Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As an early-stage VC I love this phase. Sam also had a vision as early as 2012 about how MakeSpace would be a large employer of middle-income jobs: The company would hire employees rather than just have contractors and he would lead the effort to ensure they had opportunities for growth and benefits for their families.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

When Chad Pytel introduced me to Bryan Helmkamp , CEO/Co-founder of Code Climate , I knew that I had to pay attention. Chad is the CEO of thoughtbot, a consulting firm that makes web + mobile apps for early-stage startups. I can definitely see it being pretty big.” “I I’m quite bullish.” “I It’s indispensable.”

Software Review 191

Software Review Chad Ruby PHP 191

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 23, 2007

And there are definitely other service providers who provide things like marketing services who are interesting, so its not all service providers, its more like the wealth management types. Why does this hurt, well I was just reading a few blog posts yesterday on finding startup co-founders: Where do you Find Cofounders?

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Technical Cofounder Southern California Networking 150

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

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

think about the entrepreneurs that started in the early days of the Internet, mobile, crypto, VR and yes… now Metaverse. Given the ‘fuzzy’ period we’re in, where we still struggle with a definition of the Metaverse, it’s easy to dismiss it all as a fad. Tim Sweeney, Epic Games’ founder and CEO.

IP 206

IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2018

Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn and Greylock Partners will be talking about “blitzscaling” with his co-author Chris Yeh, and Stanford Professor Bob Sutton. Kabam, the mobile gaming company, hit a major stumbling block in its early days when its financing was lost due to the 2008 financial collapse.

Lean 103

Lean Las Vegas Cofounder Startup 103

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2010

years ago and told me, “I just got offered the chance to buy this company because the founder doesn’t want to continue. Sometimes this involves co-CEO’s. They often involve big hugs on stage. I think we had slightly different definitions of this saying but since he coined the term I have to credit him.

Merger 276

Merger Technical Review Early Stage Dilution 276

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I guess if you do more than one, I guess by definition, that’s serial. You’ve got entrepreneurs and founders who are really – a lot of them are in the very early stage of their startup. Technical founder. Because, almost by definition, I’m going to tell you no. You’re 42.

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Technical Cofounder San Diego Startup 337

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 5, 2016

I've heard a lot of VCs tell founders they need co-founders--and that they wouldn't look at a business at a very early stage without a co-founder. A lot of accelerators treat solo founders the same way--making it an implied requirement to participate. The same holds true for VC funds.

Cofounder 60

Cofounder Founder Equity Limited Partner 60

Hunter Walker

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

If you showed me a bunch of random early stage startups and asked me to select the ones disproportionately likely to be successful, I’d bet on the teams which are able to turn a hypothesis into a test and a test into learnings with the greatest compounding velocity. Don’t Freak Out When Part Of Your Original Hypothesis Was Wrong.

Cofounder 115

Cofounder Startup Early Stage Channel 115

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

So most early-stage VCs have started to evaluate investment opportunities with an imaginary benchmark in mind: can this company become a $100 million opportunity? Many businesses built in the early days of the Facebook platform (like Zynga ) benefitted from a huge viral co-efficient and scaled very rapidly. (As

Churn Rate 168

Churn Rate Viral Acquisition Cofounder 168

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

Jack Tankersley, a long time mentor of mine, co-founder of Centennial Funds, and co-founder of Meritage Funds, wrote me a very long response. So contrary to the piece, it wasn’t VC were good at early stage technology, it was that they had newfound capital and a big exit window.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

So Member Desk is a virtual and yet it can also be physical, literally sitting in the front of the co- working space inexpensive way to do that for pretty much any organization. But the answer is the co-founder’s been in the industry for 30 years and he’s somebody and so they can get meetings. Jason: Right.

Cofounder 199

Cofounder Technical Review Chicago Technical Cofounder 199

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 26, 2015

I understand that and actually think it’s ok because that partner gets experience with making investments, sitting on boards, finding co-investors, managing founder relationships, etc. Honestly, they are a refreshing group of hustling, young, early-stage VCs and I love working with them. ” Guys?

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Detroit Early Stage Partner 150

Hippoland

APRIL 9, 2017

2) You mix up the definition of common software startup KPIs This is unfortunate. Often, I see entrepreneurs get the definition of common startup KPIs wrong, and it comes back to bite them even if it’s just an innocent mistake. What looks really bad is when founders try to be evasive about their answers. But that’s ok.

Cofounder 48

Cofounder Early Stage Software Review Naming 48

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

What is it, and how should founders think about it? note: We’d like to be extra clear that founders should not take on venture debt if they don’t have 100% visibility into repaying the loan, as banks that need to recoup their loan my force the company or you as the guarantor into liquidation or bankruptcy.

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

My first job out of school was at one of the early bioinformatics companies in Silicon Valley, working as the head of technical services. On the SEO side of things, I'll definitely want to get your feedback on Browse My Stuff. Tell me a bit about the Founder's Institute. I'll be interested to see what it turns into.

Management 150

Management Product Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 150

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 6, 2017

by Jason Mendelson and Brad Feld, co-authors of “ Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist “ So, you’ve got a brilliant idea and you’re ready to launch a company. It consists of signing the term sheet, then signing the definitive documents, and finally getting the cash.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Term Sheet Technical Review Due Diligence 100

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

It seems the focus on “virtual&# goods has been both the demo of the consumer as well as the fact that by definition virtual goods have almost no marginal costs to the seller so giving a huge slice to the carrier (and Zong) isn’t a problem since actual costs are ~ $0. 15mm in Series A. Add this new model to the mix.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

According to Fortune , in 2006, female founders were involved in only 2.95 Teams of male and female founders and the implication for team composition. Obviously, startup teams aren’t always comprised of all men or all women; teams of mixed gender founders exist, and some of them get funding. 33 billion in venture funding.

Venture Capital 82

Venture Capital Lean Cofounder Technical Review 82

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 10, 2022

I love working with great people and as a venture capitalist, am fortunate the number of founders I’m impressed by far exceeds our investment capacity. Here’s an example of a founder that I’ve known for a while who recently raised a seed round with different firms than ours. Post-BuildingConnected things definitely changed.

Cofounder 89

Cofounder Founder Acquisition Startup 89

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 7, 2011

Founder Dialogues : Eric Paley plays talk show host on this recurring fireside chat style event with Boston area founders. The next one is TechProm , organized by Dave Balter, the founder of BzzAgent. OnStartups: One of the largest online startup communities founded by HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah. University Resources.

Boston 56

Boston Technical Review Community CTO Hire 56

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 9, 2018

According to Glossier co-founder Emily Weiss , “one of the things that we really rely on is our customers as co-creators and sort of co-conspirators of our company.” So we see our community as co-conspirators, co-builders, co-storytellers. They are ultimately trusting their friends.

Marketing 90

Marketing Social Media Cofounder Design 90

View from Seed

JANUARY 26, 2016

For now, it’s fine to think about pre-seed rounds as relatively small ($750K or less), early (pre-product), and typically followed by a larger round within 12 months ($1M – $3M). This is actually an imperfect definition, but let me first talk about why these are happening in the first place.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Early Stage Cofounder Finance 120

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

Seed investors are aplenty and of course they need downstream money to fuel their early-stage bets. Co-founder discontent. Reference checking is to confirm or disprove a strong, positive intuition you already have about founders that could lead to an investment or a pass. You have to deal with CEOs who resign.

Cofounder 374

Cofounder Syndicate Syndication Early Stage 374

www.geekwire.com

JULY 10, 2012

According to the Dow Jones research, 43 early-stage funds raised $3.1 Madrona’s new $300 million fund — while the largest in the firm’s history — certainly qualifies in the early-stage group. Get the education you need at the definitive Tech M&A conference, July 18. Co-founder, National Editor.

Venture Capital 42

Venture Capital Seattle Cofounder Software Engineering 42

Austin Startup

JUNE 27, 2017

Looking for Funds in All the Right Places: The Definitive Guide to Austin Capital By David Altounian and Stephen Straus OVERVIEW For entrepreneurs: We’ve compiled a definitive list of sources of capital in Austin to help focus your fundraising efforts. We’ve compiled a definitive list of sources of startup capital in Austin.

Venture Capital 54

Venture Capital Austin Texas Private Equity 54

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?

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

Where I use LinkedIn: * I definitely use LinkedIn for Specific Requests - Ex. I definitely check people out using LinkedIn. However, it definitely has served as a hub. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Rob Go

FEBRUARY 24, 2013

Early stage companies are often refining their stories or narratives. From a fundraising perspective, one of the challenges of telling one’s story is that as an early stage company, you are by definition very very small, but you are trying to convince an investor that you can be very very big.

Software Review 61

Software Review Due Diligence Early Stage Cofounder 61

Where to Play

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Adrien Briod , the co-founder, envisioned how a collision-tolerant drone would assist in managing such dangerous situations. The answer is definitely dazzling, because there are numerous options. The idea to develop a caged drone was born after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. So, where should they begin building their business?

Agile 54

Agile Technical Review Sales Cycle Distribution 54

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 21, 2018

One was the result of a cofounder breakup. ”) but we’ve definitely had some “soft pivots” which probably should have just been shutdowns and some “soft pivots” which resulted in tremendous successes. As Jason wrote : . And most recently, Jason’s, which he describes in the link above.

Founder 97

Founder Cap Table Seed Stage Cofounder 97

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 27, 2018

As part of The Startup Magazine founder interview series , we talked with Travis Batiza, the founder of AssuredLeads, a sales and marketing platform serving the insurance industry. My co-founder, Taylor Stinchfield, and I helped build a rapidly-growing insurance agency prior to founding AssuredLeads. Great advice.

Founder 98

Founder Sales Cofounder Early Stage 98

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

This is a guest post from Stephano Kim , former co-founder of Web 1.0 Many startup CEOs hire COOs or launch companies with a co-founder carrying the title. When should founders hire one? For most of my career, I’ve served startups and early-stage companies as an operating executive or advisor.

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Hiring Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder 336

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Carolyn serves as the co-founder and CEO of Hello Alice. Carolyn Rodz co-founded a free digital platform that connects business owners with the resources they need to launch and grow. She serves as the co-founder and CEO of Hello Alice. Carolyn Rodz (04:43): Definitely the latter.

Entrepreneur 80

Entrepreneur Technical Review Networking Community 80

Hunter Walker

OCTOBER 31, 2021

and my answer is that generally while a particular zip code or two might feel ‘overfunded’ at a moment in time, that early stage entrepreneurism is still UNDERFUNDED globally by at least an order of magnitude. Lead/Co-Lead Checks of $750k+ for 8+% ownership. Supporting Checks of $50k-$250k for <5% ownership.

Cap Table 122

Cap Table Cofounder Early Stage Portfolio 122