Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 19, 2023

Unfortunately many founders I work with as a mentor are experts on the technical side, but have no insight into leading a team. Be compulsive about scheduling time for your team. But fortunately, team building is a skill that can be learned and practiced, for those willing to put in some effort.

Leadership 318

Leadership Technical Review Technical Cofounder Development Team Review 318

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2020

Every startup founder loves to prompt for questions from investors and potential key team members about their vision, and the huge opportunity that can be had with their disruptive technology. Most founders like to talk about their many months or years of sweat-equity , but cash invested is a stronger commitment.

Technical Review 436

Technical Review Due Diligence Sweat Equity Burn Rate 436

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 18, 2023

Every startup founder loves to prompt for questions from investors and potential key team members about their vision, and the huge opportunity that can be had with their disruptive technology. Most founders like to talk about their many months or years of sweat-equity , but cash invested is a stronger commitment.

Sweat Equity 207

Sweat Equity Burn Rate Technical Review Intellectual Property 207

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 25, 2022

Business partners can be co-founders in a startup, multiple owners of an existing business, or a joint venture. As a former startup investor, I was often involved with due diligence on founders, and I felt that founders should do the same on co-founders, as well as investors. Their skills and interests complement yours.

Technical Review 313

Technical Review Due Diligence Partner Cofounder 313

View from Seed

JANUARY 31, 2024

At NextView, we were cautious about crypto and didn’t engage significantly. Consequently, nearly every founder is attempting to weave an AI narrative into their ventures, regardless of its necessity or fit, which will likely lead to an unhealthy market environment and potentially drown out genuine opportunities.

Web 168

Web Generative AI Houston Distribution 168

VC Cafe

MARCH 1, 2024

Most startups equate the process of fundraising to dating – founders have to typically kiss a lot of frogs until the find the right fit. It’s been a while since they’ve updated their RFS list and it captures all the buzzword’s of today’s tech world: AI, defence tech, climate, spatial computing, etc.

Artificial Inteligence 176

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Software Review Generative AI 176

View from Seed

JULY 8, 2020

Over the intervening years, we’ve heard continued and consistent feedback about the value of it for seed stage Founders in providing both strategic thought and tactical help in assembling their post-financing investor communications. Again, we’ve put together the full template here for founders to utilize.

Email 331

Email Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication 331

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

Yet every entrepreneur I meet wants to talk about the idea, and rarely mentions the team. A sales fanatic on the founder team helps to contain that risk. The combination of technical insight, founder authority, and sales experience is a hard-to-beat advantage in a competitive market. The trusted leader. The industry veteran.

Technical Cofounder 309

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Advisory Board Startup 309

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 24, 2023

This will improve your effectiveness in your current role, and give you a head start towards a future role, such as startup founder, where you are the boss. In business, leadership consists of creating the vision and direction, while management is primarily about gaining traction to achieve it. Make more effective use of your own time.

Management 291

Management Leadership Demand Founder 291

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 13, 2022

Founders seem to get that. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t mean trust in the sense that VCs think founders are just going to get a fake passport and move to Fiji, or that investors are secretly plotting to take over the company. What happens sometimes is that we don’t have an honest conversation about that.

Founder 159

Founder Fiji CTO Hire Term Sheet 159

VC Cafe

AUGUST 11, 2022

A couple of weeks ago I was did a fireside chat with Alon Grinshpoon, founder and CEO of Echo3D , a CDN and CMS for 3D content in the cloud and a Remagine Ventures portfolio company, as part of an entrepreneurial finance MBA class in Tel Aviv University. We were discussing both sides of the table and the relationship between founders and VCs.

Founder 187

Founder Term Sheet Cofounder Venture Capital 187

Hunter Walker

JUNE 26, 2023

At 500, I had the opportunity to work with early-stage founders from around the world and quickly realized that this was where I wanted to spend my time. HW: Your blog , which I love, tries to bridge a knowledge gap between founders and investors, often explaining ‘why investors do/care about X’ and so on.

Silicon Valley 114

Silicon Valley Canada Founder Early Stage 114

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 20, 2023

” — Phil Norton, Founder of Leave Dates In today’s digital age, software subscriptions have become integral to business operations. ” — Phil Norton, Founder of Leave Dates In today’s digital age, software subscriptions have become integral to business operations. ” — Carl Jenson, Founder of Compare Bank.

Software Review 138

Software Review Technical Review Retention Cost 138

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Prices went up from round to round, and startups were encouraged to grow, grow, grow, and not to worry about profitability. Prices went up from round to round, and startups were encouraged to grow, grow, grow, and not to worry about profitability. It’s safe to say that that era is now over.

Venture Capital 215

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Institutional Investors 215

ReadWriteStart

JULY 5, 2023

Neko Health is well positioned to achieve its goals, as the board of directors recently welcomed notable investors such as Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of Skype, and Klaus Hommels, founder of the venture capital firm Lakestar. million) in funding from venture capitalists.

Sweden 126

Sweden Artificial Inteligence Cofounder Technical Review 126

View from Seed

MARCH 5, 2015

When entrepreneurs think about approaching VCs to cultivate a relationship for a round, they often try to match their company with the sectors in which the VC has invested in the past. The investor likely knows more about the sector than the next person and theoretically has an inclination to invest in that sector again.

Founder 120

Founder Matching Portfolio eCommerce 120

VC Cafe

MAY 17, 2023

But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains” Steve Jobs (from Chapter 8) I got to meet Uri Levine, the founder of Waze and Moovit, through his involvement in the Zell Entrepreneurship program at Reichman University. It starts from how founders pitch their startups.

Founder 103

Founder Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 103

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 26, 2023

The path to success is far from easy, which is a lesson Quattro Development’s founders, Rob Walters and Mike Liyeos, know all too well. After founding their real estate development firm during the Great Recession in 2008, the duo received a crash course in perseverance. That got us through a really tough economic time.”

Cofounder 132

Cofounder Developer United States Founder 132

SiliconHills

JUNE 21, 2017

And Phillips founded another medical advice […] The post Medici’s Founder Clinton Phillips Talks About Disrupting the Healthcare Industry on Ideas to Invoices appeared first on SiliconHills.

South Africa 102

South Africa Africa Founder Venture Capital 102

NZ Entrepreneur

JUNE 19, 2023

Commenting on their support for the initiative, Callaghan Innovation Startup and Founder spokeswoman, Dr Jenny Douché, said that the partnership with Startup NZ was a natural fit within the organisation. Dr Jenny Douché, Callaghan Innovation.

New Zealand 98

New Zealand Technical Cofounder Early Stage Entrepreneur 98

Hunter Walker

MARCH 21, 2022

We’ve sent hundreds of millions of dollars to startup bank accounts but none of those have gone to teams which don’t have at least one founder we consider to be ‘mission-driven.’ They’ve often been thinking about it deeply ahead of even understanding whether it could be a startup or would be an attractive, valuable issue to address.

Founder 117

Founder Startup LLC Software Engineering 117

Eric Friedman

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

I have been thinking about early stage equity and advisor grants for some time, including a post in 2016 , that I rely on and wanted to revisit. I have had a few founder friends reach out to me asking about how much equity to give to an advisor, and had some operators reach out asking how to become an advisor for an early stage founder.

Early Stage 103

Early Stage Equity Vesting Cap Table 103

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 18, 2024

Say what you will about VCs, but we’re a mostly predictable bunch. You know what our incentives are and we care enough about our reputation within the ecosystem to not do anything too terrible—usually. I’m not talking about active angels. I’m talking about what someone I know recently referred to as “dentists”.

.Net 88

.Net Cap Table Startup Technical Review 88

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 26, 2023

” – Marc Andreessen In the book “ Super Founders “, author Ali Tamaseb, studied 200 Unicorns, aka startups valued at over $1 billion, started between 2005 to 2018. The 7 Traits of “Super Founders” 1. They are able to stay focused on their goals, even in the face of adversity.

Founder 88

Founder Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation 88

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 19, 2024

Despite not going to university, Ash became a serial tech founder and the first marketing director of a unicorn startup – Just Eat). In this episode, I talk with Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba about how to identify your own unfair advantages and apply them to any project in your life. Which one was your favorite?

Fractional CTO 77

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review Marketing 77

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. don’t think about at all. This is obvious. Marketing first.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. don’t think about at all. This is obvious. Marketing first.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 4, 2023

Today we present Olga Camargo as part of The Startup Magazine’s Female Founder Interview series. Olga has a great story as CEO and Founder of SHENIX , a Chicago-based fintech app company focused on financial education and advisory services for Latinas. Chicago Council on Global Affairs 2010 Emerging Leaders Program Selection.

Founder 147

Founder Chicago Illinois Community 147

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 30, 2022

Investing in startups doesn’t have to be as much of a gamble as you might think; it’s all about ignoring the hype and instead letting the underpinnings of the organization, and any performance figures and projections for future revenues, do the talking. Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels. The statistics don’t lie. Timing is crucial.

Technical Review 136

Technical Review Due Diligence Angel Investor Startup 136

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

I touched on this in my post “ Founder Investor Fit “ Passing the initial filtering process. Most of these can sound like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many founders skip this initial research. The time spent on reviewing decks went down compared to 2021. How to make your pitch deck stand out.

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder Portfolio 166

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 2, 2021

If you’re thinking about starting a tech startup you already know — there are a lot of things to consider. Why should a founder entertain this idea? The legal structure for business formation is one of those critical factors, and it has a significant impact on whether you will succeed or not. LLCs vs Corporations.

Technical Review 158

Technical Review LLC IPO Stock 158

NZ Entrepreneur

SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

Welcome to ‘500 Founders’ where we ask innovators from around New Zealand for their top insights for first time startup founders. Startup founders should connect with other founders at similar stages to them, and ones who are a few steps ahead.”. ” Marta Meszaros – Founder. The Cleaning Lady.

Founder 101

Founder Cofounder New Zealand B2C 101

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 6, 2022

Steve is the CEO of Founders Space, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators with over 50 partners in 22 countries. Founders Space was ranked the #1 incubator for overseas startups by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazines. 18:05] How does the Founder Space operate? [20:21] More About Steve Hoffman: FounderSpace.com.

San Francisco 97

San Francisco Technical Review Incubator Silicon Valley 97

Hunter Walker

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

There’s a group of us who I describe as “in the industry but not of the industry,” in the sense that we understand and embrace the jobs we have but don’t put everything about venture on to a precious pedestal. And adjust accordingly.” They concealed a G.P.S.

Technical Cofounder 79

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Coder Canada 79

Duct Tape Marketing

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

Aaron is the CEO and Co-founder of Leadferno, a business and text messaging platform to close more leads faster. 9:31] So many people are talking about SMS and how the open rates are higher, but many people don’t want their messaging app to turn into what email has become for a lot of people – how do you not fall into this? [13:07]

SMS 101

SMS Marketing Cofounder Software Review 101

NZ Entrepreneur

JANUARY 20, 2022

Having spent close on a decade working in and reporting on our small but burgeoning startup ecosystem, and a decade before that “building my chops” in other various entrepreneurial endeavours, I am familiar with the toll that entrepreneurship can exact on founder mental health. It also made me angry.

New Zealand 109

New Zealand Founder Technical Cofounder Kenya 109

Hearpreneur

AUGUST 28, 2022

Some of them are alive and continue to do great things while others only read about them. What I admire most about Gates is his ability to take risks and make bold decisions. What I love the most about her business is she started with just 5,000 dollars in hand. 1- Jessica Livingston. Photo Credit: Noah Elion. 2- Bill Gates.

Entrepreneur 118

Entrepreneur Green Cofounder Trinidad 118