Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

Traction can simply mean showing that you’re making progress with customers, product development, channel partners, initial revenue as a proof point, attracting well-known angel investors, winning industry awards / recognition. They hire key staff. Unfortunately there is no real objective measure. They make progress.

Technical Review 309

Technical Review Term Sheet Venture Capital Revenue 309

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 12, 2017

A frequent metaphor I use in customer acquisition, fundraising, or any kind of deal making is that you as the founder and promoter should present the finished meal on the dining table and not drag your counterparts into the kitchen. Most customers will sell themselves if you just give them half a chance.

Term Sheet 48

Term Sheet Technical Review Due Diligence Merger 48

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2018

I told him, “I know we don’t yet have a term sheet so you feel you need to listen to everybody’s request. But imagine you were expecting two term sheets imminently. I know bigger firms sometimes hire people just to fill out the data but I mostly refused. How would you act then? I think it’s a smokescreen.

Term Sheet 217

Term Sheet Later Stage Demand Email 217

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 17, 2013

Conduct customer interviews. Understand a term sheet. Hire A Players. Make decisions off cohort tracking. Become a Google analytics expert. Write a blog post. Deliver a keynote. Build Links. Segment a market. Recruit and Train. Train an intern. Replace B Players. Cold call C level executives. Write a novel. Raise Money.

Advisory Board 279

Advisory Board Balance Sheet Term Sheet Entrepreneur 279

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 16, 2011

While that post resulted in term sheets for Dennis and Naveen from VCs, the original intention was actually to get Yelp to invest in the company. I figured if I threw Yelp's name in there, maybe they'd check it out, and they'd agree to stick $200k in the company to let them keep going, maybe hire someone.

Term Sheet 108

Term Sheet API Search Technical Review 108

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 28, 2015

Investors typically negotiate from a term sheet, which if not handled properly can create problems that can hurt or kill the startup’s chances when they do their Series A round of funding. With direct customers, personally identifiable data is of most concern. On the other hand, it may encourage other trolls to visit.

Convertible Security 100

Convertible Security IP Technical Review Software Review 100

Hunter Walker

MAY 7, 2014

Whether it’s adding capacity to an existing function (#MawrEngineers) or bringing new talents onboard (“we intend to make our first marketing hire”), glossing over these bullet points towards the back of the pitch deck would be a mistake. I’m interested in not just what these people will be doing but how and when they’ll be hired.

Hiring 108

Hiring Option Pool Early Stage Term Sheet 108

Altgate

OCTOBER 8, 2009

The two most popular posts remain this one on term sheet negotiation and this one on venture debt , although this one on convertible debt is giving them a run for their money. Tips: $75 HOT All-Hands Team Meeting Board Management Tips For Startup CEOs Customer Support 2.0

Term Sheet 39

Term Sheet Technical Review Michigan Liquidation Preference 39

Reid Hoffman

DECEMBER 10, 2020

If I’m going to find out that a set of founders lack integrity, don’t behave like partners, take on unacceptable risks that might harm their customers or society, or simply aren’t the kinds of people I want to spend a decade with, I want to know those facts before I start down the path of evaluating that investment. I think David’s wrong.”.

Hosting 69

Hosting Hockey Stick IPO Silicon Valley 69

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

You’ll learn more about what destroys startups, how to use the Customer Development method to succeed, how to use the Business Model Canvas, how to identify and keep your customers, and how to drive profits. Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy. B y Cindy Alvarez. B y John Mullins.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. We hired union laborers to do that. Two paragraphs, Five bullets.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

You still have some leeway to hire above them if need be. They care about the quality of what is build more than they care about end customers. As you head into the phase where you’ve had real customers paying real money for a period of time you’ll have a whole new set of issues. Term Sheets (1).

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

As seed funds have raised larger and larger funds, more have developed the muscle around issuing term sheets and “leading”. According to First Round’s State of Startups 3 out of 4 early-stage founders (series A or earlier) say hiring is their #1 concern, but the same amount say they spend less than 20% of their time on it.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

We’re currently evaluating about 20 companies a month and issuing term sheets to 25% of them; those that fit our investment criteria. At least 12 months of customer history, generally 20+ enterprise customers or 200+ SMB customers. We’re also regularly following-on for existing portfolio companies.”. ARR of $500K+.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. Staring at us in the board meeting were three term-sheets from brand name VC’s and an unexpected buy-out offer from Google. They hired a world-class team with co-founders and early employees who shared their vision.

Hockey Stick 299

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

I know he’s smart but you wouldn’t hire a Javascript developer to do your database design – would you? He was the first guy that I saw demystify the legal terms in his term sheet series. But I don’t have money to pay a fancy lawyer – I’ll just have my cousin do it - Don’t.

Southern California 318

Southern California Silicon Valley IP Stock Options 318

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

Note to self, this event is not for alpha products with no customers. Use the 10-5-3-1 formula for raising money: Have 10 great meetings with investors, 5 of those do detailed due diligience on your company, get 3 term sheets, and 1 transfer into your bank account! What key hires do you need?

CTO Hire 49

CTO Hire Cofounder Fractional CTO San Francisco 49

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2011

On balance I usually prefer to recruit people from my network both in terms of saving costs as well as hiring people I know & trust. One tip – depending on seniority – you can sometimes hire independent reference check firms. It can get expensive so you’d probably only do it for a very senior hire.

Term Sheet 319

Term Sheet PR Liquidation Preference Stock Options 319

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2013

We had them a term sheet the same week. She learns how to ship product, how to deal with merchants, how to hire product managers. Talking about how to inspire moms to get their children engaged with iPads and physical activity sets customized for their kids and based in part on their digital lives. That’s cute.

Haiti 398

Haiti San Francisco Startup Turkey 398

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

Note to self, this event is not for alpha products with no customers. Use the 10-5-3-1 formula for raising money: Have 10 great meetings with investors, 5 of those do detailed due diligience on your company, get 3 term sheets, and 1 transfer into your bank account! What key hires do you need?

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Cofounder Fractional CTO San Francisco 40

Steve Blank

APRIL 1, 2020

Your customers will no longer be your customers. Your customers start buying. The CEO should dial through as many of the largest existing customers to get a firsthand understanding of the magnitude of any revenue shortfall. Some VC’s are walking away from signed term sheets. Actively buying?

South Korea 334

South Korea Salary Business Model China 334

Eric Friedman

JUNE 11, 2019

Whether a fundraising event, hiring, or sales/partnership opportunity- these can be especially useful to make all parties move faster. to show innovation and working with a small company for the sake of shareholders, their customers, or a corporate initiative they are working on. In the end, time will kill all deals.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Stock Options Early Stage Agile 68

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

We had scrambled to get a product to market, built our first website, rapidly hired a technology team, raised our seed round of capital ($1.5 The phones rang off the hook (we didn’t even think about hiring somebody to answer them). We had 6 term sheets in no time. million … yes that was seed in 1999!)

South Africa 310

South Africa Europe Disintermediation Poland 310

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 29, 2011

In my book, there is only one real reason for this – to a ttract new potential employees : “We’ve just raised $X and are hiring 20 people including types A through types Q – see our jobs page at jobs.companyname.com and apply now.” Make it clear that you are hiring. ” Ok, but so what?

Finance 133

Finance SEC Term Sheet Acquisition 133

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

Sign up customers who are paying you money for a service you can’t 100% guarantee is going to be operational for the full period that they’re expecting. But why don’t you just give me the damn term sheet you promised so I can trust you even more. I didn’t want to disappoint my customers.

Monaco 420

Monaco Cofounder Chicago Mexico 420

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 11, 2012

submitting term sheets. I have never signed a contract on these terms. So if you hire a senior sales rep with 100% bonus on top of their $150,000 base salary they want to get paid $100,000 (33% of $300,000). Why should I pay 2x the price to hire a VP of sales as I would pay to hire a VP of Market, Technology or Finance?

Mexico 305

Mexico Term Sheet Hiring Search 305

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Access to the corporate investor’s ecosystem can open up great opportunities from technology validation to customer and partner development. But most commonly these are customer relationships: the operating unit becomes one of the startup’s first or largest customers. Could they excel at customer development with enterprises?

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 26, 2022

They’ll obviously see the value of what you built and will be compelled to offer a term sheet on the spot. If you raised the same sized seed round as everyone else, you can only hire so many salespeople, put so much into marketing, and those resources can only grab so many customers in an efficient market for people’s time.

Founder 103

Founder .Net Term Sheet Aggregator 103

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 16, 2018

it strikes me that actually talking to an investor, sharing your vision, and actually starting to work together feels like a better strategy than going silent until "Pitch Day" when you show up all ready and prepared, expecting term sheets in just a couple of weeks. Get them to do some homework for you, too--especially around hiring.

Due Diligence 96

Due Diligence Early Stage Term Sheet Vesting 96

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

We used the Y Combinator open source term sheet. We signed the term sheet within 48 hours and had funded in under 2 weeks. They were grateful for the extra money as their launch was overwhelmingly successful and they had to rapidly hire staff to support customer demand. They elected to sign my term sheet.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Term Sheet Early Stage Silicon Valley 265

K9 Ventures

JUNE 30, 2016

Now, what do you do when you get an email from a VC firm, that says something like: Dear <Founder’s Name>, We recently came across your company in {TechCrunch | Term Sheet | StrictlyVC}. Saw that you’ve raised a seed round and are building a AI platform for chatbots. Why does this happen? .

Email 96

Email Database Term Sheet Partner 96

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

I can’t say it much simpler than this: “What if I took some of the worst, most egregious terms in a standard term sheet and made them the defacto standard in most convertible debt deals? Let me explain it more clearly in equity terms. What happens in a sale or acqui-hire? That’s right.

Ratchet 354

Ratchet Liquidation Preference Equity Stock 354

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

It led to hiring Eric Schmidt. Many entrepreneurs come by with great pitches and say, “I’m hoping to have term sheets in the next 30 days.” It’s hard for me to imagine that an entrepreneur who was waiting to see the CEO of their largest potential customer would leave if that customer were 20 minutes late.

LP 374

LP Later Stage IRR Term Sheet 374

Gust

OCTOBER 2, 2014

Sign up customers who are paying you money for a service you can’t 100% guarantee is going to be operational for the full period that they’re expecting. But why don’t you just give me the damn term sheet you promised so I can trust you even more. I didn’t want to disappoint my customers. You hire them, you own them now.

Monaco 122

Monaco Cofounder Chicago Mexico 122

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2010

Dan Primack, who is now writing a great column at Fortune called Term Sheet used to do this; there are now guest writers (including me) who do this column. By trying more things in a short period of time, they can adopt their product better to the market and their customers. I periodically write the first column for PE Hub.

Term Sheet 106

Term Sheet Seattle Angel Investor Bootstrapping 106

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2011

You’ve come full cycle from vision, to hiring some people, raising some cash, arguing about direction, setting a release date, missing a release date, feeling like you’ve effed everything up, regrouping, rethinking, getting back on track and then setting your baby loose into the wild. But we had a term sheet !!!

Entrepreneur 384

Entrepreneur Startup Salary Egypt 384

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 26, 2021

Every entrepreneur seeking funding loves the challenge of getting customers and investors excited, but dreads the thought of negotiating the terms of a deal with potential investors. On the other hand, when negotiating a financing for your company, you should never present your term sheet first.

Term Sheet 328

Term Sheet Bootstrapping Finance Startup 328