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How to Configure Your Startup Team

Both Sides of the Table

I am fond of quoting that about 70% of my investment decision of an early-stage company is the team. Quick summary: Be careful not to have too many co-founders. it’s the most expensive dilution you’ll ever face. And you need to be careful about giving up control to cofounders as much as VCs.

Cofounder 388
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Flexible VCs With Structures Between Equity and Revenue-Based Investing

David Teten

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. III: Why are Revenue-Based VCs investing in so many women and underrepresented founders?

Equity 78
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The What & Why of Hiring a Great Startup COO

View from Seed

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.

Hiring 336
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Free money for your impact tech startup

David Teten

Now the bad news: some venture capitallists have a bias against startups with an explicit positive social impact, on the grounds that they have a smaller addressable market, and that the founders are not sufficiently focused on creating shareholder wealth. If you think I’ve missed any, please contact me. J.M.Kaplan Innovation Prize. “The

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What Happens When Startups Turn from Their Innovation Stage to Operational Excellence?

Both Sides of the Table

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.

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Further Thoughts on Startup Operations

Both Sides of the Table

I recently wrote a post about why I didn’t think early-stage startups should have COOs. “We’re all equal co-founders and we don’t care about titles.&# Still, I’ll bet that functionally you divide areas of competence like sales & marketing, product, engineering, biz dev, etc.

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Flexible VC, a New Model for Companies Targeting Profitability

David Teten

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. From RBI, Flexible VCs borrow the ability to reap meaningful returns without demanding founders build for an exit. By tying payments to actual revenues, founders and investors remain aligned around the company’s real-time performance, good or bad.