Gust

DECEMBER 28, 2011

The two major differences in the exit environment in the past decade are (1) the disappearance of the IPO market and (2) the rapidly increasing size of the average VC fund. As you may know, startups can go public on active foreign exchanges – such as Toronto’s TSXV and the London AIM market – but there’s a catch.

IPO 153

IPO Venture Capital Entrepreneur Angel Investor 153

Gust

DECEMBER 16, 2011

And, a bit misty-eyed, this old war veteran can actually remember the glory days: Venture capitalists would commit tens of millions for a startup to buy expensive infrastructure; hire sales and marketing teams as products were still being built; and lease out big slugs of office space for the coming hiring spree.

IPO 87

IPO .Net Social Network Mobile 87

Gust

NOVEMBER 23, 2011

Talented entrepreneurs are nothing if not resilient in the face of change: Market forces, competitive threats, technological shifts, you name it. Google, which incorporated in 1998, has a market cap of $200 billion and employs more than 30,000 people. Facebook, which did not exist in 2003, is now valued at nearly $100 billion.

IPO 110

IPO Prospectus SEC Intellectual Property 110

Gust

JANUARY 4, 2012

Entrepreneurs: if you’re looking seriously at angel investment, and you have the kind of product-market fit and management experience investors will like, you need to take a good look at convertible notes. Do yourself and the investors you want to talk to a favor: take a few minutes and do some homework on this issue.

Angel Investor 114

Angel Investor Valuation Angel Groups Equity 114

Gust

DECEMBER 23, 2011

There’s no better test of how well your idea works, nor any better way of iterating it to real market demand, than to watch how the checks come in. By the way, there’s a very beautiful thing about organic growth, aside from the absence of dilution: it usually forces you to try to monetize early.

Intellectual Property 127

Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Dilution Bootstrapping 127

Gust

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Lots, on the other hand, have passed up attractive exits only to see the market turn against them, the model run out of steam, or a competitor pass them by. For a while, that might have looked “smart” to some observers; the purported value of the company ran up to 25 or even30 billion on the private market exchanges.

IPO 70

IPO Valuation Stock Partner 70

Gust

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

Growth means a strong market and a deliverable that’s scalable and defensible. I suggest you start by asking yourself these three questions. If you can’t honestly answer “yes” to all three, revise your plan, beef up your team, refocus, or pivot. Can it really grow? By scalable I mean that you can gear up to sell 10 or 100 or 1,000 per hour.

Angel Investor 93

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Finance Web 93

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Intermix had acquired their previous online marketing startup, ResponseBase, and they remained a cohesive group. The early history of MySpace is inextricably intertwined with that of Intermix, a small-cap publicly traded Internet company in Los Angeles where I worked as corporate counsel from 2004-06.

Valuation 98

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Merger Vesting 98

Gust

JANUARY 5, 2012

Since the IPO market has been in the doldrums for most of the past decade, high-profile private companies have chosen (or been forced) to stay private while raising huge sums of money from VCs and other private equity sources. But, the SEC limit on the number of shareholders is not the only issue entrepreneurs should consider.

SEC 131

SEC Angel Groups Technical Review Private Equity 131