The best time to invest is early.

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JANUARY 11, 2021

The sudden arrival of the global pandemic has shifted the playbook for founders and venture capitalists. As high-conviction, seed stage investors, we are inherently relationship-driven, and we value meeting exceptional founders face-to-face. I can have a wider reach and a higher volume of 30 minute meetings with founders.”.

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DECEMBER 6, 2018

They are disciplined about their time, their strategy, the way they engage with founders, and the way they fight to develop an independent point of view. Seek high-slope founders with great FMF (Founder/Market fit) and FGTMF (Founder/GoToMarket fit). But the best investors I find are not dogmatic.

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AUGUST 26, 2015

Just yesterday, Adam Medros , SVP of Global Product at TripAdvisor and an entrepreneur advisor for NextView, just asked about when the next event will be. And although this is written for angel investors, I think entrepreneurs can only benefit by increasing their knowledge around these investors and hope you’ll continue reading if that’s you.

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SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

Traction is a biweekly podcast where founders share the creative or unusual things they did during the seed stage to make early progress. Founders from LinkedIn , DraftKings , General Assembly , The Muse , Behance , InsightSquared , and more have appeared on the show. Subscribe on iTunes , SoundCloud , or Stitcher.

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JULY 31, 2014

Typically, these patterns arise out of a combination of approaches by my partners and me: proactive searching for startups in specific categories, reacting to what entrepreneurs pitch, and translating valuable learning from making one investment over to making another.

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AUGUST 26, 2015

Just yesterday, Adam Medros , SVP of Global Product at TripAdvisor and an entrepreneur advisor for NextView, just asked about when the next event will be. And although this is written for angel investors, I think entrepreneurs can only benefit by increasing their knowledge around these investors and hope you’ll continue reading if that’s you.

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Technical Review Angel Investor Software Review Silicon Valley 120

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JANUARY 24, 2024

Our goal is to get to know the most talented founders and aspiring future founders as early as possible, and find ways to partner with them over many years and perhaps multiple companies. Ultimately, it is the entrepreneurs that pull us into spaces that we never expected and allow us to join their remarkable adventures.

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NOVEMBER 9, 2016

What does the evolution from founder to CEO look like? And how does an entrepreneur balance working IN the business early to tinkering ON the business as it grows? Today, we talk to the co-founder and CEO of thredUP, one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the NextView portfolio (and in general).

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SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

They talk about how Andy came up with the term product-market fit, how he applied his own lessons (and updated them) in building Wealthfront, and the mental models founders can use to unlock their real unfair advantage in a tactics-obsessed world: how you think. Follow Andy on Twitter. Follow Rob on Twitter.

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FEBRUARY 1, 2021

The most overrated attribute that some investors look for in founders is “coachability” Do I have your attention? It’s not that founders shouldn’t be coachable. The first is that there is a balance that a founder needs to strike between being coachable and leading with conviction. It’s a good attribute.

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APRIL 23, 2015

As an operator, not an investor, I’m amazed at how many casual, throwaway comments that happen inside a VC’s office would be genuinely useful to entrepreneurs building their businesses. ” Founders must address distribution in their pitches both overtly and succinctly. You can find those here. ). Accidental VC'

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