Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

It doesn’t prove your business model of pricing, distribution, and support. Funding for pre-revenue startups used to be the domain of angel investors, but they have moved up-stage. Get a real customer and real revenue. Real customers give you real feedback, rather than just tell you what you want to hear.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Sweat Equity CTO Hire 281

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2022

That approach may work for an entrepreneur who just sold a successful business for a huge profit, but it doesn’t work for the rest of us who are not proven successes yet, or don’t even have a business yet. At these stages, it’s all about you, and your ability to communicate and execute effectively.

Due Diligence 271

Due Diligence Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Preferred Stock 271

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

The first time a few brave corporate innovators tried to overlay the Lean tools and techniques that work in early-stage startups in an existing corporation, the result was chaos, confusion, frustration and ultimately, failure. Horizon 1 activities support existing business models. Horizon 1 is the company’s core business.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 7, 2012

In these days of rapid change, almost every startup has to adapt their solution, business model, or target customer. You need to find vendors who can deliver in less cost and time than competitors, and build distribution and support channels. Leverage the technology to change directions as needed.

Startup 242

Startup Database Early Stage Distribution 242

The Next Web

DECEMBER 4, 2013

As a startup, you’re working with limited resources and a lean business model. Building your brand presence on specialized outlets holds immense value for your business – especially in early stages. Zappos assumes everyone in the company is on social media and trusts them to participate in growing the brand.

Social Media 158

Social Media Media Viral Startup 158

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

It doesn’t prove your business model of pricing, distribution, and support. Funding for pre-revenue startups used to be the domain of angel investors, but they have moved up-stage. Get a real customer and real revenue. Real customers give you real feedback, rather than just tell you what you want to hear.

Intellectual Property 260

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 260

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

Seed-stage compatible: Like traditional equity VC investors, Flexible VCs accomodate early-stage investment risk within their portfolios better than a traditional RBI funder. Eligible for favorable treatment under Qualified Small Business Stock exemption, if structured as equity. Early liquidity. Venture Debt.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 29, 2010

In these days of rapid change, almost every startup has to adapt their solution, business model, or target customer. You need to find vendors who can deliver in less cost and time than competitors, and build distribution and support channels. Leverage the technology to change directions as needed.

Entrepreneur 236

Entrepreneur Database Early Stage Distribution 236

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

It doesn’t prove your business model of pricing, distribution, and support. Funding for pre-revenue startups used to be the domain of angel investors, but they have moved up-stage. Get a real customer and real revenue. Real customers give you real feedback, rather than just tell you what you want to hear.

Intellectual Property 253

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 253

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 14, 2020

That approach may work for an entrepreneur who just sold a successful business for a huge profit, but it doesn’t work for the rest of us who are not proven successes yet, or don’t even have a business yet. At these stages, it’s all about you, and your ability to communicate and execute effectively.

Due Diligence 308

Due Diligence Intellectual Property Preferred Stock Seed Stage 308

View from Seed

JULY 19, 2019

All early stage venture firms essentially look at some weighting of team, market, product, and traction. And additionally, my partners and I use other, more differentiated, lenses like asking if a startup has an “ unfair distribution advantage.”

Boston 149

Boston B2B Early Stage Portfolio 149

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Eric Ries in Times Square For any model to be useful it has to predict what happens in the real world – including the web. I realized the Customer Development model needs to be clearer in what exactly a startup is supposed to do, regardless of the business model. “What is the “Business Model” of your startup?&#

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

It doesn’t prove your business model of pricing, distribution, and support. Funding for pre-revenue startups used to be the domain of angel investors, but they have moved up-stage. Get a real customer and real revenue. Real customers give you real feedback, rather than just tell you what you want to hear.

Intellectual Property 222

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 222

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

Others believe that new business models are emerging that could replace venture capital all together. Yes, distributions to LPs have been pushed out a few years but the value capture in privates by the best VC firms (and best LPs) has been enormous. We’re in a new tech bubble!” some have pronounced. More on that later.

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital IPO Mezzanine Early Stage 292

Mucker Lab

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Furthermore, the venture “business” is a business of making money off outliers. Normal distributions do not exist; standard deviations are meaningless. Out of hundreds of daily-deal companies funded, one or two became long-term businesses. Betting on the wrong horse. The road ahead for entrepreneurs.

Harvest 60

Harvest Vertical IPO Early Stage 60

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 6, 2022

You know, could you look at my business plan? See if the business model works, all these questions. So if you're running a small business, usually what you're doing, if it's a consulting business or any type of business, you are doing something similar to what other people have done in the past.

San Francisco 97

San Francisco Technical Review Incubator Silicon Valley 97

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 4, 2022

The application landscape, while still in the early stages, seems to be rapidly growing. As the tools are being democratised (from OpenAI’s invite-only approach to Stable Diffusion’s open source disruption), new APIs are making it possible for developers to create novel products using these technologies.

Generative AI 204

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence Video Architecture 204

David Teten

DECEMBER 12, 2017

As a globally focused LP in early stage VC funds, we at Blue Future Partners have observed a growing trend of firms investing substantially in software tools, whether developing proprietary solutions or adopting off the shelf tools. But what tools are they using themselves to automate their own processes? Methodology.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 60

Gust

JANUARY 4, 2012

Most investors will assume that if the business plan is solid and a large market opportunity exists, there will be vigorous competition from other players. The amount of investment in IP in any direct sense is generally small for early stage startups. Measured as a discrete line item in a budget, it might be near zero.

Intellectual Property 143

Intellectual Property IP Startup United States 143

Genuine VC

APRIL 30, 2008

After the crash at the end of the last decade, web startups clamped down to focus on their core value proposition and were forced out of necessity for survival to hone their revenue models. The old playbook six years ago was that the web distribution could be bought for a price with Google Adwords.

Distribution 103

Distribution Widget Viral Social Media 103

Transformify

SEPTEMBER 12, 2017

Post Brexit, many companies in the UK consider distributed teams overseas as an alternative to the shrinking talent pool and high recruitment costs in Britain. Kenya: Youth Fund Targets Young People in Business Start-Up Loans Plan. According to the fund chairman, Ronnie Osumba, the start-up market is yet to be explored.

Africa 75

Africa Benin Seychelles Nigeria 75

Genuine VC

APRIL 30, 2008

After the crash at the end of the last decade, web startups clamped down to focus on their core value proposition and were forced out of necessity for survival to hone their revenue models. The old playbook six years ago was that the web distribution could be bought for a price with Google Adwords.

Distribution 100

Distribution Widget Viral Social Media 100

Mucker Lab

AUGUST 27, 2014

It’s probably not too controversial to say that the median level of sophistication of early stage entrepreneurs in Los Angeles is lower than that of Bay Area. Categories like retail, automotive, logistics, distribution, manufacturing, and many others all play a significant role in employment AND entrepreneurship in Southern California.

Los Angeles 138

Los Angeles Southern California Silicon Valley Technical Review 138

Up and Running

MAY 3, 2012

From a young person’s perspective, with tight labour markets, decreasing barriers to entry, low capital-intensive business models and immediate free access to a global market, the appeal is also compelling. And besides, obtaining early-stage investment is no guarantee of success, either. What is there not to like?

Entrepreneur 82

Entrepreneur Technical Review Silicon Valley Lean 82

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2010

One of the toughest problems for entrepreneurs is to keep score as they search for their business model. One of the key concepts of Customer Development is writing down your initial hypotheses (guesses) of all the parts of your business model, then updating them with the facts you find outside the building. Keeping Score.

Customer Development 211

Customer Development Business Model Early Stage Channel 211

SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

It seems that four different models of "discussion creation" have occurred: Organice Discussion - someone posts something interesting, lots of bloggers post on the topic, distributed discussion ensues. Open Source Business Models, speakers for Web 2.0 Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2010

The customary vesting model has founders vest their stock over 4-years , and when the founding CEO gets in over their head the VC’s bring in professional management. The fallacy is believing that a founders value is evenly distributed over four years. And that they’ll emerge from this fog of war with a scalable business model.

Vesting 251

Vesting Liquidity Event Venture Capital Founder Vesting 251

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2016

That approach may work for an entrepreneur who just sold a successful business for a huge profit, but it doesn’t work for the rest of us who are not proven successes yet, or don’t even have a business yet. At these stages, it’s all about you, and your ability to communicate and execute effectively.

Due Diligence 120

Due Diligence Intellectual Property Preferred Stock Seed Stage 120

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core. Great stuff.

Metrics 225

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 26, 2013

Part 6: Distribution channels in Life Sciences. Vitruvian is a good example of a great early stage therapeutics idea with animal data missing and many key components of the business model still needed to verify. Part 3: described what we’re going to do about it. Part 7: Revenue Streams in Life Sciences.

Lean 237

Lean Customer Development Video Early Stage 237

Up and Running

JULY 22, 2019

A telling success factor for new businesses looking to make an impact in their industries is whether they can attract investment at an early stage of development. . Attracting investors in the early stages helps bring in new partners that are committed to your business. Do not be greedy. Build your profile.

Canada 78

Canada Early Stage Valuation Finance 78

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Business Model I would like to propose that in addition to team, product, and market, there is actually a fourth, equally important, core element of startups, which is the need for a viable business model. These new business models focused heavily on how buying behavior has changed because of the power of the web.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 18, 2016

Make no mistake, starting your own business is indeed gratifying that way, but not all startups are an escape from a regular job. The business model and investors play a critical role in shaping the independence and work-style of an entrepreneur. What Investors Mean For A Startup. Of course, all investors are not the same.

Startup 100

Startup Equity Bootstrapping Early Stage 100

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

We often tell founders that a business plan is nonsense. A business model, on the other hand, is a snapshot of your business assumptions at this moment in time. It''s that the business model is complex. Data-driven business is here today; it''s just not evenly distributed.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Growthink Blog

AUGUST 12, 2013

Well, in most forms of angel and early-stage private equity investing, these breakdowns flow from a misunderstanding of the power and nature of outliers. Thus, one of the first screens that the intelligent early stage investor should utilize is the degree to which a network effect is present in a company''s business model.

Private Equity 67

Private Equity Equity Early Stage IPO 67

Growthink Blog

FEBRUARY 13, 2012

Last week , I shared the lessons of liquidity and sector that the intelligent early - stage investor can learn from Facebook's IPO. This week, let’s discuss arguably the most important wisdom to be gained from the story of Facebook's founding, rocket ship growth, and now exit for its early investors. And so on and so on.

IPO 67

IPO Private Equity Early Stage Equity 67

The Equity Kicker

FEBRUARY 24, 2014

Why I have taken on this challenge now, at this moment in time, really boils down to 3 reasons; The VC model is changing and I believe that the approach that we are taking at Forward Partners will become the future of early stage tech investment. I am truly excited about being instrumental in defining that model.

Partner 91

Partner Early Stage Business Model HTML 91