Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

You (think) you have product-market fit with real customers and real revenue and need money to grow and expand. What most founders don’t realize is: Every stage of a startup requires a different set of metrics and milestones and founder skills. Better answer, “Because I’m the customer.”) Business Model.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

At seed-stage startups, especially companies with well-networked founders and investors, finding applicants who can do a job on paper is not overly difficult. To help you more effectively build your early teams, we asked a group of founders to share their favorite interview questions when they build new startup teams.

Founder 120

Founder Seed Stage Cofounder Boston 120

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. What should be in your pre-seed pitch deck. What would make an investor more interested in your pitch deck.

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder Portfolio 166

View from Seed

MAY 19, 2015

To me, the most exciting (and most perilous) times in a company’s lifecycle are the early first stages when it is just getting off the ground. At the seed stage, the founder’s or co-founders’ role in the company is essential and therefore carries a great deal of risk for missteps. Indecisiveness.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Liquidity Event Cofounder Startup 120

View from Seed

APRIL 16, 2015

An easy way to think about it is that value over time doesn’t go up and to the right in a straight line like this: Instead, it’s more of a stair step like this: So, what are the value inflection points that create the stair steps, and how does one think about it at the earliest stages? These might include: Bring on a technical co-founder.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Cofounder Early Stage Startup 120

View from Seed

AUGUST 12, 2015

I loved the founder but was struggling because this just didn’t seem “big enough” to me. They pass because of doubts about customer adoption. It’s not a question of “are there a lot of potential customers for this?” It’s more a matter of, “I don’t really believe that lots and lots of customers will buy/adopt this.”

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Marketing Angel Investor Term Sheet 120

View from Seed

AUGUST 12, 2015

I loved the founder but was struggling because this just didn’t seem “big enough” to me. They pass because of doubts about customer adoption. It’s not a question of “are there a lot of potential customers for this?” It’s more a matter of, “I don’t really believe that lots and lots of customers will buy/adopt this.”

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Marketing Angel Investor Term Sheet 120

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

My internal compass has always steered me strongly toward the belief that founders who can scale with their startup companies are better to back that founders who eventually need to hire a CEO. Very few founder CEOs go into the job ever expecting to give up their seat. We set out to find Jonathan’s “co-founder.”

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

(co-written with Stephane Nasser , co-founder of OpenVC , an open-source initiative to collect and analyze all VC theses.). OpenVC is a new, open-source initiative to collect and analyze all publicly available VC theses, to help founders more efficiently find the right investors, and vice-versa. Technical founders .

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

View from Seed

AUGUST 3, 2021

As seed stage investors here at NextView Ventures , we have the privilege of working with a wide profile of founders at the company conception stage — from early-career first time entrepreneurs , to seasoned execs turned founders , to repeat successful entrepreneurs.

Cofounder 156

Cofounder Seed Stage Portfolio Revenue 156

View from Seed

AUGUST 3, 2021

As seed stage investors here at NextView Ventures , we have the privilege of working with a wide profile of founders at the company conception stage — from early-career first time entrepreneurs , to seasoned execs turned founders , to repeat successful entrepreneurs.

Cofounder 156

Cofounder Seed Stage Revenue Acquisition 156

View from Seed

AUGUST 3, 2021

As seed stage investors here at NextView Ventures , we have the privilege of working with a wide profile of founders at the company conception stage — from early-career first time entrepreneurs , to seasoned execs turned founders , to repeat successful entrepreneurs.

Cofounder 136

Cofounder Seed Stage Portfolio Revenue 136

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Thanks to all of the amazing founders, advisors, co-investors, corporate partners, and others that helped make 2018 an amazing year. To that point, we are most excited when our founders are able to go from slide deck to product-market fit and Series A and beyond. First check to seed?—?congrats First check to Series A?—?congrats

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Most of these rhyme with what we’ve said in the past, but some have also evolved to fit the changing landscape and our own convictions about what really matters for founders and their investors at the seed stage. Of the last 15 investments we’ve made, we’ve been the lead or co-lead investor over 80% of the time. .

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. Now it’s time to set the stage with the early traction you have. Seed stage VCs are realistic about how much traction a very raw company might have. B) Post-Product Companies.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

You don’t often hear a founder speak so candidly about this (especially before the final chapter is written) so it’s worth a listen. . We were co-lead investors in Grove’s seed round and actually doubled down in an intermediate round prior to this challenging series A process. The second is customer obsession and market focus.

Founder 153

Founder Cofounder Seed Stage Portfolio 153

Hearpreneur

MAY 4, 2019

Conversely, the integrated mindsets, mechanics, and methodologies of entrepreneurship and venture capital are designed and calibrated to discover new customer needs and devise innovative and new-to-the-world solutions. It is, literally, the toolkit for operating what we call the Big to Bigger machine.

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Founder Entrepreneur Venture Capital 66

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

Kayak was started here in my backyard of Boston… co-founder & CTO Paul English and the product/engineering team is based here in Concord MA. Co-founder & CEO Steve Hafner and the business team are based in Norwalk, CT. I co-founded NextView Ventures , a seed-stage VC firm based in Boston, in 2010.

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

View from Seed

JULY 17, 2019

Although you still hear stories of investors that require founders to move to SF, it’s more likely these days that investors see a winning business outside of the Bay Area as a positive, given the costs and competitive pressure in that local market. How should a founder go about it? But doing this takes extra work.

San Francisco 243

San Francisco Cofounder B2B Seed Stage 243

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Many assume it was a cakewalk, based on the success LinkedIn has enjoyed over time and the current stature of our founder/CEO Reid Hoffman (now Chairman). Yes… he was a very successful PayPal exec and previously co-founder & VP Product of SocialNet. But keep in mind at this point Reid’s a first-time CEO.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

VC Cafe

MARCH 31, 2021

VC Cafe: What’s the best advice or practical tips you have for founders with regards to marketing and branding at seed stage? Be customer-obsessed. Find your “super users”, the super passionate people that represent your customers at scale; they’re your champions. Stay focused and block out the noise.

Marketing 179

Marketing Early Stage Seed Stage 179

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2009

A few years ago it became fashionable for large VC’s to do seed funding. With open source software (LAMP stack) and cloud computing infrastructure it just wasn’t that expensive to get your company going and founders just wanted to raise less money. Many VCs who do lots of seed stage deals are very supportive and active.

Software Review 283

Software Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Southern California 283

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

And VC’s are tough customers. If you have beta customers, new pricing plans, different positioning, more market insights, good press coverage – whatever – these are all signs that the ball is moving forward. Almost every deal I’ve ever funded I’ve gotten to know the founders over time.

Early Stage 360

Early Stage Startup Venture Capital Seed Stage 360

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

FitzGerald is the co-founder and CEO of Submittable , a cloud-based submission platform used by thousands of publishers for accepting and curating digital content. Get one customer. Get one customer. At the seed stage, your investors will be people who are more interested in you and your team than your product.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley Montana Curation Seed Stage 126

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Of the NextView-backed founders have have tried to raise this round, over 70% have done so (compared to a mean success rate in the industry of around 27%, according to some sources ). However, large, lifecycle VCs who invest in a seed round seem to correlate to an increase the size of the Series A raised by a given startup.

Syndicate 333

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Startup 333

View from Seed

AUGUST 2, 2017

For this reason, we’re excited to announce that we have closed on NextView’s $50M third fund, with a mission to champion founders who are redesigning the Everyday Economy. . For example, Upserve , a NextView portfolio company, is an all-in-one tech platform (POS, payments, CRM/loyalty, BI) to help restaurants better serve their customers.

Seed Stage 273

Seed Stage Portfolio Cofounder B2B 273

Up and Running

DECEMBER 13, 2021

Fundraising isn’t easy for most founders. No longer are founders being asked to drive up and down Sand Hill Road, meet in small coffee shops throughout SF or NYC, or spend a meaningful amount of money getting around to all of these meetings. Don’t interrupt your co-founder or the investor. Know when to stop talking.

Founder 85

Founder Cofounder SMS Seed Stage 85

Gust

OCTOBER 20, 2011

Diversification across industry sectors is not as easily achieved for angels as could be accomplished in public markets, but can be achieved by co-investing with trusted angel colleagues in a broader set of businesses. We also have data points for VC investments in seed/startup companies (but not necessarily pre-revenue companies).

Valuation 146

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Intellectual Property Technical Review 146

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

Even for those who don’t care to dive into the numbers, it’s worth a quick glance because co-founder/CEO Andrew Mason wrote a letter which forms the preamble of the full document. Cumulative customers (unique buyers of Groupons): 15.8M (Q1 2011), 9.0M (2010), 0.4M (2009). in net revenue and passes $0.58

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

Founders laud their own “end-to-end” thinking. He’s dubbed the approach “ pretotyping ,” and it shares many of the same principles as both its similar-sounding (if later-stage) cousin, prototyping, as well as the more well-known lean startup movement. ” It’s a very different story.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

View from Seed

AUGUST 5, 2014

This is a guest post from Ben Rubin , co-founder and CEO of Change Collective , which offers courses for behavior change with world-class experts. For seed-stage startups, when resources are tight, trying to consciously build startup culture can feel wasteful. My co-founder Derek had the opposite communication style.

Cofounder 307

Cofounder Startup SCRUM Seed Stage 307

YoungUpstarts

MAY 8, 2018

All entrepreneurs want to demonstrate that they’re competent, courageous, and bold, however, always take a co-founder or trusted advisor along. Wayne Embree is an experienced seed-stage investor with a 30-year track record of fueling startup growth through venture capital. Learn to decipher “no”.

Seed Stage 133

Seed Stage Due Diligence Cofounder New York 133

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

This post was co-authored with Omri Stern and originally appeared in Harvard Business Review. The founders have started companies before. More recently, Israeli founders are themselves moving to the U.S. So how early should the founders pack their bags and ship out to the U.S.? Israel has been branded the “startup nation.”

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

View from Seed

MAY 27, 2015

We’ll talk to founders as well as executives, investors, and journalists, all of whom did something smart or sneaky or downright brilliant to go from zero to one in an important area of their business. Yes, there are other tech podcasts out there that do a great job talking about industry trends, strategy, and founders’ stories.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Early Stage Non-Compete Silicon Valley 120

YoungUpstarts

JULY 29, 2013

by Meng Weng Wong, co-founder and social engineer at JFDI Asia. But they’ll sit up and pay attention when you talk about the customers and revenues of the business. You’re competing with actual businesses, other startups who you’ve probably never met, to reach millions of customers and become a billion-dollar company.

Asia 207

Asia Singapore Cofounder Incubator 207

David Teten

DECEMBER 12, 2017

In his white paper How Private Equity and Venture Capital Investors Are Eating Their Own Dogfood , PEVCTECH.com founder David Teten explored how private equity and venture capital investors are trying to automate more of their job. I’d expect a similar shift in venture over the next decade or two.”.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 60

Ben's Blog

JANUARY 31, 2012

That excitement took a sharp downhill turn when one of the top partners said to me, in front of my co-founders, “When are you going to get a real CEO?”. As we set out to design a venture capital firm that would enable founders to run their own companies, we began by asking: In what ways are professional CEOs superior to founder CEOs?

Venture Capital 78

Venture Capital Portfolio Cofounder Partner 78