Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2014

Most of these are non-profits, set up by a university to commercialize new technologies, or a municipality to foster business development for the local economy. Accelerators generally accept startups at a slightly later stage, and attempt to compress the timeline to commercialization into a few months, instead of a year or more.

Incubator 247

Incubator Silicon Valley Startup Small Business Administration 247

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 4, 2016

They point to some widely known facts: financings & valuations are up massively over the past 7 years and non-VC money has entered the system. Median pre-money valuations skyrocketed – shooting up 3x in just three years as investors competed to christen imaginary animals with imaginary valuations. Sentiment of the Market.

LP 150

LP Valuation Burn Rate Pre-Money Valuation 150

Up and Running

AUGUST 17, 2015

C Corp versus LLC, non-competes, liquidation preferences, preferred versus common stock, and so on). This can be particularly important for founders with “non-traditional” career backgrounds.

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Cofounder Angel Investor eCommerce 60

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

But once entrepreneurs have their initial team and product in place, a few smart advisors around the table and the social proof required to attract great talent, why would they raise additional dilutive equity capital if they can raise non-dilutive capital through the sale of tokens? Are VCs going to be competing with crypto hedge funds?

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

But once entrepreneurs have their initial team and product in place, a few smart advisors around the table and the social proof required to attract great talent, why would they raise additional dilutive equity capital if they can raise non-dilutive capital through the sale of tokens? Are VCs going to be competing with crypto hedge funds?

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One reasonstartups prefer series A rounds is that theyre more prestigious.But if angel investors become more active and better known, theyllincreasingly be able to compete with VCs in brand. Angels In the big angel rounds that increasingly compete with series Arounds, the investors wont take as much equity as VCs do now.

Startup 93

Startup Valuation Non-Compete Deal Flow 93

Ben's Blog

APRIL 7, 2021

Among the most important acts of the California legislature and courts was to provide for a strong right-to-work culture in the state, including that employers couldn’t enforce non-compete clauses and non-solicitation agreements, other than in limited circumstances. Federal government The U.S.

Silicon Valley 36

Silicon Valley Non-Compete San Francisco Government 36

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

The extraordinary amount of capital flooding in at the Seed stage, often from non-traditional capital sources, foreign capital, or new funds also sometimes makes it possible for companies to raise a larger round without demonstrating the progress that seasoned investors would look for a Seed stage company today.

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

As the check size increases, investors tend to look for more traction, established revenue models, proven unit-economics, and other metrics that were previously associated with later stage companies. A lot of this capital is coming from non-traditional geographies like China, Russia, Middle East, India. Implications for LPs.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

View from Seed

MARCH 8, 2016

They might believe that branding is a fluffy idea or a later-stage need, and right now, they need to move faster, launch, learn, grow, and survive. If you’re a price brand, then that’s your core competency—you offer a price benefit to the market. Is that the wrong mentality? You sell something for less.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Conversion Startup PR 120

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2021

In 2019 and 2020, we saw hundreds of millions of dollars in non-dilutive funding go to Texas startups, most of which had never worked with the government before. from growing startups to late-stage buyouts. It’s also important that Texas is a right-to-work state that limits the use of non-compete clauses for talent.

Texas 90

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 90

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 11, 2016

Lisa Raehsler of Big Click Co agrees… Lisa Raehsler , Big Click Co : “Keyword search has been a dependable stand-by, but with rising CPCs, small and medium sized business advertisers are finding it’s too difficult to rely solely on the traditional keyword search and compete with the ‘big guys’ ” (via Acquisio).

PPC 48

PPC Matching Campaign San Francisco 48

Austin Startup

JUNE 26, 2019

I’ve made a few grammatical and non-substantive updates for clarity. It’s my hope that some of it can be useful to others, specifically other under-represented founders or non-traditional markets. (I There’s a particularly acute leak in the pipeline for non-traditional founders. Several folks asked that I share our story here.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup B2C Sweat Equity 54

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. No lying 3 Pitch the technical puzzles attempting to solve 99.9999% of non-technical founders/co-founders get 2 out of 3 of these points wrong. Living expense money 2.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Giving a start up less money makes them aim to waste less and not rely on funding to run the company in the hope that one day ‘we’ll turn profit positive’ [link] Bob Butler Another bit of bad news is that VC funds are now on average in their later stages, meaning most of the money is already invested.

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 30, 2016

It’s not that we don’t occasionally compete for deals but we’re far more likely to find ways to work together than we are to compete to exclude others. In Los Angeles the venture community is very collaborative. And the more LP money that would pour into LA the better for the entire ecosystem.

Community 150

Community Los Angeles LP Portfolio 150