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Some of the Best Founders Are “Difficult” People

Hunter Walker

Or those special little bombs of a phrase like “enjoys playing founder more than being one” and “tells a good story but no follow-through.” For an investor, partnering with Difficult Founders also comes down to how you both think about relationship building. Sketchy would be one. Unmotivated another.

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8 Keys To Maximizing Your New Venture Stock Net Worth

Startup Professionals Musings

Every entrepreneur needs to understand the following basics, to be addressed at company formation, as they engage a qualified attorney to draw up the paperwork: Allocate founder’s stock commensurate with commitment. Key founder vesting should have no cliff. Target no more than five members, with at least two being founders.

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The Shift from FOMO to FOLD in Early Stage Investing

View from Seed

VCs are always founder focused no matter the market environment. But in a FOMO world, more investors are willing to take a chance on a founder that they don’t know, but seems to match some of the heuristics of other high quality founders. This gets really challenging if it remains difficult to meet in person or to travel.

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6 New Venture Realities To Target Your Funding Effort

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurs who require funding for their startup have long counted on self-accredited high net worth individuals (“angels”) to fill their needs, after friends and family, and before they qualify for institutional investments (“VCs”). All startups always need more money. They will need more money.

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The Pros and Cons of Rando Rich People Investing in Your Startup

This is going to be BIG.

Some of these folks are founders and CEOs, but not at high-growth tech startups. The first thing you need to get straight with a high net worth individual—what is their return expectation? Role When I was a lowly Analyst at Union Square Ventures, I had so many ideas for the founders we worked with. Perhaps they inherited it.

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5 Key Points Of Focus For Every Scalable New Venture

Startup Professionals Musings

You can review all the specifics of this approach in the classic book by Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom, appropriately titled “ Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation ,” but I will net it out here. Great businesses begin with a customer problem that has a big and monetizable pain point.

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What is the Right Burn Rate at a Startup Company?

Both Sides of the Table

Gross Burn vs. Net Burn. Burn rate in case you don’t know is the amount of money a company is either spending (gross) or losing (net) per month. (it Net burn is the amount of money you are losing per month. I often see companies burning $100,000 per month (net) looking to raise $6-8 million.

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