article thumbnail

Remind Me Why I Love You? (Why “In Person” is Everything)

Both Sides of the Table

You race back to the office to tell everybody how well it went and you wait for the follow-up call to have a partners’ meeting or talk about term sheets or at least dip into due diligence. That way when my partners in are in …. there is a reason for us to re-engage because they never met that partner before. What do I do now?

article thumbnail

The Option Pool Shuffle

venturehacks.com

SUPPORTED BY Products Archives @venturehacks Books AngelList About RSS The Option Pool Shuffle by Nivi on April 10th, 2007 “Follow the money card!&# – The Inside Man, Three-Card Shuffle Summary: Don’t let your investors determine the size of the option pool for you. Don’t lose this game. share to $1.00/share:

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

What to expect before accepting the offer to become Engineer #1 at a startup

The Next Web

Startup employees are granted common shares out of something called an option pool. It is typical for employees to vest their options over four years with a one year cliff, which means a new hire must stay on the company for at least one year to see any shares. What’s everyone else getting?

Engineer 129
article thumbnail

Most Common Early Start-up Mistakes

Both Sides of the Table

Assuming normal valuations at fund raising rounds you’ll be down to 6-12% after you’ve created a stock-option pool and raised capital. But these people seldom make retirement money from the stock options on these companies. It is hard enough to have a great financial outcome when you start with 100%.

article thumbnail

5 Tips for Raising a Venture Round

ReadWriteStart

If you're earlier in the process, a small angel round or partnering with an accelerator may be the best approach. Next if you are going to raise a round, find one or two partners to do it with. It turns out Premature Scaling is the leading cause of hemorrhaging cash in a startup, and death. Tip 2: Have a "real" lead.

Cap Table 125
article thumbnail

Beware of Premature Merge Elation

Both Sides of the Table

My recommendation to our lead partner looking at the deal, “Pass. If they raise a bunch of capital little ole you isn’t going to be around to have your option pool topped up. He had an ad-supported business doing about 1.5 million uniques. 500k had come through the last acquisition. He’s talented.

Merger 276
article thumbnail

VCs eating our own dog food: Using technology and analytics to make better investments

David Teten

But in business, you want a lot of partners. In the private equity universe, most Partners have primary training as deal-makers, not as managers. See Bessemer Venture Partners’ A comprehensive guide to security for startups. Cobalt for General Partners helps GPs to optimize their fundraising strategy. 1) Manage the firm