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8 Questions You Should Ask Before You Join A Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

Most founders like to talk about their many months or years of sweat-equity , but cash invested is a stronger commitment. If the company has been around for more than a couple of years, and still has no product or revenue flow, there better be a good explanation. When did this effort really start, including pivots?

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8 Red Flags To Evaluate Before Pledging To A Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

Most founders like to talk about their many months or years of sweat-equity , but cash invested is a stronger commitment. If the company has been around for more than a couple of years, and still has no product or revenue flow, there better be a good explanation. When did this effort really start, including pivots?

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Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers

SoCal CTO

Understand where they were in terms of being able to pay or was this equity-only (sweat equity only). Unless you are a co-founder of the startup, a developer is probably not going to do all that well working on sweat equity alone. How To Find A Programmer To Build Your Startup Idea Another option is sweat equity.

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Equity for Early Employees in Early Stage Startups

SoCal CTO

I've talked about this topic before in How Investors Think About Valuation of Pre-Revenue Startups. Same Value for Sweat Equity as Investment Dollars? Jason Cohen in How to think about cash vs. equity compensation (definitely read the comments) provides similar kinds of formulas. Risk Premium on Equity Compensation?

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8 Keys To Starting A Venture With Minimal Equity Loss

Startup Professionals Musings

With one of the many new tools , and a dose of sweat equity, you can create a website for almost nothing -- and you are on your way to success with ecommerce, your latest invention or personal services. Favor profitability over revenue and user growth. You will be in good company with the many legends who used this approach.

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8 Tactics To Highlight Your Startup For Early Funding

Startup Professionals Musings

The average amount per startup has been $23,000, usually in the form of a convertible loan, rather than an equity investment. Tie re-payments to revenue growth in the startup. Rather than set a fixed repayment schedule, tie investment payoffs to a percentage of new product revenue, or a plan to convert the debt to equity.

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10 Entrepreneur Milestones That Make Funding Easy

Startup Professionals Musings

Don’t expect them to believe your $100M revenue projection, if you are still waiting for the first revenue dollar. Get a real customer and real revenue. Funding for pre-revenue startups used to be the domain of angel investors, but they have moved up-stage. Only real results count. Attract a well-rounded team.