article thumbnail

Am I a Founder? The Adventure of a Lifetime. « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

Cofounder 229
article thumbnail

How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

Most of this advice boils down to an argument in favor of basic planning before starting a company or raising money. In many ways the fact that it has become so cheap to start a company and relatively cheap to raise angel/seed money that we as an industry have gotten lazy on basic planning. Incumbent Strengths & Weaknesses.

Startup 150
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

This Week in VC with @VCMike Hirshland of Polaris Ventures

Both Sides of the Table

You’ll hear this story in the video. This includes seed funding Automattic (who produce WordPress, the blog I use for this website) and investing in formspring.me, stickybits, Thing Labs (producer of Brizzly), KissMetrics and many others including Quantcast. Founded 2007 in Boulder, CO. So how did Mike get into VC?

article thumbnail

From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

techcrunch.com

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. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like.

article thumbnail

Where to Get Feedback on Your Business Pitch

Up and Running

Drawing on advice from our own Tim Berry, founder of Palo Alto Software and Josh Cochrane, our VP of Product Development, I’ve broken down a few of the different options for entrepreneurs looking for feedback on their pitch. The three who agreed to do it had some semblance of a relationship with the founders beforehand.

article thumbnail

The Series A crunch is hitting now. Have we even noticed?

pandodaily.com

“I wouldn’t expect anyone except seed investors to complain about it,” Graham says. “Founders don’t think their problems are due to trends. And in fact, overall trends are a second-order effect for founders.” Sarah Lacy is the founder and editor-in-chief of PandoDaily. Pando Daily.

article thumbnail

Fundraising: Words of Wisdom from Ron Conway and Marc Andreessen

Scott Edward Walker

Each week, we share our favorite video of successful entrepreneurs, investors or business leaders on a variety of topics. So you raise seed money to peel away the first two or three risks.” It’s important for the founder to say to themselves in the beginning, ‘at what point does my ownership start to de-motivate me?’