Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 3, 2014

With the uptick in the economy, as an active startup mentor, I’m seeing a new surge of entrepreneurs and startups, with the commensurate scramble for funding. Being a public company isn’t cheap or easy. Is your startup really ready to play in the corporate world? Reverse mergers may not get your startup on the Nasdaq.

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Merger OTC IPO Stock 246

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2018

With the current strong economy, as an active startup mentor, I’m seeing a new surge of entrepreneurs and startups, with the commensurate scramble for funding. Thus I’m getting more questions on new mechanisms, like crowd funding, or going public through the side door as a reverse merger.

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Merger OTC IPO Due Diligence 198

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2012

Different types of investors look for startups at different levels of maturity. If your startup is at the wrong stage for the investor you are approaching, fishing for money is a waste of time for both of you. You also will find that the stage your startup is in dictates where you go to seek funding. Early or embryonic stage.

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Investment Bankers Venture Capital Startup Initial Public Offering 241

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

In the old days, every entrepreneur dreamed of someday taking their startup public, and making it a multi-national powerhouse. According to an Ernst & Young report , the number of startups that have gone public in the US over the past decade is down about 75% from the previous decade, to about 10% of startup exits.

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IPO SEC Prospectus Startup 242

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 13, 2010

Different types of investors look for startups at different levels of maturity. If your startup is at the wrong stage for the investor you are approaching, the courting is a waste of time for both of you. You also will find that the stage your startup is in dictates where you go to seek funding. Early or embryonic stage.

Investment Bankers 231

Investment Bankers Venture Capital Startup Initial Public Offering 231

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2019

VC’s have just changed the ~50-year old social contract with startup employees. In doing so they may have removed one of the key incentives that made startups different from working in a large company. For most startup employee’s startup stock options are now a bad deal. Why Startups Offer Stock Options.

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Stock Options Stock Vesting Common Stock 334

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 15, 2015

With the uptick in the economy, as an active startup mentor, I’m seeing a new surge of entrepreneurs and startups, with the commensurate scramble for funding. Thus I’m getting more questions on new mechanisms, like crowd funding, or going public through the backdoor as a reverse merger. It takes real money to get into the game.

Merger 120

Merger OTC IPO Due Diligence 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

What are they, how do they differ and what can startup do to take advantage of them? Paths to Liquidity: a quick history of the four waves of startup investing. The Golden Age (1970 – 1995): Build a growing business with a consistently profitable track record (after at least 5 quarters,) and go public when it’s time.

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Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 2, 2012

The fact that a great deal of the content produced by tech news sites concerns startup companies might make an observer from another planet think America is a veritable nursery for brilliant business ideas. Doing so would reduce costs for companies while still adhering to the first principle of investor protection.".

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IPO Startup Florida Seed Capital 121

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 16, 2011

It has been at least a decade since going public via an Initial Public Offering (IPO) has been considered a credible exit strategy for startups. Draper III, in his new book titled “ The Startup Game.” These can add millions to the cost of doing business.

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IPO Social Media Media Exit Strategy 223

Gust

NOVEMBER 22, 2011

Different types of investors look for startups at different levels of maturity. If your startup is at the wrong stage for the investor you are approaching, fishing for money is a waste of time for both of you. You also will find that the stage your startup is in dictates where you go to seek funding. Early or embryonic stage.

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Venture Capital Investment Bankers Angel Investor Initial Public Offering 171

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

. — Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm. The startup process has become demystified – information is everywhere. 20th Century Tech Liquidity = Initial Public Offering.

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Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 274

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2013

Since Angel investors put money into 60 times as many companies as venture capital funds, according to Wikipedia, early-stage startups need to focus first on the key thresholds that drive these investment decisions. Angel investors look for prior domain and startup experience. The same hold true for venture capital investors.

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Angel Investor Cram Down Intellectual Property Venture Capital 269

Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

With this capital, the company propels itself to $50 million+ in revenues, and to either a sale to a strategic acquirer or to an initial public offering. Technical progress and market traction are much slower and cost a lot more than anticipated. There are a lot of dark, hard days.

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Angel Investor Venture Capital Sweat Equity Cram Down 112

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

They are looking for solutions that will reduce their costs by 20%, or double productivity, or cut traffic accidents by a third. Social value alone is not normally a sustainable advantage for a startup with limited resources, since big players can jump in with more money to replicate your social value and add more innovation.

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Intellectual Property Initial Public Offering Merger Acquisition 48

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

And from a financial perspective, any investor would be better off buying stock in Amazon than buying and share of a corner bookshop; if you invested $100 in Amazon’s 1997 initial public offering (IPO), those shares would have been worth about $120,000 in 2018. These companies didn’t blitzscale; they scaled sustainably.”.

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Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

We expanded to Houston, San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles within months, and we were generally doing all the things and seeing all the things that a startup needed to do and see in order to feel good about VC funding prospects. startups with billion-dollar valuations) in recent years. It’s not my goal to bash anyone.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review Venture Capital San Francisco 48

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 5, 2012

Treasury Department assembled 17 leaders of the startup business investment community, under the auspices of its Access to Capital Conference. The task force recommendations, titled, "Rebuilding the IPO On-ramp," presented stunning insight into the symptoms of the nation's startup problem. million per year just to stay public.

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IPO SEC Silicon Valley Startup 118