Gust

SEPTEMBER 27, 2014

Gust is used by over 1,000 angel investment groups, accelerators, business plan competitions and support programs to manage their applications. That’s why investors attend Demo Days and look for acceptance into such programs as one of several ‘validators’ of a startup. If they’re legitimate, they will.

Angel Groups 159

Angel Groups Elevator Pitch Software Review Deal Flow 159

Gust

MAY 11, 2014

A good place to start looking is the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which is a lifeline for high-tech startups. A more general approach is to check out Grants.gov , which is a searchable directory of more than 1,000 federal grant programs.

Seed Money 164

Seed Money SBIR Dilution Government 164

Gust

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

Incubators differ from research and technology parks, in that most research and technology parks do not offer business assistance services, the hallmark of a business incubation program. However, many research and technology parks also house incubation programs. Look for the best mentors, and the toughest regimen for program survival.

Incubator 147

Incubator Entrepreneur New York City Startup 147

Gust

JULY 9, 2014

It’s wonderful that you can (now and forever) program, maintain, market and support your product yourself. According to that theory, Apple should cut out its entire multi-billion dollar sales and marketing and retail store divisions, because all of its great products will sell themselves.

Salary 138

Salary Hosting Restful Advertising 138

Gust

DECEMBER 24, 2012

Then you can decide on a marketing program, loyalty program, or a level of attention that is appropriate to each group, for acquisition, retention, and profitability. In reality, you don’t need to get to know each individual customer. But you do need to segment your customers into homogeneous groups.

Customer 166

Customer Startup Retention Differentiation 166

Gust

NOVEMBER 30, 2013

Spreadsheets and word processors are horizontally-focused products; construction industry calculators and scriptwriting programs are vertically-focused. Illustration from [link] mahugh/… *original post can be found on Quora @ [link] *. Uncategorized Google horizontal market vertical market'

Vertical 136

Vertical Marketing Engineer Search 136

Gust

MAY 3, 2014

For many years, Astia has had a training program for women entrepreneurs to prepare them to seek venture funding, which has a mind-blowing track record of getting 65% of them funded!! This is in comparison to the industry-wide rate of 0.25% for all companies.

Venture Capital 152

Venture Capital Portfolio Equity Programming 152

Gust

MARCH 21, 2016

With startup growth up 61% since 2014 and more investment programs emerging, it can be overwhelming for founders to know just where to jump in. As the most startup-friendly accelerator on the planet, MassChallenge has helped 835 startup companies around the world, who have raised over $1.1 billion in funding and created over 6,500 jobs.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital Startup Programming Founder 70

Gust

JUNE 11, 2014

In turn, we have established a virtually unprecedented communications program with our investors, including weekly reports, monthly in-person meetings, and frequent phone calls.

Programming 136

Programming Entrepreneur Startup 136

Gust

JUNE 25, 2014

AngelList is known to work very well for companies that already have some fundraising traction from known investors or accelerators; Gust provides a very powerful tool set for a company to bring together all of its investor materials and manage its fundraising program. Both are useful additions to the early stage entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Angel Groups 138

Angel Groups Curation Early Stage Programming 138

Gust

JUNE 7, 2014

But for a company with multiple rounds of equity and/or debt funding, things can rapidly get so complicated that the only way to figure out who gets what, when, is to use a specialized computer or web-based program: *original post can be found on Quora @ [link] *. Invested Interests company early stage funding investors startup starup'

Warrant 157

Warrant Preferred Stock Early Stage Common Stock 157

Gust

JUNE 28, 2014

Finally, make sure to keep all your books and records (including your option program, cap table and 409a valuations) accurate and up to date, so that you can respond quickly and professionally when your investors request information to establish valuations for their portfolios.

Angel Groups 148

Angel Groups Cap Table Term Sheet Valuation 148

Gust

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

Under the Crowdfunding provisions of the JOBS Act, a startup company will, for the first time, be able to sell shares of stock to anyone (that is, “the crowd”) once the SEC publishes the final rules for the program in January of 2013.

Accredited Investor 121

Accredited Investor SEC Stock Startup 121

Gust

DECEMBER 20, 2012

The bottom line is that cash is cash is cash, and everything else is “not cash” The reason is that cash is fungible, which means it can be interchanged for everything else, from programming skills to vacations on the Riviera. Other things, such as your particular time and effort, are not.

Sweat Equity 136

Sweat Equity Equity Valuation Salary 136

Gust

FEBRUARY 17, 2013

They recognize that people want recognition, so they reward people who get-with-the-program with attentions for doing so. They recognize that people are persuaded by those that these people, in turn, can persuade. So they open themselves up to recommendations from those they are trying to persuade.

Entrepreneur 173

Entrepreneur Analytics Reputation Channel 173

Gust

DECEMBER 23, 2011

Many other kinds of defenses also allow you to join the venture version of the “slow food” movement: robust intellectual property rights (say, obtained from a university partnership program), exclusive contracts with key suppliers or distributors, a prime physical location.

Intellectual Property 127

Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Dilution Bootstrapping 127

Gust

AUGUST 29, 2012

If and only if that potential market seems to come alive, it needs credible plans to move from ideas and messages into media and concrete marketing programs with some backbone and metrics to them. Believable paths, triggers, and channels.

Marketing 119

Marketing Social Media Sales Cycle Angel Investor 119

Gust

JULY 8, 2012

Even though significant deal vetting and filtering is performed by the investor teams running these seed programs, in effect, they spray little bits of capital onto as many good ideas as possible, help them along, and pray some eventually strike it big. Pundits call this the “spray and pray” approach to funding.

Early Stage 177

Early Stage Finance Seed Stage Entrepreneur 177

Gust

OCTOBER 29, 2014

This will be changing next year, however, because of a new law called the JOBS Act of 2012 , which establishes a new, limited type of Crowdfunding for small companies and non-Accredited investors. Once the U.S.

Accredited Investor 157

Accredited Investor Securities and Exchange Commission Technical Review Due Diligence 157

Gust

OCTOBER 2, 2014

That was the topic of my keynote at Seedcon, an event hosted by the University of Chicago, where I am a graduate of the MBA program. As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. What’s it really like being an entrepreneur? Entrepreneurshit. The Truth About Building Startups from msuster.

Monaco 122

Monaco Cofounder Chicago Mexico 122

Gust

AUGUST 8, 2012

Link the WiFi registration to the airline’s own online reservation/check-in/frequent-flier program. You are not granting access privileges to somebody’s numbered Swiss bank account or nuclear missile launch codes; it’s a purchase worth $5, only usable for a couple hours!

Customer 143

Customer San Jose Southern California Marketing 143