Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 21, 2013

Too many startups fail simply by missing the practical elements of money management, time management, and setting priorities. Most schools have business plan competitions, and even give out seed money to winners. Take advantage of inside and outside advisers at school. Business networking is key.

Entrepreneur 264

Entrepreneur Seed Money Social Network Business Plan 264

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business 6 months. If you don’t have a strong balance sheet and can’t hire more people that’s fine — but understand this may lead to slower growth.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 6, 2011

Too many startups fail simply by missing the practical elements of money management, time management, and setting priorities. Most schools have business plan competitions, and even give out seed money to winners. Take advantage of inside and outside advisers at school. Business networking is key.

Entrepreneur 264

Entrepreneur Seed Money Social Network Business Plan 264

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

With the influx of seed money, much has been written about the fact that start-ups that are taking far more funding than they need. I’ve seen many start-ups rush to hire new staff and tackle brand new verticals or international markets when it’s just not time yet. Pitfall #4: Culture of “we’ve done it”.

Guerilla 158

Guerilla Seed Money Vertical Early Stage 158

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 12, 2010

Too many startups fail simply by missing the practical elements of money management, time management, and setting priorities. Most schools have business plan competitions, and even give out seed money to winners. Take advantage of inside and outside advisers at school. Business networking is key.

Seed Money 225

Seed Money Social Network Networking Business Plan 225

Gust

JANUARY 13, 2013

Too many startups fail simply by missing the practical elements of money management, time management, and setting priorities. Most schools have business plan competitions, and even give out seed money to winners. Take advantage of inside and outside advisers at school. Business networking is key.

Entrepreneur 180

Entrepreneur Seed Money Social Network Business Plan 180

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

With the influx of seed money, much has been written about the fact that start-ups that are taking far more funding than they need. I’ve seen many start-ups rush to hire new staff and tackle brand new verticals or international markets when it’s just not time yet. Pitfall #4: Culture of “we’ve done it”.

Guerilla 91

Guerilla Seed Money Vertical Early Stage 91

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. The investor strategy is really determined by the management team. If we invest the follow-on money comes from our non-seed fund (e.g. But in all reasonable circumstances were in.

Post-Money Valuation 298

Post-Money Valuation Term Sheet Warrant Partner 298

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

Think about it – most entrepreneurs who manage to raise seed money or venture capital usually raise enough money for 12-18 months maximum. You hire them, you own them now. Hire fast, fire faster. Many times it’s less. And having the cojones to have them join you anyways. Pottery Barn rule.

Monaco 420

Monaco Cofounder Chicago Mexico 420

Berkonomics

MARCH 30, 2012

Most economists, however, purport that our recovery will never stabilize until small businesses can access capital, hire new employees, and grow. Crowd Funding: The Internet is at work here, especially for obtaining early stager seed money.

Intellectual Property 76

Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Small Business Administration SBA 76

Gust

OCTOBER 2, 2014

Think about it – most entrepreneurs who manage to raise seed money or venture capital usually raise enough money for 12-18 months maximum. You hire them, you own them now. Hire fast, fire faster. Many times it’s less. So at any given point you are likely operating with a maximum of 9 month’s cash.

Monaco 122

Monaco Cofounder Chicago Mexico 122

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

Scott Kupor is the managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he’s responsible for all operational aspects of running the firm. He's been with the firm since its inception in 2009 and has overseen its rapid growth, from three employees to 150+ and from $300 million in assets under management to more than $10 billion.

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Most board meetings are “update meetings” where management downloads its status to a group of investors. This is hardly ideal and some simple changes could help management avoid both issues. I’d want to maximize the amount of time these outsiders could spar with management on the key issues in my business.

Advisory Board 337

Advisory Board Valuation Stock Options Seed Money 337

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. And when businesspeople try to hire hackers, they cant tell which ones are good.Even other hackers have a hard time doing that. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called"angels." For business people its roulette.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

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. It wasnt because they werent accredited investors that I didntask my parents for seed money, though. At Viaweb we managed to raise $2.5 Apparently our situation was not unusual.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

www.reincubate.com

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

First of all, PHP powers a number of content management systems (CMS) – such as Joomla! Hiring a good team of PHP developers is neither likely nor easy for the non-technical. Many small to medium size sites use it, alongside a few massive ones such as Facebook. and Drupal – which are often confused for frameworks.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 40

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I need money for the servers. No raising money. 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

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. A BD person at an aqui-hire will write a book on the art of the deal. But, managing your career? They grew with the company and flurished as they learned how to be managers. Growth hacking?

Startup 147

Startup Venture Capital IPO Viral 147

www.businessinsider.com

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

JOB OF THE WEEK: Operations Manager. Your Money. According to Graham, Google Ventures, a venture-capital firm backed by the tech giant, has systematically been offering to make seed investments in recent Y Combinator graduates, but only on substantially more favorable terms than other investors received. Clusterstock.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup Valuation Venture Capital 54

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

We know this: As many as a thousand companies who’ve received seed rounds won’t be around in a year — maybe six months. There simply won’t be soft-landings and acqui-hires for all of them. The number of seed and angel investors has exploded in recent years, buoyed up by a number of factors.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93