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Who Should be on Your Startup Board?

Both Sides of the Table

If angel investors are pressuring you to set up a board and if you don’t have the leverage to push back a little then I might suggest a 3-person board in which all 3 seats are appointed by the common stock and you agree to appoint one of these seats to the angel investor but perhaps make it either time based or event based.

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Cliff Notes S-1: Kayak ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

Interesting to note that Hafner and English own common stock but also made meaningful investments in the Series A & B rounds. Notes: In an IPO preferred share classes are converted into common stock, and liquidation preferences and accumulated but unpaid dividends essentially go away. as of 12/31/09). Author howerl.

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Three Startup Financing Myths You Should Avoid

YoungUpstarts

Here are three pieces of advice that are tossed around Silicon Valley as if they are gospel, but they are really Startup Myths. I don’t know exactly when it happened but at some point, Silicon Valley became obsessed with the word billion. Myth #1: Build a Billion Dollar Company. I was wrong.

Finance 166
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Building a new startup hub

Startup Lessons Learned

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. But theres no denying the level of support for entrepreneurs that we enjoy.

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How to Fund Your Startup Without Losing Control

Up and Running

For a business that anticipates needing, for example, $500,000 in startup capital, that means that best-case scenario Klemm can expect to give up half of his business’s common stock (and an even larger percentage of control of the business once the deal’s fine print provisions are considered).

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Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad

Steve Blank

Why Startups Offer Stock Options. In tech startups stock options were here almost from the beginning, first offered to the founders in 1957 at Fairchild Semiconductor , the first chip startup in Silicon Valley. It drove the relentless “do whatever it takes” culture of 20 th century Silicon Valley.

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In defence of liquidation preferences

The Equity Kicker

I just read a New York Times article that led with the sentence “Deep inside a Silicon Valley unicorn lurks a time bomb”. Additionally, they introduce a small amount of complexity and an element of misalignment between the investor and the common stock holder (usually the founder).