Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2013

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup Founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Should you start a company solo or find co-Founders to help you? The co-Founder relationship dilemma.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2010

And that they don’t set your co-founders or key employees against you in meetings. Remember what happened to the alleged co-founders when Peter Thiel came in? Well, some of the people who considered themselves co-founders suddenly found out they weren’t! Some of those will be outside the company.

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Advisory Board Cofounder Phoenix Arizona 233

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2014

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup Founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Should you start a company solo or find co-Founders to help you? The co-Founder relationship dilemma.

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Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 268

Austin Startup

MARCH 3, 2018

Friday, March 9 Attracting VC Funding Outside Silicon Valley Panel with HomeAway founder Brian Sharples & Capital Factory Director Gordon Daugherty We do a lot of things differently in Texas, including fundraising. Gayle King is co-host of CBS This Morning. as in pro wrestling?—?you’re you’re going to take some hits.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2017

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Should you start a company solo or find co-founders to help you? The co-founder relationship dilemma.

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Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 144

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

I usually don’t back a business unless there are founders that can build, sell, and service the new solution that is being brought to market. In this case, they could build and service it but they needed a third co-founder to sell it. Read my Lucky7 Bootstrap or VC? post for more perspective on this.

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Bootstrapping IPO Business Model Software Review 52

YoungUpstarts

JULY 8, 2013

by Natalie Gonzalez, co-founder and head of marketing and social media at Chatalog. Although stressful, we bootstrapped the company for as long as possible while having conversations with potential investors. Small businesses are the economic engine that drives the U.S. New survey data from Constant Contact® , Inc.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 2, 2016

Unfortunately, as a startup advisor and angel investor, I’ve seen too many ventures with great potential get destroyed or set back by legal and other shortcuts that should never have been allowed to happen. A co-founder who loses interest and backs out early will likely be back to claim his half after you reach unicorn status.

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Intellectual Property Due Diligence Non-Compete Startup 120

Scalable Startup

AUGUST 9, 2018

In their quest for sustainable growth, the elusive dream for most first time founders is that first funding. This can either come from the founder(s) own bank account or from outside investors. If you’re bootstrapping, you don’t need to worry about either of these options. One of the easiest mistake to fix is timing.

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Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Early Stage Cofounder 20

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. We bootstrapped it.

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Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 149

venturehacks.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

SUPPORTED BY Products Archives @venturehacks Books AngelList About RSS How to pick a co-founder by Naval Ravikant on November 12th, 2009 Update : Also see our 40-minute interview on this topic. Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors.

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Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Technical Review 101

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 13, 2014

By Paul Jackson, founder of Worthworm. Some entrepreneurs will choose to bootstrap their venture the best they can, while others will turn to trendier options such as crowd funding or a startup accelerator to get off the ground. However, many more will choose to seek funding from investors as a way to sustain growth.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. We bootstrapped it.

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Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 25, 2016

As an active angel investor, here are some key ones I have seen, with some guidance on how to improve your odds. If you and your team have no experience in your chosen domain or no credentials starting a business, you will have trouble attracting investors. Poorly written or missing business plan.

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Intellectual Property Accredited Investor Angel Investor Reputation 120

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 13, 2012

In 1998, before they even incorporated, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were trying to present their concept to early-stage, or "angel" investors, with limited success. Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim was one such angel. So what do angels want? What's your end game?

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YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 11, 2017

by Karla Friede, CEO, co-founder, and member of the Board of Directors at Nvoicepay. Earlier this month, my co-founders and I raised our sixth round of venture capital funding for Nvoicepay. Do not waste your time with investors outside of, or even adjacent to your target market. Target firms with female partners.

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www.inc.com

JULY 9, 2010

Ive done a lot of placing people into positions, and I have never used a job board as a way to do that," says Rich Sloan , co-founder of StartupNation. Every type of business has their own meetings," says Martin Zwilling , founder and CEO of consulting group Startup Professionals. 1 way to recruit talent.

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Scott Edward Walker

OCTOBER 28, 2014

Each week, we share our favorite video of successful entrepreneurs, investors or business leaders on a variety of topics. Bootstrap as long as you possibly can.” –Ron It’s important for the founder to say to themselves in the beginning, ‘at what point does my ownership start to de-motivate me?’ Ron Conway (at 4:48).

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Cap Table Cofounder Silicon Valley Venture Capital 67

www.mint.com

MARCH 9, 2010

However, a perfectly acceptable—and perhaps even better—answer is that there are no investors other than the founders, and the plan is to bootstrap the company as long as possible. If there are outside investors, they are likely to be on the board. These days revenue is the best source of capital. That’s cool.

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Software Review Startup Post-Money Valuation Technical Review 68

Up and Running

OCTOBER 24, 2017

You never know—you may just get a potential investor out of it like Michael Litt , co-founder of Vidyard. Seeking angel investing may seem like an intimidating concept, but it’s actually very simple and approachable once you understand it. So how do you attract investors?

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Professor VC

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

Bootstrapping 101. What does it take to be an Angel Investor? I am an active angel investor and on the board of Sand Hill Angels. Survey says VC's invest on Gut Instinct. ► July. (1). ► May. (1). Can you start a company on $10K? ► March. (1). ► January. (1). ► 2008. (14).

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Technical Review San Jose Angel Investor Silicon Valley 38

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

“If you can fix a problem for someone and do it better, quicker, and/or cheaper than your competitor, you’re off to a good start.” – Gabriel Kuperman, founder and CEO of CuePin. We created UpKeep to fill this void—a cloud-based solution that was affordable for any size business.” – Ryan Chan, founder of UpKeep.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2022

Assess potential for funding or bootstrapping. If you will need to supplement your own funds and assets for your business, don’t wait for a crisis to enlist family, friends, angel investors, or start a crowdfunding campaign. Consolidated tools tend to be easier to use and cheaper than the old standbys.

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Babbling VC

JULY 25, 2012

This is an awesome WIN in my eyes (for him and his angel investors maybe) but is by far not a venture capital WIN. Even if you are Chris Dixon and have Caterina Fake as a co-founder, you inherently realize the risk of what you're doing and the fact that becoming a billion dollar business is a way-long shot!

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Venture Capital Angel Investor Bootstrapping Cofounder 70

Hippoland

JULY 24, 2018

And I enjoy working with founders immensely. You need to be willing to bootstrap for about 5-10 years. So it actually is very hard to bootstrap a micro VC, because on one hand, you get virtually no salary but are also mostly prohibited from making money outside of your work. But most importantly, I love fundraising.

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Hippoland

JULY 24, 2018

And I enjoy working with founders immensely. You need to be willing to bootstrap for about 5-10 years. So it actually is very hard to bootstrap a micro VC, because on one hand, you get virtually no salary but are also mostly prohibited from making money outside of your work. But most importantly, I love fundraising.

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Salary Capital Call Bootstrapping Cofounder 48

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

He blogs to 10,000 web entrepreneurs at Software by Rob and co-hosts the podcast Startups for the Rest of Us. Before I get into the details for founders, let me talk about options-hungry employees. The expanding pool of angel, seed, and super seed funds is another. You can bootstrap your way into existence. Dying at 70?

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Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

But you have, perhaps, heard less specific discussions on what angel investors are looking for. Well, some angel investors are looking for exactly the same thing as what VCs are looking for. In other words, these are angels looking for billion dollar opportunities as well.

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Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

But you have, perhaps, heard less specific discussions on what angel investors are looking for. Well, some angel investors are looking for exactly the same thing as what VCs are looking for. In other words, these are angels looking for billion dollar opportunities as well.

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Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

Professor VC

DECEMBER 26, 2012

If you are entrepreneur that isn't in a position for Series A, find other financing sources and/or figure out how to bootstrap to cash flow breakeven or in Jason's words "put on your big boy undies". Learn how to build a product, pitch investors, raise a small amount of angel funding, hire the early team, acquire users, sell, iterate.

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Professor VC

JUNE 20, 2011

Since the iControl system chronicles all meetings, I was able to find the automatic picture snapped from my first meeting with the founders, Reza Raji and Chris Stevens on April 22, 2004. Series B and the $5M Series A , there were angels writing checks with many less 0s. Bootstrapping 101. ► July. (1). ► May. (1).

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Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

I discuss category creation with one of the co-authors of Play Bigger , Christopher Lochhead, in episode #232 of Legends and Losers if you would like to really delve into that (it is a very important topic). Ralph Mack, Julie Allegro, and other prominent angel investors, and I’ve also agreed to be the CEO’s primary mentor.

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Software Review Sales Cofounder Analytics 48

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like.

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Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

About twenty people on Answers OnStartups have asked this question in one form or another: When I meet an angel investor, he may ask: "What if a big company copies your idea and develops the same website as yours after your website goes public?". This is Part 2 of the series: 5 lessons from 150 startup pitches.??? The Dream Team.

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Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

Professor VC

MAY 30, 2009

Also, if it turns out he neglected his girlfriend too much while starting up the company, hell certainly have the opportunity to meet plenty of co-eds as he hands out flyers for the site on campus. Labels: bootstrapping , business plans , entrepreneurship. Bootstrapping 101. What does it take to be an Angel Investor?

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San Jose Angel Investor Silicon Valley Bootstrapping 28

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

By Alan Lobock, co-founder, Worthworm. For example, in a brief discussion shortly after starting their company the co-founders decide they are willing to give up 10% ownership in exchange for $1 million. As an entrepreneur bootstrapping a venture, spending funds on consultants isn’t usually kind to your budget.

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Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Angel Investor Cofounder 133

Up and Running

MAY 15, 2019

Word of mouth is no substitute for market research , says Ben Price, co-founder of Hard Knocks Brewing, a small brewpub in its second year of operation. Co-founders Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge leased their startup system from a family running a German restaurant out of a former brewpub.

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Oregon Jordan Software Review Distribution 24