This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 22, 2014

Needless to say, I have a fair amount of startup event experience. Others talked as if they were the ones doing the deals--even though they''re just the ones making the cap tables in Excel. Talking about your acqui-hire as anything but a failure is just plain fraud. This week, I''ve got three things on the docket.

Venture Capital 140

Venture Capital Cap Table Startup Early Stage 140

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Why Pairing Junior Executives With External Mentors Can Accelerate Your Hiring and Their Professional Development Often at a startup it’s better to hire for talent, ambition, and commitment, than years in role or ‘did they have the job already somewhere else.’ My intuition? Just get her on board.

Hiring 60

Hiring Cap Table Equity Dividend 60

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

If you’re a startup and you don’t have a close relationship with a few law firms you’re really missing one of the most important relationships that any entrepreneur can have. I write about some of the lessons in my post on Startup Mistakes. Every town has firms that focus on startups – find them.

Southern California 318

Southern California Silicon Valley IP Stock Options 318

Hunter Walker

MAY 13, 2023

“Worst case scenario we’ll sell to a larger startup or public company for about ~$1.5m Especially in the early days of mobile/iOS engineering, if you hired strong technical talent into your early stage company, you basically created an acquisition outcome floor. per engineer.” of the time my answer is no f **g way].

Early Stage 118

Early Stage Cap Table Acquisition Sales 118

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

While at the company — and especially once she departed — Claire became one of the people I always hoped to add to a cap table or startup board. Claire got to experience, and played a large part in, Stripe’s proverbial rocketship, blossoming into thousands of employees, generating billions of dollars in revenue and valuation.

Cap Table 75

Cap Table Hiring Viral Valuation 75

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

August 20, 2017: This is another in my series of posts all leading up to a book on Startup Decision Making. One of the most common mistakes I see in startups is making decisions that lose sight of the context , including the past, present, and future. Compensation decisions obviously affect hiring and retention.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

VC Adventure

AUGUST 15, 2018

It was and is imprecise science but – at least in the case of venture backed startups – there wasn’t much harm in an option being priced low. These reports are generally quite lengthy and not always particularly comprehensible to non-finance professionals.

Valuation 48

Valuation Common Stock Cap Table Software Review 48

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 1, 2021

But that was back in 2004 and the trillions of dollars of wealth created since in startups, big tech companies and crypto makes earlier questions of extravagance seem quaint. I never heard about giraffes after Google’s IPO, although reportedly one early engineer did buy a carnival-size ferris wheel.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Cap Table IPO .Net 124

Hunter Walker

JUNE 25, 2022

I won’t invest in a startup that doesn’t care about its culture. And it’s with your first hires that your intended culture will be solidified, evolved, mutated, or challenged. Similarly, the ‘ holacracy ’ style that has been explored by some startups sounds like a nightmare. Code can be rewritten.

Cap Table 96

Cap Table Matching Hiring Business Model 96

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

Your historical trading information including financials and a “customer file” which shows the history of your transactions so that investors can run “cohort” analyses Customer reference, personal references, key team members, compensation, cap table, stock option plan, etc. and then asking to take a brochure home with you.

Cap Table 336

Cap Table Due Diligence Forecast Churn Rate 336

View from Seed

AUGUST 6, 2015

When someone goes to work for an early startup, the compensation package general includes an annual salary, health insurance, and, instead of fixed-cost performance upside, a percentage of unvested options to purchase equity in the company. It falls on the hiring company to thoroughly explain equity options to their new employees.

Equity 120

Equity Employee Cap Table Stock Options 120

keen.io

FEBRUARY 5, 2013

How I negotiated my startup compensation. When I started thinking about joining Keen, I quickly realized there is a lot I don’t know about startups. I knew enough to know I wanted to join a startup. To be honest, I knew I wanted to join this startup. Startup Equity for Early Employees. Michelle Wetzler.

Salary 50

Salary Equity Startup San Francisco 50

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 20, 2019

On the other hand, some people try and pad the cap table with a bunch of big names or industry vets, even if their check size is small, just to build the network. Maybe it’s an e-mail or maybe it’s just a quarterly phone call that everyone on the cap table can dial-in to. 3) Small investors are more aligned.

Cap Table 107

Cap Table Later Stage Hiring Founder 107

techcrunch.com

APRIL 26, 2013

For Startups And Winning SEC Approval, AngelList Opens Up Investment Platform To More Companies. In December, AngelList , a service that matches early-stage startups with investors, debuted the ability to allow accredited investors to actually invest in startups on the platform with as little as $1,000. Enterprise. Smartphones.

SEC 61

SEC Accredited Investor San Diego New York City 61

Altgate

JUNE 25, 2012

One who attracted much attention is David Choe, the graffiti artist hired to paint the company’s first headquarters. Choe’s equity is a headline-grabbing example of “dead equity”: equity owned by people who are no longer actively working for the startup. Dead equity has always been a significant issue for startups.

Equity 44

Equity Vesting Cap Table Technical Review 44

View from Seed

AUGUST 6, 2015

When someone goes to work for an early startup, the compensation package general includes an annual salary, health insurance, and, instead of fixed-cost performance upside, a percentage of unvested options to purchase equity in the company. It falls on the hiring company to thoroughly explain equity options to their new employees.

Equity 120

Equity Employee Cap Table Stock Options 120

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

You’ll need to hire and retain talen to grow your company. Tags: Startup Advice This Week in Venture Capital. How VC’s Calculate Valuation : We walked through a standard deal where you raise $1 million at a $3 million pre-money valuation leading to a $4 million post money valuation. That’s normal.

Valuation 405

Valuation Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 405

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

This is all incorporated into a document called a Cap Table. . A cap table will help you in the strategic management of business decisions. Wondering what a cap table is, its importance, and how you can maintain it to expand your business? What is a cap table? Let’s dive in.

Cap Table 112

Cap Table Pre-Money Valuation Stock Options Option Pool 112

adamac.blogspot.com

MARCH 9, 2010

Adam MacBeth Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10 Startup Red Flags Ive worked on a number of startups: from seed-stage through IPO, as a founder, employee, advisor, and consultant, as well as evaluating a bunch from the outside, so Ive seen my share of screw-ups. This means there MUST be a technical founder in a startup. Yeah me neither.

Technical Review 41

Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup 41

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Over the summer, based on feedback from our portfolio and the broader startup community, NextView created pre-formatted board deck templates for seed-stage startups — part of our Growth Guides series. Team: Hires, fires, departures, responsibility changes, major promotions, and your org chart.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

Altgate

AUGUST 25, 2012

One who attracted much attention is David Choe, the graffiti artist hired to paint the company’s first headquarters. Choe’s equity is a headline-grabbing example of “dead equity”: equity owned by people who are no longer actively working for the startup. Dead equity has always been a significant issue for startups.

Equity 28

Equity Vesting Cap Table Technical Review 28

The Startup Toolkit

AUGUST 29, 2012

If you’ve never done a tech startup before , it’s helpful to have someone who has ticked the boxes (raised money, built something people hate, built something people loved, hired someone, fired someone, made money, lost money). You’ll need to keep hiring tech guys. And sometimes it’s super ambiguous.

Technical Review 38

Technical Review CTO Hire Cap Table Software Review 38

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

He first came to see me in 2008 when we was raising money for his 1st startup – NextMedium. Startup DNA. He had made some structural mistakes in NextMedium that meant the Cap Table and leadership team was a bit wacky. I’ve known Hamet for 5 years. The idea immediately resonated. Media relationships.

Partner 340

Partner Los Angeles South Africa Cap Table 340

Hunter Walker

JUNE 14, 2018

But Homebrew is founded upon the belief that we’ll put sweat and reputation behind your startup, not just a wire transfer, so to me it seems like a normal question to help understand if you need things that we can, or can’t, provide. Hiring, org structure, product development philosophies and so on.

Cap Table 81

Cap Table Portfolio Vertical Reputation 81

OnlyOnce

MAY 26, 2022

Post 4 of 4 in the series on Scaling CFOs – other posts are How to Engage with Your CFO , When it is Time to Hire Your First Chief Financial Officer , and What Does “Great” Look Like in a CFO? ). So, getting this role right is one of the most important tasks of any startup team. Trust your gut. Posted on the Bolster blog here ).

Cap Table 62

Cap Table Forecast Finance Metrics 62

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 26, 2014

It allows you to truly focus on your product/idea instead of cap tables and keeping investors happy. If you don’t want to bring in a partner, hire someone to fill in your “business gaps”, because it is exhausting to try to do everything yourself and invariably whatever you’re not comfortable doing won’t get done for the business.

Cap Table 162

Cap Table Bootstrapping Naming America 162

OnlyOnce

FEBRUARY 9, 2022

worked as advisors and mentors to numerous early stage founders and startups. They are typically founder-led, often by a first-time CEO with new or incomplete management teams who need a lot of mentorship/development, and with a diversified cap table of firms that don’t own operating or consulting practices to help guide the scaling process.

Silicon Valley 62

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Cap Table Early Stage 62

BeyondVC

NOVEMBER 17, 2016

This is awesome not just for us but also for enterprise startups in NYC. West coast founders now fully understand why having a NYC investor on their cap table pays huge dividends and west coast VCs are regularly leading Series A and B rounds in NYC. Having more capital will only further our mission, not change it.

Cap Table 60

Cap Table Cofounder Dividend Institutional Investors 60

Haystack

AUGUST 18, 2019

You lose influence as larger investors come into the cap table and start throwing their weight around. Many of these new data-driven funds are hiring experienced VCs across early stages and building outposts in the Bay Area. You lose way more than you win. You wait the longest for liquidity. It is where most people start out.

Seed Stage 108

Seed Stage Cap Table Early Stage Malaysia 108

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 26, 2022

Hunter Walk: Ok, so we first met when you were leading comms at enterprise software company Box, a startup you joined when they were still pretty early and stayed at until post-IPO. I tried to get hired at Better Place and failed. When I learned they were hiring a community manager, I threw everything I had at the interview process.

IPO 91

IPO Cofounder Early Stage Portfolio 91

Feld Thoughts

JULY 5, 2015

There was one construct that bothered me – Geis’ use of the phrase “acqui-hire” and his effort to categorize acquisitions as acquihires, ACQUI-hires, acqui-HIRES, and ACQUI-HIRES. Dodgeball.com: But really…When a public company with a market cap of $64.1 Google acquires(?)

Acquisition 70

Acquisition Cap Table Framework Retention 70

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

The mode purpose for funding is (in order of frequency) Sales, Marketing, Market Expansion, Product Development, and Hiring Employees. Limited amount of existing debt and a clean cap table”. Up to $3M in growth capital for your tech startup”. Repayment caps usually range from 1.35x to 2.0x”. Repaid over 3–5 years”.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

genylabs.typepad.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Planning, Startups, Stories. I wont bother going into details on start-up financing terms ( see this post for an overview of typical VC terms) except to say if you dont know and understand: the firms cap table and valuation. Have not met anyone I wanted to hire who was willing to work for equity. Small Business Blogs.

Equity 40

Equity Technical Review San Jose Stock 40

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

The only problem that faces startup investors now is how to mine this new data layer efficiently to increase returns.”. For the broader use case of helping startups execute their legal paperwork, Clerky is a focused solution. EShares is an increasingly popular tool in our portfolio for tracking private company cap tables.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Eric Friedman

JUNE 27, 2016

This is the classic “hire people smarter than you” which is harder said than done. I have seen what I call “predatory advisors” come in and really mess up a cap table by promising big intros and sales contracts only to disappear after the first 6-12 months. Think about the things you DON’T know.

Equity 98

Equity Vesting Cap Table Common Stock 98

The Next Web

OCTOBER 7, 2013

That’s what a couple of my friends – engineers at Google and Bloomberg who have been following the rise of startup culture with intrigue – told me recently. They were referring to non-founder engineers, most commonly the first hire for technology businesses. Cap tables sound intimidating. What’s everyone else getting?

Engineer 129

Engineer Dilution Option Pool Vesting 129

venturehacks.com

DECEMBER 9, 2012

Venture Hacks Good advice for startups. This is the advisor paradox : hire advisors for good advice but don’t follow it, apply it. And startups are about applying unconventional wisdom. Your task is to hire the maverick advisors in the crowd. Hiring advisors is an ongoing effort. SPONSORED BY. venturehacks.

Advisory Board 50

Advisory Board Cap Table RSS Cofounder 50