Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

What stage? Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? When you are raising a large, later-stage round given by this time you’ve likely got a fairly large business to run. What kind of deals should I be doing? What price?

Early Stage 361

Early Stage Deal Flow Investment Bankers Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

What stage? Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? When you are raising a large, later-stage round given by this time you’ve likely got a fairly large business to run. What kind of deals should I be doing? What price?

Deal Flow 347

Deal Flow Early Stage Investment Bankers Technical Review 347

View from Seed

MAY 18, 2016

The purpose of a board is not simply to be the founders’ friend… it is to help govern the company and provide input into its strategic direction. And various stakeholders (investors, early founders no longer operationally involved, etc.) Decided to proactively add one or more independent board director is useful as well.

Seed Stage 216

Seed Stage Cofounder Later Stage Government 216

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 27, 2023

He is the founder of Nudge, an analytics company, that was a commercialized product from his agency. Prior to Nudge, he co-founded an agency in New Zealand that was the 8th fastest-growing business at the time. With the retirement of Google Analytics, many are re-evaluating what options are out there. This is John Jantsch.

Cofounder 57

Cofounder Artificial Inteligence New Zealand Analytics 57

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Remember the whole controversy over Facebook’s Beacon product where a guy bought an engagement ring for his wife and it was published to a stream and ruined the surprise ? So my gut says this will be a youth-oriented product. The investment will be used for product development initiatives. 4mm in Series A.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 9, 2021

Looking back, I believe that Jeff is one of most iconic, successful founders and CEOs of all time. Far too often, people think that innovation is limited to the product, service, and technology. Over and over, he has gambled on products and product areas where no current market existed. THE CORE OF GREATNESS: FOCUS.

Leadership 42

Leadership Technical Review Cofounder Later Stage 42

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Even for later-stage companies with predictable financials, the lack of liquidity, audited financials, and standardized metrics creates real challenges to scaling quantitative investing. Signal is a fundraising tool for founders run by NFX Guild, which identifies the most relevant VCs for you. . Pitchbot.vc

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

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

Up and Running

AUGUST 17, 2015

Between my experiences as a management consultant, as well as my product and marketing roles at multiple tech companies, I felt that I had enough operational experience to make that leap sooner than later. This can be particularly important for founders with “non-traditional” career backgrounds.

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Cofounder Angel Investor eCommerce 60

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2013

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Christian Reber, CEO and co-founder of Berlin-based 6Wunderkinder. They need to challenge your way of thinking, your way of doing business, and your way of building products. 60-70% for founders. As a founder you need to develop this skill very quickly.

Management 120

Management Cofounder Startup Bootstrapping 120

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 28, 2019

by Ronald Dod, Chief Marketing Officer and Co-founder of Visiture. You’re not trying to sell your products and services to Google’s web-crawler bots. Your product itself should already have given you an idea of your general audience, but it’s good to have an understanding that goes somewhat beyond that. Industry news.

Audience 164

Audience Algorithm eCommerce Cofounder 164

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 2, 2012

“Vinnie was amongst the most popular and valued mentors on the bootcamp we operated earlier this year,” says Hugh Mason, co-founder and CEO at JFDI.Asia. “Golden Gate Ventures’ links to later stage investors and Silicon Valley can add most value once start-ups launch products and prove market traction.

Asia 162

Asia Singapore Silicon Valley Cofounder 162

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

I’m a female founder. I don’t have a technical co-founder. These are all of the things I heard from a founder that I recently backed. So what about all of the above statements—things that founders widely hold to be true barriers to fundraising? Nearly half of the teams I’ve backed have female founders.

Venture Capital 162

Venture Capital Cofounder Deal Flow Later Stage 162

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 26, 2022

So, think of the typical two founders with a pitch book in a garage. Instead, that’s the sort of pre-series-A investment where companies or founders have visions of where they think there are underserved market needs, and they’re coming up with something super excited to try to solve that. . We’re a crossover fund.

Partner 132

Partner Cofounder Retention Acquisition 132

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2016

by Krista Morgan, CEO and co-founder of P2BInvestor. You’re pre-selling your product or raising money to get a prototype out. We associate this type of financing with earlier-stage companies, but we’re starting to see later-stage brands putting campaigns out. Think Kickstarter and IndieGoGo.

Finance 100

Finance Angel Investor Cofounder Later Stage 100

The Equity Kicker

JULY 22, 2013

Investors are frequently asked what they look for in a good startup and most good ones answer “Great team, great product and great market” With early stage companies team is paramount because that’s just about all there is in the company. Later stage companies have the reverse situation.

Early Stage 146

Early Stage Later Stage Cofounder Startup 146

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

After graduating he put together a prototype and had quickly marched through Customer Discovery , iterating his product with the help of CIOs and Fortune 1000 IT departments. He kept telling him he couldn’t remember when he had seen an enterprise software product with so much promise. Life couldn’t be better. It’s not too late.

Customer Development 330

Customer Development Cofounder Later Stage Software 330

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of SNAZZ, a cloud-based event management platform. What are some of the unique benefits and constraints from the point of view of a founder? . However, founders shouldn’t take money from corporate VCs because of an exit expectation. Some corporate VCs even have seed funds.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

It is with this backdrop that I was really happy to learn from my friend Ethan Anderson (HBS alum & founder of RedBeacon) about an awesome program at HBS run by Tom Eisenmann called Launching Technology Ventures. My list of excuses includes: product, pricing, competition and lack of sales support.

Startup 319

Startup Early Stage Sales Cofounder 319

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. For software, the easiest batch to see is code.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

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). Series A investors invested quite early, often before product/market fit. technical co-founder). FWIW, that is not how we operate.).

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Early Stage Cofounder Finance 120

View from Seed

JUNE 16, 2015

My conviction in investing in a company is a function of my belief in the team, the traction of the company, and how the product/opportunity resonates with me personally. My POV is that every VC has a core product. For NextView specifically, we say that we are a one-product company.

Boston 120

Boston Syndicate Syndication eCommerce 120

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

(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

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Why do these founders get to stay around? Because the balance of power has dramatically shifted from investors to founders. VCs competing for unicorn investments have given founders control of the board. Twenty-five years ago, to go public you had to sell stuff – not just acquire users or have freemium products.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

www.mint.com

MARCH 9, 2010

If the answer to the question centers around “We will achieve revenue soon so our net will improve and give us more runway,” it means the company is in trouble because no product ever ships on time nor achieves the company’s “conservative forecast.” Life is challenging for a company that has undistinguished products and services.

Software Review 68

Software Review Startup Post-Money Valuation Technical Review 68

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 17, 2020

When speaking with founders and private growth investors, we hear countless references to “multiples paid” on current or near-term revenue; both obsess over this because a higher multiple translates to a higher valuation. How valuation multiples work Why did multiples become a shortcut-heuristic for estimating valuations in the first place?

Valuation 36

Valuation Balance Sheet Cofounder Forecast 36

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

To learn more about this space, I suggest join an online community I co-founded, PEVCTech. . Automation allows you to spend less time on tedious tasks and will help boost productivity, especially within a small marketing team. They read reviews of the products of target investments. 1) Manage the firm . 3) Raise capital.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

Because it is a “series&# I plan to get into some of the deeper complexities of funds such as “cross over funds&# and “why VC’s hate to price their own deals&# at a later stage. When I was first starting companies in the late nineties it took $3 million just to get version one of our product out the door.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Term Sheet Early Stage Silicon Valley 265

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

Many very successful, non-technology companies have also been products of venture capital, including Home Depot, Starbucks, and Staples. The reality today is that capital is more available than ever and entrepreneurs have become more sophisticated, so founders are looking for more than just cash from their venture backers.

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

Reid Hoffman

JUNE 11, 2020

My Blitzscaling co-author and friend Chris Yeh helped me record a Greymatter podcast episode where I share some of the great memories of and learnings from working with Jeff. I gave a critique of Yahoo’s products and strategy, and explained all the things that I thought Yahoo should do differently. Jeff said, “There’s something wrong.

Cofounder 36

Cofounder Leadership Metrics Later Stage 36

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2021

It seems like every day there is a new headline about an exceptional startup founder, investor, or corporate headquarters moving to Texas. The Innovation Center at Houston’s TMC (TMCx), co-located with Johnson and Johnson’s J-Labs, and the Center for Medical Device Innovation, drive medical innovation. Joe Lonsdale. Drew Houston.

Texas 90

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 90

The Next Web

JULY 29, 2013

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Christian Reber, CEO and co-founder of Berlin-based 6Wunderkinder. When I started my first company in Berlin, I lived and worked in my apartment with one of my co-founders. There was no need for an office, we built our product right from our living room.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Cofounder Germany Europe 125

Hippoland

JANUARY 1, 2017

In the beginning, I started the blog, because writing was cathartic for me and was a way for me to write down what I was advising founders already on a 1:1 basis. Special thanks to my co-founder Thea Koullias, CEO/founder at Jon Lou , who has helped me pull this all together. I feel lucky to have such a great team.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Cofounder Email Canada 48

Seeing Both Sides

APRIL 1, 2013

As my classmates were rushing off to high-paying, high-powered jobs on Wall Street, I joined a Series A start-up with 30 employees as a product manager, making $65,000 per year - lower than my pre-MBA salary at management consultancy The Boston Consulting Group. Your co-workers in one start-up become your co-founders in another.

Boston 52

Boston B2C Salary Cofounder 52

Ben's Blog

APRIL 7, 2021

These R&D investments matter because they enhance productivity, which enables the formation of new (and often higher-wage) jobs. Productivity enhancements can also help reduce income inequality. For every 1% increase in productivity, wages for low-skilled workers rise at roughly double the rate of those for high-skilled workers.

Silicon Valley 36

Silicon Valley Non-Compete San Francisco Government 36

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. I don’t know any developers. Need proof?

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Up and Running

AUGUST 19, 2014

The type of deals and industries they invest in, the company stages, and the amount they invest depends on the individual or angel group. I have pitched to hundreds of angel investors over the years as a result of co-founding two tech companies and raising just shy of $1M in angel capital. 51 percent). Tweet This Tip. Tweet This Tip.

Angel Investor 161

Angel Investor Technical Review Due Diligence Startup 161