Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2011

Yet, I find that startup founders often fixate on one or two sources, often to the detriment of their business. Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Startup incubators. Partner with distributor or beneficiary. Friends and family.

Technical Review 233

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Venture Capital 233

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Of partner? The other problem with extreme success is that for some VCs it makes them disinterested in middling outcomes, things that take a long time to incubate or solving thorny problems when a company doesn’t immediately move up and to the right. Picking a VC is hard. Reputation of firm? Deals done in your industry?

Portfolio 364

Portfolio Chicago Sales Incubator 364

Gust

JUNE 17, 2012

Yet, I find that startup founders often fixate on one or two sources, often to the detriment of their business. Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Startup incubators. Partner with distributor or beneficiary. Friends and family.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 164

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 1, 2010

Yet, I find that startup founders often fixate on one or two sources, often to the detriment of their business. Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Startup incubators. Partner with beneficiary company. Friends and family.

Technical Review 149

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Venture Capital 149

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Look at the valuations of companies like Tesla, Illumina, and Twitter. The companies that can show “startup-like” growth rates of 50% plus per year will get stratospheric market valuations. If they don’t, then the management team has simply become caretakers of the founders’ legacy. This never ends well.

Private Equity 326

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 326

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2010

Launch48 is a new kind of micro-incubator taking place over the course of a weekend, which enables entrepreneurs to pitch their concept in one minute, in order to find team mates who are interested in pursuing the idea. Very cool concept and I want to thank the founder Adil Mohammed for inviting me to take part in it. Be a salesman.

Elevator Pitch 102

Elevator Pitch Incubator Technical Review Startup 102

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Entrepreneurs and investors who have spent any time dealing with convertible debt seed financing transactions are likely to have encountered the subject of valuation caps. Valuation caps can come into play in settings other than seed-stage convertible note financing rounds. Read on for a fuller explanation.

Valuation 98

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Merger Vesting 98

Rob Go

DECEMBER 28, 2011

Still led by its founder, Steve Kaufer. Boston Investors: At the earliest stages, we saw a surge in seed activity from manly local investors (Atlas, General Catalyst, Founder Collective, Matrix, CRV, Flybridge, Highland, Kepha, etc.). ThredUp: Service started in Boston while the founders were at HBS, raised $7M from Redpoint.

Technical Review 54

Technical Review Boston Software Review IPO 54

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

However after Sequoia and Ron Conway announced their investment in YC in 2009 , and after YC alumni DropBox and AirBnb raised capital on billion-dollar valuations in 2010-11, the program quickly became the gold standard among early-stage startup incubators. They are operators, through and through.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

mashable.com

OCTOBER 16, 2010

All of this is according to Paul Graham, co-founder of the early-stage investment fund Ycombinator. The result is that many venture capital firms are now making smaller angel investments in an attempt to get close with startup founders that are likely to raise bigger funding rounds later on. Angel rounds also tend to close quicker.

Angel Investor 84

Angel Investor Venture Capital Social Media Technical Review 84

mashable.com

OCTOBER 16, 2010

All of this is according to Paul Graham, co-founder of the early-stage investment fund Ycombinator. The result is that many venture capital firms are now making smaller angel investments in an attempt to get close with startup founders that are likely to raise bigger funding rounds later on. Angel rounds also tend to close quicker.

Angel Investor 83

Angel Investor Venture Capital Social Media Technical Review 83

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 11, 2010

I’m surprised how few people talk about valuations, term sheet terms, how much to pay recruiters, etc. And you can tell that the founders have thought greatly about creating the right kind of space for startup companies. Dogpatch was the brainchild of Mike Hirshland , partner at Polaris.

San Francisco 285

San Francisco Incubator Silicon Valley Startup 285

K9 Ventures

MAY 14, 2011

Incubators and Accelerators : Incubators and accelerators have to a large extent replaced the funding from friends and family. The incubators and accelerators are investing $15-$50K in a large number of early stage teams (the current YC class has 60+ teams !). The 3Fs invest their own hard-earned money, usually under $50K.

Preferred Stock 125

Preferred Stock Seed Stage Incubator Early Stage 125

David Teten

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

David Teten, Partner, ff Venture Capital ; Chairman, HBS Alumni Angels of Greater New York. From the perspective of best practices, we will address questions such as: How to assess opportunities (idea, team, valuation). Karen Bantuveris, Founder and CEO of VolunteerSpot. Moderator: Katina Stefanova, Bridgewater Associates.

Private Equity 114

Private Equity North America Cofounder Angel Groups 114

Early Growth Financial Services

MAY 19, 2015

Co-hosted by First Ascent Associates and Runway Incubator, “Cannabis Startups: Exploring the Opportunities & Challenges” will take place on May 26, 2015 at Runway Incubator in San Francisco, California. Founder and CEO … Continue reading →

San Francisco 28

San Francisco San Jose Silicon Valley Incubator 28

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 3, 2011

We also had two other entrepreneurs who are working with the William Factory Incubator in Tacoma, Washington. At this point, Greg is in the process of bringing in two additional investors, and the primary topics of our discussion were valuation and ROI issues around the new investors. You can read more about athenahealth here.

San Jose 115

San Jose Entrepreneur United States Washington 115

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 10, 2017

The Institute includes a co-working space and accelerator (the Blackstone LaunchPad at UT Dallas), an incubator, a training group, a seed fund, and much more — all working together under the unifying, umbrella theme of entrepreneurship. I’m also executive director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Dallas 60

Dallas Austin Texas Cofounder 60

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

And, oh by the way, we also really like the idea of the 1M/1M entrepreneurs building valuation and negotiating leverage through these business development efforts, instead of signing off large chunks of their company in form of equity early on. Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

I think it would help founders to understand funding better—notjust the mechanics of it, but what investors are thinking. 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. Another concept we need to introduce now is valuation.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

Austin Startup

MAY 11, 2018

We’re human just like everyone else, and yet I’m very surprised at how many founders think that we’re jerks when they, in fact, are acting like wild animals. OK, this seems obvious; however, you’d be surprised how many times drunk founders approach VCs at mixers. Successful entrepreneurs know how to engage VCs. Get value from the “no”.

Elevator Pitch 48

Elevator Pitch Valuation Conversion Portfolio 48

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 16, 2016

As of January 20, 2016, based on the “CrunchBase Unicorn Leaderboard,” there are 157 unicorns (companies with $1 billion+ valuations) which have not IPOed or been acquired—and more start-ups reaching unicorn status every day. 38 unicorns, or 1 in 4 (24%), have at least one MBA founder. Key Insights. Shazam (GSB, Haas). that of GSB).

Programming 120

Programming St. Louis Cofounder India 120

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

I gained nearly 20 pounds during those two years, in part because of the growing frustration I felt when I would leave yet another meeting with VCs who I felt didn’t genuinely listen to, understand, or value my experience as a black founder and CEO. Are there amazing Silicon Valley VCs out there with whom entrepreneurs should work to partner?

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley Technical Review Venture Capital San Francisco 48

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 19, 2010

The hilarious thing is that Yelp actually thinks it can beat Foursquare at its own game—and it is a game, one that founder Dennis Crowley has been thinking about for at least 8 years. On top of that, news broke that the company is taking $50 million from Elevation Partners—which includes a secondary offering for long-time employees as well.

Technical Review 68

Technical Review Venture Capital IP API 68

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

Only a handful of so-called unicorns — companies that have achieved a valuation of over $1 billion in the last 10 years — come from Israel, and only one Israeli firm, Teva, ranks in the world’s 500 largest companies by market capitalization. The founders have started companies before. That’s the good news.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

The Next Web

AUGUST 14, 2013

This is a guest post by Wade Foster , co-founder and CEO of Zapier, which originally appeared on his blog. But since I’m relatively fresh off of the experience I get asked by first-time founders how they should go about raising money for their startup. Usually those aren’t first-time founders though.

Founder 142

Founder Incubator Cofounder Accredited Investor 142

techcrunch.com

SEPTEMBER 2, 2012

Sometimes these loans have a valuation cap and/or a discount. Today, TheFunded.com and the Founder Institute is announcing in conjunction with law firm Wilson Sonsini, Convertible Equity, a startup-friendly seed-financing vehicle intended to replace Convertible Debt notes. FOUNDER INSTITUTE. Company: Founder Institute.

Equity 87

Equity San Francisco Technical Review Angel Investor 87

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 10, 2017

Are we teaching founders more than they need to know? The oldest university affiliated incubator in the country, the ATDC at Georgia Tech, is only 34 years old, a millennial, and now there must be many thousand incubator and accelerator programs just in the US. Startup founders had better be in much more of a hurry than that.

Georgia 48

Georgia Startup Incubator Harvest 48

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Blogs (VC): Antonio Rodriguez [link] – A very technical VC at Matrix partners who can actually code. Blogs (web development): Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots – [link] Company blog of thoughtbot covering Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, Javascript, databases, and mobile development.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team?

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

.” Hackernews list of “Tools of the Trade” for startups - includes over 150 SaaS tools used by startups, and over 150 comments with interesting insights from founders. Founders Institute Plain Preferred Term Sheet â?? Mark Suster GRP Partners Advice. Seed Stage Valuation Guide. Founder Equity Issues.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

I’ve been hearing about the so-called Series A Crunch for at least six months, and in recent weeks, I’ve spoken with more than 20 venture capitalists, angel investors, incubator heads, lawyers, and other necessary cogs in the ecosystem trying to get some details about it. Those numbers are likely conservative.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93