Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

So we as VCs search for entrepreneurs/founders who have the whole package or as much of it as possible. Your financial risks of starting most technology companies these days are so low. VCs don’t have the same net worth litmus test and great entrepreneurs have a ton of sources for seed money to get financed very early.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur CTO Hire South America Salary 293

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

At this level, as a founder you feel SO CLOSE to profitability that many say, “I’m going to keep my costs really low this year to try and hit profitability. If you spent the 3 years perfecting some hugely differentiated technology IP that may also be different. They both raised angel / seed money of $1.5

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

Did I mention it only took the founder a month? The industry has made it very easy for companies to raise seed money through online marketplaces like Angel List, accelorators. You need to seed the market for investor interest by building relationships as early as possible--pretty much right after your previous round.

Venture Capital 114

Venture Capital Marketing Term Sheet Software Review 114

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

I’m supposed to believe that my best innovation can only come from scores of startup founders who just made millions and have now become CVOs at my company? And they might give a premium if the team has been around a longer period of time, has built some hard-to-build proprietary technology or has some customer traction.

Liquidation Preference 357

Liquidation Preference Early Stage Retention Lock-up Period 357

Scalable Startup

AUGUST 9, 2018

In their quest for sustainable growth, the elusive dream for most first time founders is that first funding. High growth startup companies need seed money to get things going. This can either come from the founder(s) own bank account or from outside investors. Your strategy is to create growth with little or no money.

Technical Cofounder 20

Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Early Stage Cofounder 20

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let the founders take money off of the table. Not FU money, but “feed the family&# money. I raised $500k in seed money to start the company.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

Global Student Entrepreneur Awards: Students across the globe will convene at the New York Stock Exchange to compete for $150,000 in cash and business services as well as one year of mentorship with RedBox founder Mike DeLazzer.

Global 167

Global Non-Compete United States New York 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2010

He and his co-founder were both PhD’s in applied math who believe they can make some serious inroads on next generation search. I thought his technology was was potentially a killer app. We thought we’d take our plan and go raise seed money. We can’t raise money knowing our plan is wrong.”. Here’s why.

Business Model 328

Business Model Business Plan Customer Cap Table 328

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

This includes seed funding Automattic (who produce WordPress, the blog I use for this website) and investing in formspring.me, stickybits, Thing Labs (producer of Brizzly), KissMetrics and many others including Quantcast. So how is Mike able to do this at a time where others have warned against taking seed money from VC funds?

San Francisco 230

San Francisco Los Angeles Cofounder SMS 230

cdixon.org

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

Interesting idea, but what happens when you share your idea with, say, a candidate for head of all your back-end and technology, don’t bring him in as part of the team, and then he goes out, takes the entire idea (including pitch details), and starts a competitor? link] What’s the right amount of seed money to raise?

Stealth 68

Stealth Startup NDA Cofounder 68

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 1, 2010

I think the issue was mostly framed initially by Chris Dixon in his article The Problem with Taking Seed Money from Big VC s. If we invest the follow-on money comes from our non-seed fund (e.g. So we led the first big institutional round and partnered with Greycroft Partners and Matt Coffin (founder of LowerMyBills).

Post-Money Valuation 298

Post-Money Valuation Term Sheet Warrant Partner 298

Austin Startup

APRIL 23, 2010

With seed money recently going into Workstreamer, Spredfast , Manuel Rosso’s new venture, Scott Harmon’s new venture, and it’s community outreach office hours programs, I would say that Austin Ventures is still interested in the early stage.

Intellectual Property 79

Intellectual Property Austin Early Stage Agile 79

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

It’s also important to say that while many successful technology companies have been venture-backed--Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook come to mind-- it’s not solely a funding method for technology companies. I’ve seen many founders not fully grasp how the venture capital business works and what incentives investors have.

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 23, 2018

While it’s true that you sometimes need to spend money to make money, the amount of money you need to spend is where things get murkier. The highway of new ventures is littered with the remnants of businesses that started with tons of seed money but ran out with little to show for it. business environment.

Entrepreneur 69

Entrepreneur Startup Seattle Social Media 69

Rob Go

NOVEMBER 15, 2016

You probably are quicker to build technology vs throwing bodies at a problem. Very proven repeat founders can usually get away with early proof points even with limited top-line growth, but most teams will feel like they are approaching investors from a weak position if the headline numbers don’t pop.

Product 28

Product Seed Stage Seed Money Metrics 28

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

And since a startup thatsucceeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies gettingrich is doable too. A lot ofwould-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is theinitial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute.Venture capitalists know better. Ideally you want between two and four founders.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Seeing Both Sides

MARCH 2, 2011

I had the pleasure of teaching a new case at HBS yesterday on foursquare that I co-authored with Professors Tom Eisenmann and Mikolaj Piskorski as part of Tom's new course "Launching Technology Ventures". million in its series A financing and kept the burn rate at less than $100k per month to make he money last.

API 44

API Valuation Lean Burn Rate 44

www.paulgraham.com

AUGUST 1, 2008

Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper. Its a pattern we see over and over in technology. In the last batch of startups we funded, we had several founders who said theyd thought of applying before, but werent sure and got jobs instead. Now the only threshold is courage.

Web 54

Web Startup Silicon Valley Technical Review 54

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

A typical startup goes throughseveral rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take justenough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the nextgear. I think it would help founders to understand funding better—notjust the mechanics of it, but what investors are thinking. Few startups get it quite right.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

crowdSPRING Blog

FEBRUARY 16, 2016

For every example of a successful company that proves a myth wrong, there will always be one that will prove it right, especially in today’s world of rapidly expanding technology and connectivity. Myth #2: You need a lot of money to start. Startups are the epitome of unpredictability and extremes.

Washington 48

Washington Incubator Cofounder Angel Investor 48

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 6, 2014

A founder will raise one party round worth of seed money and they''ll go teach a class on how to raise venture capital. Even if they have prior experience, they don''t have experience at *this* company at *this* particular moment in technology with *this* particular product. Venture Capital & Technology'

Startup 147

Startup Venture Capital IPO Viral 147

www.businessinsider.com

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, the influential advisor to dozens of startups like Dropbox and Airbnb , sent his entrepreneurs an email Wednesday afternoon cautioning them against taking "lowball offers"—in particular, he said, from Google Ventures. This Chart Shows Why VCs Are Willing To Give Hyped Startups Absurd Valuations.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup Valuation Venture Capital 54

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

“I wouldn’t expect anyone except seed investors to complain about it,” Graham says. “Founders don’t think their problems are due to trends. And in fact, overall trends are a second-order effect for founders.” Sarah Lacy is the founder and editor-in-chief of PandoDaily. Sarah Lacy.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93