YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. Competition from other startups and established incumbents, constraints on time and capital, and limited access to talent and technology resources are just a few of the hurdles nearly every first-time founder faces while trying to build a business.

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 118

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance. For background, see Revenue-Based Investing: A New Option for Founders who Care About Control. Alternative Capital. “

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2016

This term refers to an initial venture-capital investment, often wrongly sought to seed early product development. In fact, most often, it is limited to seeding a startup business rollout or scale-up after development is completed from friends and family. Frothy is good for entrepreneurs. Seed-round investment. Sweat equity.

Software Review 120

Software Review Sweat Equity Accredited Investor Angel Investor 120

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

But the thing I am most proud of about Rob is that he has taken a company with a uniquely talented founder & CTO – Nick Halstead – and managed to build a very tight working relationship with Nick where we drive world-class product development without having the usual founder / CEO conflicts.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing launched a virtual portfolio management game on Facebook in January 2008 and a similar version shortly thereafter on kaChing.com. Because kaChing prefers its portfolio managers to have a long track record, the marketplace launch (i.e., A portfolio manager’s entire track record & holdings had to be disclosed.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Recently, we looked at our own portfolio at NextView Ventures to dig a little deeper on how startups actually raise that next round of financing. Of the NextView-backed founders have have tried to raise this round, over 70% have done so (compared to a mean success rate in the industry of around 27%, according to some sources ).

Syndicate 333

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Startup 333

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

We first invested in co-founders Ben Forgan & Pat Wilbur in early 2015, when NextView led a $1.3M We champion founders redesigning the Everyday Economy , and to many, that brings to mind consumer businesses in particular. The Hologram story is near and dear to our hearts here at NextView for a number of reasons.

Chicago 156

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 156

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 25, 2022

First off, many founders don't really feel the need to have external accountability. Not only that, founders get a lot of warnings from other founders about “losing control” and to be careful about ceding too much power to investors. I find that the best meetings with my founders include other investors.

Equity 118

Equity Metrics Widget Bandwidth 118

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

We first invested in co-founders Ben Forgan & Pat Wilbur in early 2015, when NextView led a $1.3M We champion founders redesigning the Everyday Economy , and to many, that brings to mind consumer businesses in particular. The Hologram story is near and dear to our hearts here at NextView for a number of reasons.

Chicago 136

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 136

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Thor Ernstsson, Founder of Alpha UX ; previously, founder of Casual Corp , a venture studio, said, “Fundamentally and theoretically, this model works; practically and actually, it didn’t at all. […] The most important thing to consider is that launching a startup is usually a personal endeavor. Others think the model can work.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Developer 60

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Earlier this year, I was on a panel with Guy Podjarny, Snyk’s founder, at SaaStock Remote to discuss how the team’s community-driven freemium approach led to the company’s stellar growth. million developers using our product. Developers have no barrier to getting started with Snyk. Today, we have around 1.5

Early Stage 62

Early Stage Open Source Development Team Review Security 62

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Other players such as Obopay have set out to focus on mobile person-to-person cash transfers, mFoundry (a GRP portfolio company) has focused on mobile banking and a mobile wallet and one of my favorite companies m-via is focusing on mobile remittances (right now between the US and Mexico). Add this new model to the mix. 13mm in Series B.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. Marketing first. B2B companies can have great unit economics.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. Marketing first. B2B companies can have great unit economics.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

www.tangosource.com

MARCH 8, 2012

You are here: Blog > Finding a technical co-founder: Youâ??re Finding a technical co-founder: Youâ??re re trying to create a new product as a non technical person, it might seem easy at first, until you start looking for real technical partners. As a potential technical co-founder, thereâ??s re doing it wrong.

Cofounder 48

Cofounder Founder SEO LLC 48

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 28, 2012

This is a guest post by Christian Gheorghe, founder and CEO of Tidemark. Unlike political regimes, technological rulers are comprised of products rather than people. These aging products, developed in earlier times now represent bankrupt ideologies, weak paradigms and byzantine complexity. People, people we are the same.

Romania 77

Romania Software Review Cloud Mobile 77

Hunter Walker

JUNE 14, 2018

Information, relationships, pattern matching for marketplaces, SaaS, financial services, agriculture, media, etc etc – our backgrounds and/or portfolio suggest that we might have ability to help the founders move faster and with greater accuracy in testing their market hypotheses. Who support them as people and their growth.

Cap Table 81

Cap Table Portfolio Vertical Reputation 81

Genuine VC

MARCH 24, 2014

And in seeing that process unfold numerous times, I’ve picked up that there are really four main distinct playbooks which a Founder/CEO can run in the subsequent 12-18 months following a Seed round in preparation for the next round of financing. Just plow ahead blindly and hope for the best?

Seed Capital 212

Seed Capital Metrics Cofounder Revenue 212

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2012

In a startup, that needs to be the founder or CEO, and that person has to be regularly and personally involved. New product development process. Longer-term, enhanced product value begets superior company valuation through your organization’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio. This is an imperative.

Intellectual Property 247

Intellectual Property IP Valuation .Net 247

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Both venture firms sought my advice for their portfolio companies. When I told her they not only didn’t want it back, but were trying to see if they could give me more for my next company, she paused for a long while and then said in a very Russian accent, “Only in America are the streets paved with gold.”

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Over the summer, based on feedback from our portfolio and the broader startup community, NextView created pre-formatted board deck templates for seed-stage startups — part of our Growth Guides series. In doing so, a few core metrics inevitably emerge depending on the product and the model.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

That’s the mission driving products like Hemafuse , one of 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2020. Carolyn Yarina , Co-Founder and CEO of Sisu Global Health. Yarina, Co-Founder and CEO of Sisu Global, was recently named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Healthcare, one of many awards the company has received for its work.

Baltimore 62

Baltimore Africa South Africa Michigan 62

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 24, 2017

In addition, we were lucky enough to finally find reliable partners, thus adding a few more services to our portfolio – like Locksmith and Childcare. 15- Feature and interview by SCOOP Founder Phil Stoten. Recently we were featured and interviewed during Productronica 2017 by SCOOP Founder Phil Stoten. environment.

Las Vegas 85

Las Vegas Entrepreneur Software Review Community 85

K9 Ventures

DECEMBER 22, 2021

The audience can be either external (customers, partners, developers) or internal (employees). Theo Miller , the founder of Hit Start Media was an early Carta employee. Above is a clip of me and Theo Miller, founder and CEO of Hit Start Media, having a lively discussion about the role of data and instinct in product development.

Media 62

Media Audience Distribution Product Development 62

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2020

Sometimes you get great founders with an average idea; but because they’re so good, they make it work to a degree. So having both a great founder and a great idea at the outset is super important. We have a studio team – developers, designers etc. It offers a richer service for founders and gives them a better chance of success.

Partner 68

Partner Early Stage Portfolio Metrics 68

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2011

In a startup, that needs to be the founder or CEO, and that person has to be regularly and personally involved. New product development process. Longer-term, enhanced product value begets superior company valuation through your organization’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio. This is an imperative.

Intellectual Property 234

Intellectual Property IP Valuation .Net 234

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Today one of our portfolio companies BigDoor announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based OneTrueFan , a community and web check-in company. Recently the market demand has been outpacing their ability to keep up, so they turned to OneTrueFan as a means of accelerating their product development and overall growth.

San Francisco 115

San Francisco Acquisition Cofounder IPO 115

Version One Ventures

NOVEMBER 22, 2016

Last week, one of our newest portfolio companies, Abstract , launched their Private Alpha. You can read co-founder Josh Brewer’s announcement here. Unlike code where version control of text is relatively straightforward, product and design IP is locked up in inaccessible file formats (binary). That’s where Abstract comes in.

Design 60

Design Cofounder IP Vertical 60

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.” (The line is just a first approximation, nothing hard and fast about it.)

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

David Teten

MAY 1, 2013

The ff Venture Capital portfolio is evidence of how much we believe this, e.g., our companies Alerts.com , Gobbler.com , Identified.com , Patents.com , Phone.com , and Plated.com. I was formerly Founder/CEO of a domain name investment bank , and still own about a hundred domain names personally. I previously published this in Forbes.

Naming 114

Naming Semantic Venture Capital Startup 114

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Managers in this area have to take a portfolio approach, promoting ideas that work and might make good candidates for further investment. Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 27, 2020

We updated our investment thesis a few months ago…we invest in mission-driven founders at the earliest stages. Since that time, we’ve been asked how we define a mission-driven founder. Let’s start with why we’re focusing on mission-driven founders right now. The market for talent has never been more fierce. For example….

Founder 188

Founder Portfolio Leadership Product Development 188

Version One Ventures

NOVEMBER 29, 2016

This is why it was so great to hear from Indiegogo co-founder Slava Rubin on how Indiegogo grew by 1) expanding into different verticals and 2) expanding into different products. Slava offered these pieces of advice to marketplace founders starting today: Start tight and gather a lot of information.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Vertical Equity Cofounder 60

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 28, 2012

This is a guest post by Christian Gheorghe, founder and CEO of Tidemark. Unlike political regimes, technological rulers are comprised of products rather than people. These aging products, developed in earlier times now represent bankrupt ideologies, weak paradigms and byzantine complexity. Public Enemy, Fight The Power.

Romania 44

Romania Software Review Cloud Mobile 44

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 1, 2013

Viljakainen, founder of No Fear Community and author of “ No Fear: Business Leadership for the Digital Age “ Right now Samsung is the biggest technology company in the world. There is no digital device or development that Samsung doesn’t have in its portfolio. He is also the founder of No Fear Community.

Las Vegas 150

Las Vegas Cofounder Asia China 150

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 15, 2010

In a startup, that needs to be the founder or CEO, and that person has to be regularly and personally involved. New product development process. Longer-term, enhanced product value begets superior company valuation through your organization’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio. This is an imperative.

Intellectual Property 122

Intellectual Property IP Valuation .Net 122

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 17, 2015

These days most startups need only a fraction of that to launch – our idea stage partners get to significant traction within a year on a £250k investment – which means there isn’t much money to hire a team and the founders have to cover a lot more of the bases themselves.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Venture Capital San Francisco Silicon Valley 60