Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

If they acquire later stage companies who already have users/customers and/or a predictable revenue stream, they are acquiring companies which are executing. What gets lost when a large company looks at the rationale for an acquisition (IP, team, product, users) is that startups are run by founders searching for a business model.

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

What stage? Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? When you are raising a large, later-stage round given by this time you’ve likely got a fairly large business to run. What kind of deals should I be doing? What price? I love complexity.

Early Stage 361

Early Stage Deal Flow Investment Bankers Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

What stage? Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? When you are raising a large, later-stage round given by this time you’ve likely got a fairly large business to run. What kind of deals should I be doing? What price? I love complexity.

Deal Flow 347

Deal Flow Early Stage Investment Bankers Technical Review 347

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Regional Angel funds that pool investors capital and typically make a one time investment in a startup, sometimes at an early stage but often at a slightly later stage. Late stage large regionally based funds that invest in late stage or mezzanine deals. Large regionally based early stage funds have mostly failed.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Austin Startup

JUNE 30, 2017

Background / Related Reading: Founder Education Gatekeepers and Ecosystems What is the purpose of universities? And you can verify from certain founders (not pragmatists) that the right accelerators do deliver on that kind of experience; that the accelerator was “ life changing.” It depends on whom you ask.

Curation 48

Curation Startup Cofounder Equity 48

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

A one-year problem means taking a knife to your burn rate (layoffs and elimination of perks and programs to reduce your variable expenses,) renegotiating what previously seemed liked fixed expenses (rent, equipment lease payments, etc.) If they pull back, there will be a liquidity crunch for later stage startups (Series B, C…).

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Wildfire was one of the darlings of the fbFund incubator program. ShoeDazzle has Kim Kardashian as a co-founder / company as a spokesperson as well as Brian Lee who was a co-founder at Legal Zoom. In the program we also talked about much debated topic of large VC’s and whether they should have seed programs.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Version One Ventures

JANUARY 15, 2019

Most founders appreciate the importance of making good hires; however, when a startup is scaling rapidly, process often gets left behind. First hires should be like “swiss army knives,” able to take on multiple tasks at any stage and figure out how to solve problems. At later stages, you start hiring for specialists.

Hiring 118

Hiring Later Stage Early Stage Portfolio 118

Up and Running

AUGUST 17, 2015

Legal Aspects of Entrepreneurship: While the exact title and contents of this class may vary depending on the business school you attend, as a first time founder, it’s incredibly important to understand all of the legal considerations around starting your own company (e.g., It helps mitigate startup risk.

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Cofounder Angel Investor eCommerce 60

David Teten

JULY 25, 2017

Most importantly, we have regular meetings with later-stage VCs and enterprise clients both in the US and internationally to discuss our companies which fit their investment mandates. Effectively, we are a market maker between our portfolio companies and the late-stage VCs and large enterprises which are our co-investors.

Portfolio 60

Portfolio Technical Review Private Equity Database 60

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 2, 2012

“Vinnie was amongst the most popular and valued mentors on the bootcamp we operated earlier this year,” says Hugh Mason, co-founder and CEO at JFDI.Asia. “Golden Gate Ventures’ links to later stage investors and Silicon Valley can add most value once start-ups launch products and prove market traction.

Asia 162

Asia Singapore Silicon Valley Cofounder 162

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. Erin’s main points: “As a former tech sales executive, I agree with many of [Mark's] lessons — when applied to later-stage, post-traction point startups.

Startup 319

Startup Early Stage Sales Cofounder 319

View from Seed

JUNE 5, 2018

We launched the Hiring Bootcamp to equip portfolio founders and hiring managers with the best practices around building a hiring machine , so they can maximize their chances of getting the best talent into the door efficiently. The quest for building such hiring machine is universal across companies at various stages.

Hiring 120

Hiring Portfolio Metrics B2C 120

Gust

SEPTEMBER 27, 2014

I am continually surprised at founders who spend ten minutes throwing up a barebones profile and are dismayed that money doesn’t start flowing in. Gust is used by over 1,000 angel investment groups, accelerators, business plan competitions and support programs to manage their applications. If they’re legitimate, they will.

Angel Groups 159

Angel Groups Elevator Pitch Software Review Deal Flow 159

Austin Startup

JULY 29, 2018

It doesn’t make any sense to pitch a later stage, “growth” investor with your seed stage idea just like it doesn’t make much sense to pitch a new tech startup to an investor who only does oil & gas. Talk to other founders who that Angel has invested in. Try for casual interactions. just get to know them.

Angel Investor 59

Angel Investor Technical Review Los Angeles Seed Stage 59

Genuine VC

MAY 5, 2015

Today, I’m thrilled to publicly announce NextView’s Talent Exchange, a program helping both top talent and NextView-backed startups connect with each other more easily, beginning with Boston companies (which make up just over half our portfolio). And, above all else, we knew this program could feel more human than other existing solutions.

Portfolio 100

Portfolio Startup Boston Seed Stage 100

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 12, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 12, 2009 Lean Startup Workshop scholarship program I havent had much time to write lately, and so havent been able to share much about the Lean Startup Workshop series I have been producing with OReilly in their Master Class division. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Lean 60

Lean Programming San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Up and Running

JANUARY 30, 2014

To thrust our venture forward, gain business skills quickly, and increase our chances of raising capital, we searched for an accelerator program. Accelerators are short entrepreneur training programs designed to jump-start new businesses. They are frequently confused with incubator programs, but the two are technically different.

Incubator 105

Incubator New York City Venture Capital Startup 105

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

That was the topic of my keynote at Seedcon, an event hosted by the University of Chicago, where I am a graduate of the MBA program. You’d imagine that every founder was getting rich. Actually, positive outcomes for founders are quite rare. Actually, positive outcomes for founders are quite rare. Entrepreneurshit.

Monaco 420

Monaco Cofounder Chicago Mexico 420

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

The sooner you pass your work on to a later stage, the sooner you can find out how they will receive it. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. for Harvard Business Revie.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

Of course there were variants – we preferred PostGres to MySQL and many people used other programming languages than PHP. More recently great funds like IA Ventures, Floodgate, Rincon Ventures, Founder Collective, Freestyle Capital and others have raised money to focus on early-stage investing as a strategy.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software PHP Open Source 334

Software By Rob

JANUARY 8, 2019

To catch you up, here’s a brief summary of TinySeed: TinySeed is a remote accelerator designed for SaaS founders seeking mentorship from world-class experts, community with other talented founders, and enough funding to live for a year. ” That is, a group of 10-20 companies going through the program together.

Early Stage 46

Early Stage Valuation Seed Capital Revenue 46

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

You see, equity capital is raised in stages or rounds. The five main stages include the following: 1. Early Stage Investment (Series A & B) 4. Later Stage Investment (Series C, D, and so on) 5. Series B is the round that follows series A in early stage financing. Pre-Seed Funding 2. Seed Funding 3.

Equity 88

Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2021

It seems like every day there is a new headline about an exceptional startup founder, investor, or corporate headquarters moving to Texas. The University of Houston has the number one undergraduate entrepreneurship program in the country and Rice University has the number one graduate entrepreneurship program in the country.

Texas 90

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 90

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

Richard Witten , special advisor on entrepreneurship to the President of Columbia University ; and Kathryn Minshew , co-founder of the popular online career platform TheMuse.com both joined me in Sirius’ New York studio and shared their version of being knocked down and coming back stronger. ” Was that a shock to the system? (It

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur New York Cofounder Equity 120

www.mint.com

MARCH 9, 2010

However, a perfectly acceptable—and perhaps even better—answer is that there are no investors other than the founders, and the plan is to bootstrap the company as long as possible. But you should beware of boards that are only the founders and their family and friends. These days revenue is the best source of capital. That’s cool.

Software Review 68

Software Review Startup Post-Money Valuation Technical Review 68

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. III: Why are Revenue-Based VCs investing in so many women and underrepresented founders? II: Who are the major Revenue-Based Investing VCs? IV: Should your new VC fund use Revenue-Based Investing?

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

Gust

OCTOBER 2, 2014

That was the topic of my keynote at Seedcon, an event hosted by the University of Chicago, where I am a graduate of the MBA program. 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.

Monaco 122

Monaco Cofounder Chicago Mexico 122

Ben's Blog

APRIL 7, 2021

Corporate incentives: Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 developed a broad-based equity incentive compensation program known as stock options. local/state QSBS) to encourage high-risk, early-stage investing. Simply put, later-stage capital travels easier; seed-stage capital providers are homebodies.

Silicon Valley 36

Silicon Valley Non-Compete San Francisco Government 36

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

Because it is a “series&# I plan to get into some of the deeper complexities of funds such as “cross over funds&# and “why VC’s hate to price their own deals&# at a later stage. You were a VP at a company that sold for $200 million making the founder very wealthy. The last post was a high-level primer.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Term Sheet Early Stage Silicon Valley 265

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan Foundation , the Sloan School of Management at MIT , the Sloan program at Stanford , and the Sloan/Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York. The founder of what became General Motors was William (Billy) Durant. Billy Durant - Founder General Motors More in the next posts. There’s the Alfred P. What happened to him?

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Hippoland

JANUARY 1, 2017

In the beginning, I started the blog, because writing was cathartic for me and was a way for me to write down what I was advising founders already on a 1:1 basis. Special thanks to my co-founder Thea Koullias, CEO/founder at Jon Lou , who has helped me pull this all together. I feel lucky to have such a great team.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Cofounder Email Canada 48

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 26, 2011

I've been experiencing a lot of crashing on my Galaxy S lately, and the number of running programs that I didn't turn on is getting ridiculous--slowing my memory to a crawl. Open and free seems nice until stuff stops working.

Technology 116

Technology Valuation Community Restful 116

David Teten

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

Build a specialized outbound origination program. Investors with dedicated, large-scale sourcing teams are almost all top-quartile performers across stage, vintage, and sector. I’ve shown below a case study of the geographic diversification of the largest late-stage technology venture capital / growth equity investors.

Private Equity 114

Private Equity Venture Capital Technical Review Equity 114

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

Going to business school and becoming a startup founder are often positioned as conflicting choices by the media and startup bloggers. Some go as far as stating, flat out, that MBAs don’t make for good founders. So we decided to study one program in particular: Harvard Business School. Harvard MBA Startup Founders: 2008-2014.

North America 120

North America Founder Cofounder San Francisco 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

Some have done earlier-stage deals and done well. Others have chased earlier-stage but lack the skills or relationships to do this effectively. Some have moved into later stage investments in an effort to “put logos on their websites.&# These trends have put pressure on traditional VCs.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

Rob Go

JANUARY 10, 2017

An alternative path for people very early in their career is to join a firm that has a structured analyst sourcing program. A number of funds that invest in growth-stage companies have established sourcing teams that essentially cold-call founders and track them over a long period of time. That’s pretty much it.

Technical Review 28

Technical Review Due Diligence Deal Flow Early Stage 28