View from Seed

FEBRUARY 9, 2022

You have unbounded curiosity for emerging trends, a love for experimentation, and you’re always eager to dive into new products and technologies before others do. You have 5-10 years of professional experience as a technology operator, founder, and/or investor. We have a high-conviction, hands-on approach to seed investing.

Technical Review 156

Technical Review North America Seed Stage Bandwidth 156

View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

Another affinity-based co-working space? As a seed stage VC, I have a unique privilege of confidentially spending time with a number of entrepreneurs throughout their company formation and initial product development process. And it’s amazed me how many times I’ve seen two or more entirely separate groups of founders?—?without

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Startup Cofounder Stealth 120

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 12, 2014

Josh Porter is the founder of What to Wear Daily , a service that helps you prepare for your day. He is best-known as the creator of 52 Weeks of UX and was also head of UX at HubSpot, by way of being co-founder of Performable (acquired in 2011). You Found a Problem to Solve. Great … But Now What?

Design 330

Design Product Cofounder Boston 330

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 26, 2023

” – Marc Andreessen In the book “ Super Founders “, author Ali Tamaseb, studied 200 Unicorns, aka startups valued at over $1 billion, started between 2005 to 2018. The 7 Traits of “Super Founders” 1. They are able to articulate this vision in a way that inspires others and generates excitement.

Founder 88

Founder Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation 88

View from Seed

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. However, our overall goal is to invest in the full spectrum of seed. And by early, we mean pre-traction.

North America 120

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 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. These 10 slides should be part of every pre-seed deck: Company purpose – why do you exist?

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder Portfolio 166

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 20, 2019

by Everett Harper, CEO and cofounder of Truss. Specifically, there are five challenges that emerging business typically put on the backburner between funding rounds: Seed to Series A: Customer Testing. Hypotheses should be tested extensively and disproven, which is where customer testing plays a central role for seed-stage startups.

Technical Cofounder 113

Technical Cofounder Burn Rate Seed Stage Cofounder 113

VC Cafe

APRIL 4, 2024

The MAD 2024 landscape A final example, is this list of the 50 most popular consumer AI web products , recently published by A16Z. While investments to generative AI startups are red hot, founders have to battle quite a few investor biases. How can startups even compete against big tech, scale ups and other startups?

Generative AI 78

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence Technical Review ChatGPT 78

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

Every year I teach classrooms full of students who leave class understanding the basics of how to search for product/market fit—and thinking their next goal is to “get funded.”. You (think) you have product-market fit with real customers and real revenue and need money to grow and expand. That’s a mistake.

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

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

Traction is a biweekly podcast where founders share the creative or unusual things they did during the seed stage to make early progress. Founders from LinkedIn , DraftKings , General Assembly , The Muse , Behance , InsightSquared , and more have appeared on the show. You can subscribe here. TractionPodcast.

CTO Hire 120

CTO Hire Framework Cofounder Seed Stage 120

View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

Founders laud their own “end-to-end” thinking. Starting in 2009, Savoia began using an approach as an engineering director at Google that helped the tech giant know whether it was about to build the right product for the market … or a product that would flop.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 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

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. It’s your baby. You took the biggest leap of faith.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

View from Seed

MAY 3, 2016

Today’s guest, Jesse Middleton, is a co-founder of WeWork Labs, the company’s global startup incubator, and currently the head of WeWork X, which includes Labs and also the new WeWork investing and M&A activities. Jesse was also among the first to join the co-founders of WeWork when it started.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Cofounder Incubator Global 120

View from Seed

AUGUST 12, 2015

I loved the founder but was struggling because this just didn’t seem “big enough” to me. Today, Lumos Labs is better known by their product’s name, Lumosity.com, which is used by more than 70M worldwide. The post The Market Size Fallacy for Seed-Stage Startups appeared first on NextView Ventures.

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. Today, Lumos Labs is better known by their product’s name, Lumosity.com, which is used by more than 70M worldwide. The post The Market Size Fallacy for Seed-Stage Startups appeared first on The View From Seed.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Marketing Angel Investor Term Sheet 120

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

(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.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 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

NOVEMBER 14, 2019

I sent a tweet out last week that elicited quite a few responses from both founders and investors: seed funds that don’t invest pre-traction =. — First – there are a lot of seed investors out there that don’t actually want to invest in seed. For very well known founders, a series A can happen well before traction.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cofounder Retention Founder 331

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. The discussion with Howard Morgan starts off by acknowledging Josh Kopelman as a co-founder of First Round Capital. I'm a huge fan of this innovation.

Pre-Money Valuation 284

Pre-Money Valuation Technical Review Cofounder Cram Down 284

ReadWriteStart

MAY 22, 2023

According to Rolf Illenberger, co-founder of VRdirect, a virtual reality platform in Munich, none of the big European tech companies are currently relevant to the future of the Metaverse. Featured Image Credit: Photo by SHVETS production; Pexels; Thanks!

Finland 187

Finland Europe Estonia Silicon Valley 187

VC Cafe

JULY 8, 2012

So how do you go about finding co-founders and early members of your startup? VC Cafe took a look at the most promising sources for finding co-founders, both in the “real world” and online. . From “napkin” (seed stage) to profitable startups, this site will give you a good set of options.

Cofounder 149

Cofounder Founder Startup Seed Stage 149

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

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

At NextView, for instance, one of our more popular posts centers on atypical seed rounds to know. What is it, and how should founders think about it? Use good judgment, talk to your co-founders/investors/lawyers, and partner with a bank that values transparency and relationships such as SVB.].

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

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. Here at NextView, we are strong proponents of creating a board at the seed stage. And various stakeholders (investors, early founders no longer operationally involved, etc.)

Seed Stage 216

Seed Stage Cofounder Later Stage Government 216

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. However, our overall goal is to invest in the full spectrum of seed. And by early, we mean pre-traction.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2021

The sudden arrival of the global pandemic has shifted the playbook for founders and venture capitalists. As high-conviction, seed stage investors, we are inherently relationship-driven, and we value meeting exceptional founders face-to-face. Zoom calls have taken the place of in-person meetings.

Venture Capital 350

Venture Capital Cofounder Early Stage Seed Stage 350

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. A) Pre-Product Companies.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 14, 2017

Dan Reich is the CEO and co-founder of Troops, a company bringing artificial intelligence to your sales team’s workflow, right in Slack. Subscribe to the NextView blog for future episodes and more resources for seed-stage startups: nextviewvc.com/blog. to learn more about the company and their product.

Artificial Inteligence 159

Artificial Inteligence Seed Stage Founder Cofounder 159

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. 5) High Productivity: Kayak had 148 employees at the end of 2010.

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Hearpreneur

MAY 4, 2019

Tell us about your products and services. It starts with a pilot, with often is pretty small: just one or two teams of co-founders dedicated to growth opportunity areas for six months or so. How do you help clients? What makes you unique? What is your unique selling proposition (USP)?

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Founder Entrepreneur Venture Capital 66

Agile VC

JANUARY 4, 2012

Founders Hardi Meybaum and Indrek Narusk originally started building the company in their native Estonia before moving to Boston to join the hub of SaaS / CAD software companies located here. In addition to compelling founders, we were drawn to the company by their vision for a professional community for mechanical engineers and designers.

Community 100

Community Estonia Syndicate Syndication 100

View from Seed

JUNE 10, 2020

of teams’ online pitch decks and recorded videos, as well as loved the dozens of second-round video conversations which we had with Founders working on quite compelling startups. Many of these Founders we wouldn’t have had an opportunity to connect with if we hadn’t launched this program.

Cofounder 177

Cofounder Syndicate Syndication Alabama 177

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