Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2021

Every entrepreneur needs to understand the following basics, to be addressed at company formation, as they engage a qualified attorney to draw up the paperwork: Allocate founder’s stock commensurate with commitment. This is the purpose of a vesting schedule, which issues allocated stock over time.

Vesting 298

Vesting Dilution Stock Founder Vesting 298

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 8, 2022

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup founders quandaries in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Should you start a company solo or find co-founders to help you? The co-founder relationship dilemma.

Founder 325

Founder Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event 325

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. A pre-IPO board usually had two founders, two VCs and one “independent” member. Technology Cycles Measured in Years.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. What are the terms of their relationship with the founder?

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Thursday, March 1, 2007 Entreprenuer Network Great post by Ben Kuo - The Importance of the “Network&# to Entrepreneurs - the informal connections between people in the technology industry here who have a vested interest in helping entrepreneurs take their companies to the next level.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Networking Southern California Los Angeles 150

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. Today, in steps 10-12 I want to discuss with you raising your first round of money, hiring to develop and maintain your company culture, as well as defining your role in the management of your startup.

Management 120

Management Cofounder Startup Bootstrapping 120

View from Seed

JANUARY 5, 2016

At the beginning, a startup team is typically just a couple of co-founders. What we suggest at this juncture is that founders get acclimated to the tactics of scaling beyond the founding team. What to Address During Genesis Team Building: How do we divide and conquer responsibilities as co-founders?

Founder 120

Founder Cofounder Startup Early Stage 120

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 10, 2019

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup founders quandaries in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Should you start a company solo or find co-founders to help you? The co-founder relationship dilemma.

Hockey Stick 243

Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event Startup 243

thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

How to Divide Equity to Startup Founders, Advisors, and Employees. The part that I’d like to zero in on is when you’ve got a high growth company what are some of the best practices out there to distribute equity to the founders, advisors, and employees? Equity for Founders. Manager or Junior Engineer 0.2 - 0.33.

Equity 62

Equity Employee Founder CTO Hire 62

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 29, 2018

Unfortunately, in my years since as a small business advisor, I have seen too many founders squander this asset through a lack of understanding of some basic legal and operational issues, or by handing out nominally “free” stock to the wrong people at the wrong time. Always specify a vesting period for new partners.

Stock 129

Stock Vesting Preferred Stock Cofounder 129

Altgate

JUNE 25, 2012

Re-posted from post co-authored with Prof. —————– Dead equity — equity held by employees and founders no longer working at the company — is a large and growing problem. Founders and hires have always quit, after all, and their companies don’t always have a way to reclaim their equity.

Equity 44

Equity Vesting Cap Table Technical Review 44

David Teten

MAY 7, 2019

You must have a strong product management pedigree. See Ready to Join a New Management Team? We agree on an equity split, vesting, and initial compensation structure. See Should you co-found a company with your friend? The CEO is ideally a successful serial entrepreneur who has taken a startup all the way to an exit.

America 60

America Technical Review Advisory Board Due Diligence 60

David Teten

JULY 10, 2019

You must have a strong product management pedigree. See Ready to Join a New Management Team? We agree on an equity split, vesting, and initial compensation structure. See Should you co-found a company with your friend? See Should you co-found a company with your friend? However, we’ll consider first-time CEOs.

America 60

America Technical Review Advisory Board Due Diligence 60

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

However, in private markets, there is more room to optimize across all 11 steps of the investing process: firm management , marketing, fundraising , origination , manage relationships, due diligence, negotiation, monitoring, portfolio acceleration , reporting, and. 1) Manage the firm . This is harder than it sounds.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2014

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup Founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Should you start a company solo or find co-Founders to help you? The co-Founder relationship dilemma.

Hockey Stick 268

Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 268

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2015

I got answers that sounded like the Tom’s – new stock grants for the executive staff, great new building, and oh, by the way, Tom and his co-founder got to sell some stock in the new round. Tell each hiring manager: No new hires until you write/update your own job description. Refactoring” organizational debt.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Salary Early Stage Software Review 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2015

Every entrepreneur needs to understand the following basics, to be addressed at company formation, as they engage a qualified attorney to draw up the paperwork: Allocate founder’s stock commensurate with commitment. This is the purpose of a vesting schedule, which issues allocated stock over time.

Stock 120

Stock Vesting Common Stock Founder Vesting 120

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2017

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Should you start a company solo or find co-founders to help you? The co-founder relationship dilemma.

Hockey Stick 144

Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 144

The Startup Toolkit

JANUARY 10, 2017

The most common (and emotional) screwing you’ll get in a startup is via your cofounders. First, some examples: A buddy of mine had done the hard work of finding two excellent tech cofounders. It’s not just cofounders. But because they have equity, cofounder screwings are different. A solution at the end.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review Vesting Ratchet 20

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 8, 2017

by Bryan Miles, CEO and co-founder of BELAY. Their unwillingness to give up even the tiniest bit of control forces them to manage every single aspect of their business. When it comes to delegation, it’s important to always have patience, and take time to in vest in your delegates. Entrepreneurs are an interesting bunch.

Entrepreneur 202

Entrepreneur Cofounder Vesting Founder 202

The Next Web

JUNE 21, 2015

Suggested by: Brittany Berger , Content & PR Manager @ Mention. Suggested by: Brittany Berger , Content & PR Manager @ Mention. Suggested by: Brittany Berger , Content & PR Manager @ Mention. This book has been on my radar even since Buffer announced they were experimenting with having no managers.

PR 60

PR Startup Software Review Technical Review 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2013

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup Founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Should you start a company solo or find co-Founders to help you? The co-Founder relationship dilemma.

Founder 245

Founder Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event 245

www.avc.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

To be clear, these are hires we are talking about, not co-founders. Co-founders are an entirely different discussion and I am not talking about them in this post. The second bracket is Director level managers and key people (engineering and design superstars for sure).

Equity 64

Equity Employee CTO Hire Fractional CTO 64

Ben's Blog

APRIL 28, 2010

In this post, I describe why we prefer to fund companies whose founder will run the company as its CEO. As we looked at the history of great technology companies, we discovered that founders ran an overwhelming majority of them for a very long time, including: Acer—Stan Shih. were the driving force behind Intel and IBM, respectively.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 78

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

After a thorough analysis of those 32 start-up post-mortems, we have determined the common reasons founders gave to compile this list of the top 20 ways to have your startup fail. Work life balance is not something that startup founders often get and so the risk of burning out is high. 13 – Disharmony with Investors/Co-founders.

Cofounder 89

Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 89

OnlyOnce

APRIL 27, 2021

1 member of the management team. The conversation with your co-founder about only one founder/executive on the board. You already have 100% of the mindshare and ambassadorship your co-founder has to offer. Seats don’t turn over often. My new mantra for Startup Boards is simple: 1-1-1.

Vesting 48

Vesting Cofounder Startup Term Sheet 48

techcrunch.com

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

It consists of a standard term sheet, automatically generated closing documents, and tools to manage the process including electronic signatures, managing wire information, generating PDFs, and more. AngelList will then automatically generate a term sheet and closing documents.

Term Sheet 70

Term Sheet San Francisco Technical Review Seed Stage 70

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

There are several factors that should be considered when finding the right VCs for your startup, and Atlas Venture partner Fred Destin reminds us this morning of another significant one - how a VC manages reserves. What are reserves? Driving reserves to winners is absolutely core to fund performance," says Destin. Few firms do this well.

Management 115

Management Vesting Angel Investor Startup 115

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Leadership & Managing | Tuesdays. LEADERSHIP & MANAGING. Managing Creativity. Durkin , managing partner with the Boston -based law firm Lucash, Gesmer & Updegrove LLP. Chip Morse , cofounder and partner with Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton P.C., Technology | Thursdays. The Goods: Your Business Toolbox | Thursdays.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO Equity Iowa Technical Cofounder 40

www.metamorphblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Home About Contact Home About Contact The Metamorphosis Becoming an Entrepreneur, by Matt Mireles Startup Lessons for the Proto-Founder I started SpeakerText in October 2008 during the financial apocalypse. You need a Co-Founder, not an Engineering Bitch. Treat everyone you hire like a co-founder. Vest, young man.

Founder 51

Founder Startup Cofounder Vesting 51

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Go vest yourself. When a co-founder walks out of a company — as was the case for me — you’ve already been dealt a heavy blow. So, the best way of dealing with this issue is to take a long, long vesting period for all major sweat equity founders. Furthermore, founders become highly emotional about their companies.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 22, 2010

It’s still important advice for startup founders and something that I’m passionate about. You’re a startup founder. You start fighting with your co-founder whom you thought you understood. And he has already vested 75% of his stock options at your company. This is part of my startup advice series.

Hiring 392

Hiring Employee Vesting Silicon Valley 392

The Next Web

DECEMBER 29, 2013

Founders, executives and decision makers don’t have time to consistently create quality content and then properly distribute it. John Hall , Influence & Co. . Content Manager. Even if it flops, it will still produce tens of thousands of specialized jobs for social media managers and content developers.

Social Media 164

Social Media Vesting Distribution 164

Spencer Fry

SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

Much has been written about the disadvantages of being a solo founder. Paul Graham was certainly one of the first to write about it publicly in 2006 when he published his article, Startup Mistakes , with “Single Founder” as the first in a long list of mistakes. Bad co-founder fit. I wanted to start it on my own.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Founder Vesting Equity 28

www.quora.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Type to Add and Search Questions; Search Topics and People Startups Startup Compensation Entrepreneurship Compensation Stock Options Major Internet Companies Silicon Valley Why is there such a large founder to early employee equity drop-off? The real question here is: why is it fair for founders to get so much more?

Equity 40

Equity Employee Founder Cofounder 40

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Mike Arsenault and his two co-founders—all with technical backgrounds—built their MVP while working full time for other SaaS companies. “We Running comparative calculations, Arsenault figures that “two senior engineers plus a product manager/marketer for 40 hours per month, times 6 months, would be 720 hours to get to our MVP.

Sweat Equity 78

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 78

Gust

DECEMBER 8, 2011

Likewise, founders can benefit from understanding basic characteristics of the overall legal structure, formation and governance documents, rights and responsibilities of team members, etc. Determine who will serve on the Board of Directors and in executive officer positions (usually founders). Newco, Inc.”)

Intellectual Property 139

Intellectual Property Non-disclosure Agreement Delaware Stock 139