article thumbnail

How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

Most of this advice boils down to an argument in favor of basic planning before starting a company or raising money. In many ways the fact that it has become so cheap to start a company and relatively cheap to raise angel/seed money that we as an industry have gotten lazy on basic planning. Incumbent Strengths & Weaknesses.

Startup 150
article thumbnail

This Week in VC with @VCMike Hirshland of Polaris Ventures

Both Sides of the Table

This includes seed funding Automattic (who produce WordPress, the blog I use for this website) and investing in formspring.me, stickybits, Thing Labs (producer of Brizzly), KissMetrics and many others including Quantcast. So how is Mike able to do this at a time where others have warned against taking seed money from VC funds?

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Do the Math

Austin Startup

A business model must be created out of whole cloth, and generally it’s a compilation of assumptions piled on top of other assumptions. Every model has a happy outcome when a founder is trying to convince himself or herself, a team, an investor, or even a spouse that the venture ahead is a good idea.

article thumbnail

How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

Microsofts originalplan was to make money selling programming languages, of all things.Their current business model didnt occur to them until IBM droppedit in their lap five years later. Because so little money is involved, raising seedcapital is comparatively easy-- at least in the sense of getting aquick yes or no.

Startup 105
article thumbnail

From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

techcrunch.com

Update: Part 2: Finding Your Co-Founders CrunchBase Information Seth Sternberg meebo Information provided by CrunchBase Tweet Next Post Previous Post Advertisement Now Commented Facebook Goodbye, MacBook Pro. For both companies, the initial traction enabled raising seed money to get them to a traditional VC investment.)