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How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

It turns out that to build a successful company you ultimately need this strange thing called “revenue” that people don’t just hand you: You need to earn it. And there’s this other thing called “gross margin,” which shows the quality of your revenue. How much ad revenue does TripAdvisor make?

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How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

Because so little money is involved, raising seedcapital is comparatively easy-- at least in the sense of getting aquick yes or no. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called"angels." the seed stage, investors dont expect you to have an elaboratebusiness plan. A rich companyis one with large revenues.

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From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

techcrunch.com

For both companies, the initial traction enabled raising seed money to get them to a traditional VC investment.) Take the top 10 largest tech innovators (take your pick of largest by revenue or largest by idea) of the last 20 years in Silicon Valley. Hopefully your idea of business model isn’t “ad revenue based”.

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To Follow On or Not to Follow On

This is going to be BIG.

In the late 90's, it wasn't surprising that companies with no revenue that were funded at 100 million dollar valuations didn't survive. I think I'm terrific at helping early stage teams by rolling up my sleeves and doing what's necessary--getting them hires, PR, product strategy help to find that market fit.