Gust

JANUARY 15, 2014

Boy, do I wish there was a magical Gmail extension to let me manage my startup deals! Gust (the company I founded) is the online platform used by over 45,000 accredited angel investors and VCs, from over 1,000 angel groups and venture funds, in 74 countries, to manage their startup deals.

Angel Investor 70

Angel Investor Belarus Portugal Accredited Investor 70

Gust

APRIL 13, 2014

If you find it hard to trust others, love to work alone, always have to be in control, or insist on micro-managing, you probably won’t find a partner who will satisfy you. Does not need to be managed. You may be too independent to be partner material.

Partner 179

Partner Software Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 179

Gust

APRIL 27, 2014

Think about the implications of each to your own business, and the potential impact of getting them done incorrectly, or forgetting to do them entirely: Manage your financials and physical assets. Manage human resources. Here are eight key business tasks that relate to almost every startup, generally prioritized by criticality.

Startup 187

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 187

Gust

JULY 25, 2023

As the Growth Manager at Gust, one of my responsibilities is to evaluate accelerator programs on the Gust Accelerator Platform to determine if they are a good fit for our community of founders.

Startup 171

Startup Community Programming Founder 171

Gust

MARCH 23, 2014

There are several free and paid services, such as LinkedIn and Naymz , that allow you to manage your professional profile and measure your social reputation. This is especially useful in providing links to other positive and neutral content. Profile sites. Other user-created content sites.

Reputation 178

Reputation Affiliate Technical Review Social Network 178

Gust

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Large companies move slowly because they are usually in reasonable financial condition, with less urgency, have a lot to lose from making bad decisions, and have built layers of management sign-off over the years. These conditions don’t apply in a small business. Speed gives you the greatest chance of success.

Startup 165

Startup Early Stage Technical Review .Net 165

Gust

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

The Ohio TechAngels describe the method, as follow: ”Reflecting the premise that the higher the number of risk factors, then the higher the overall risk, this method forces investors to think about the various types of risks which a particular venture must manage in order to achieve a lucrative exit. Stage of the business.

Valuation 102

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Ohio Early Stage 102

Gust

AUGUST 21, 2023

The appropriate form of entity can depend on numerous factors, including the nature of the business, its intended ownership and management structures, the need to raise equity capital, the desired tax treatment of income and losses and the importance of limiting the personal liability of the business’s owners.

LLC 91

LLC Limited Liability Company Equity Management 91

Gust

DECEMBER 13, 2012

There is no one thing (aside from integrity) that is an absolute, and what you need to have when fundraising for a startup will depend to some extent on how you are managing your funding process.

Early Stage 149

Early Stage Video Elevator Pitch Angel Investor 149

Gust

FEBRUARY 22, 2014

As such, creating a functional clone of Gust (including all the features under the hood, and ones that have not yet been released), using world-class engineers and state-of-the-art, 2012 project management in Ruby on Rails, would take roughly 20 person-years from soup to nuts (figure about 1/3 of that in product/UX/UI and 2/3 in actual coding.)

Belarus 107

Belarus Kazakhstan Portugal Accredited Investor 107

Gust

AUGUST 17, 2014

No organization can manage more than 3 to 5 goals and priorities without becoming unfocused and ineffective. Later in the pitch, you can show that you are not a one-trick pony by prioritizing related solutions in your long-term plan. Limited goals and priorities.

Entrepreneur 182

Entrepreneur Technical Review Angel Investor China 182

Gust

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

Don’t start podcasting, blogging, tweeting, “friending” on Facebook, and posting YouTube videos until you know what your messages are, who will manage them, who your audience is, and how they and you are going to benefit from the content and relationship. Manage your “e-putation” and avoid the most common mistakes of social media novices.

Social Media 125

Social Media Media Startup Curation 125

Gust

JANUARY 13, 2023

New York State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) and it's venture capital management arm, NY Ventures is providing support and capital of $30 million for it's Pre-seed and Seed Matching Fund Program to help early stage startups who are registered in New York. Good news for startups building from within New York State!

Matching 91

Matching Programming New York Early Stage 91

Gust

DECEMBER 15, 2013

Some entrepreneurs are quick with creative ideas, and even excellent at managing the chaos of initial implementation. Your company has outgrown you. That’s not the same as instilling discipline in a larger organization, where most the challenge is people. You need a prototype.

Bootstrapping 183

Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Entrepreneur Technical Review 183

Gust

OCTOBER 29, 2014

This timely information is complemented by searchable, user-managed profiles of every startup, investor, incubator, and accelerator in NYC. Every resource with an address is also integrated into a unified map , where users can peruse the City’s resources in relation to where they live or work.

Early Stage 133

Early Stage Technical Review New York Deal Flow 133

Gust

JULY 19, 2023

Being the founder of a startup can be both exciting and scary, particularly when raising capital from investors and managing your company’s finances. If this sounds familiar to you, a financial model is one tool you need to have in your corner.

Finance 70

Finance Conversion Founder Startup 70

Gust

OCTOBER 18, 2011

Reflecting the premise that the higher the number of risk factors, then the higher the overall risk, this method forces investors to think about the various types of risks which a particular venture must manage in order to achieve a lucrative exit.

Valuation 174

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Southern California Post-Money Valuation 174

Gust

SEPTEMBER 16, 2012

Especially in this world of constant litigation and hackers, how can I as an executive manage the risk to my personal future, as well as the future of my company? How does your proposition address highly targeted advertising without a privacy backlash? Risk reduction. Return on investment.

Technology 162

Technology Agile Architecture Distribution 162

Gust

SEPTEMBER 27, 2014

Make your public profile as sexy, comprehensive and enticing as possible, adding a short, well done, elevator pitch video (think “the kind of video you see on great Kickstarter campaigns”) and listing your full management team. And don’t forget the ability to customize your profile’s background.

Angel Groups 159

Angel Groups Elevator Pitch Software Review Deal Flow 159

Gust

DECEMBER 6, 2011

It is important that the management team of new companies understand the capital food chain, acknowledge these gaps in capital sources and design fundraising strategies accordingly. The funding gaps can create a bumpy fundraising road for entrepreneurs.

Angel Investor 179

Angel Investor Venture Capital Valuation Software Engineering 179

Gust

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Or the in-kind winning includes legal work or management consulting, but the startup that wins has its own providers. But it also has the disadvantage of mixing apples and oranges and playing up prizes that don’t work out to real dollar value. For example, the winner is based somewhere else and doesn’t want to move.

Software Review 79

Software Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Angel Investor 79

Gust

MAY 22, 2012

We’ve used the gust.com platform to manage our documents, submissions, due diligence, and so forth since our first year, 2009, even before it was renamed and reconfigured. That’s worked out very well for us, which is part of the reason I blog on this site regularly. .

Technical Review 111

Technical Review Oregon Due Diligence Term Sheet 111

Gust

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Investors are looking for your depth of talent, loyalty and commitment, strengths and weaknesses, teamwork, and management style. For small teams, every team member will likely be interviewed. A dysfunctional team, or even one naysayer in a critical position can stall your investment. Product or service readiness.

Technical Review 152

Technical Review Due Diligence Intellectual Property Private Equity 152

Gust

APRIL 9, 2014

This typically happens when the company is facing tough times, and the value of management’s original options has greatly decreased to the point that the equity no longer serves as an incentive for staying with the company.

Dilution 150

Dilution Equity Vesting Stock Options 150

Gust

JUNE 17, 2012

An example would be getting free office space by agreeing to be the property manager for the owner. Bartering services for equity. Bartering technically means exchanging goods or services as a substitute for money. Exchanging equity for services is worth negotiating with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 164

Gust

DECEMBER 14, 2014

Startup founders also need to realize that building and managing a company is quite different from learning to search for and solidify an idea that can grow into a company. Every entrepreneur has to navigate that personal change from thinking to doing to managing.

Entrepreneur 189

Entrepreneur Founder Revenue Startup 189

Gust

DECEMBER 1, 2013

These include: Managers delegate real work. Manage a team rather than work with a team. Before stepping into a new role, you count on the company providing you with in-house or contracted training courses for the basics, like project management or people management. There is a difference. Training courses are required.

Entrepreneur 182

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Salary Lean 182

Gust

JUNE 7, 2014

Also, as Ben Black mentioned in his answer, in some cases the investors may choose to provide an incentive to the management team, in order to ensure that the sale goes through, and quickly. Management carve-out (if any). Management carve-out (if any). 2) Secured creditors. 3) Un-secured trade creditors. 2) Secured creditors.

Warrant 157

Warrant Preferred Stock Early Stage Common Stock 157

Gust

JUNE 25, 2014

While companies do indeed receive investor inquiries from these listings, the sheer volume of profiles on both platforms means that both are best used as tools to help the startup manage its own fundraising process. Both platforms allow investors (and others) to search for companies by criteria such as name, keyword and location.

Angel Groups 138

Angel Groups Curation Early Stage Search 138

Gust

DECEMBER 7, 2014

Managing investors is a distraction from your core business. To investors, having no money indicates that you may not have the discipline to manage their money, and manage a tough business process as well. Sometimes creative efforts need more time before launch, or your efforts to run the company need tuning.

Bootstrapping 191

Bootstrapping Entrepreneur Startup Burn Rate 191

Gust

MARCH 26, 2014

A venture capitalist (colloquially known as a VC) is a professional money manager who gets paid to manage *other* people’s money, not his or her own. As Ryan Lackey noted, having a lot of money is essentially irrelevant in this context, because that is not the way venture capital works.

Angel Investor 138

Angel Investor Early Stage Venture Capital Partner 138

Gust

NOVEMBER 2, 2011

Quality Management Team. It has been used by angels since, however Dave updated the model for 2009 ACA Leaders Workshop in Richardson, TX. Here is his latest version. Characteristic. Add to Pre-money Valuation. Zero to $0.5 Sound Idea. Zero to $0.5 Working Prototype. Zero to $0.5 Quality Board of Directors. Zero to $0.5

Valuation 79

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Intellectual Property Southern California 79

Gust

MAY 7, 2014

In addition, every year, the managers of the fund (the GPs), are entitled to pay themselves 2-3% of the total amount of the fund to pay their expenses and salaries. (In In many, if not most, cases, this management fee can significantly exceed the “earned” amount from the “carried interest”).

Venture Capital 154

Venture Capital IPO Limited Partner Carried Interest 154

Gust

DECEMBER 22, 2011

” Apart from all the other benefits of good corporate hygiene and risk management, handling these IP issues carefully from inception can go a long way to allay the concerns investors or their counsel may have in doing due diligence. All opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of Gust.

Intellectual Property 149

Intellectual Property Technical Review Software Review IP 149

Gust

AUGUST 23, 2014

Monthly, quarterly or annual narrative management reports. While not every investor will have every right (or every right with the same frequency), the types of things we’re talking about include: Seat on the Board of Directors. Non-voting Board Observer Seat. Monthly, quarterly or annual financial statements (audited or unaudited).

Information Rights 139

Information Rights Management 139

Gust

DECEMBER 21, 2011

Valuations are generally higher in Silicon Valley; term sheets are different; capital sources are different; building a management team and Board of Directors requires a different strategy; and I’ve just begun to scratch the surface. Please stop pontificating from the Valley about “how entrepreneurship or startup funding works.”

Silicon Valley 107

Silicon Valley Southern California Tucson Seattle 107

Gust

MARCH 11, 2014

Invested Interests content marketing saas Startup Funding startup management' Tomasz Tunguz is a Partner at Redpoint Ventures where he works with Axial, Looker, Electric Imp, Expensify, ThredUp, Quantifind and Erply. .

Seed Stage 169

Seed Stage Seed Capital Startup Green 169