YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 25, 2018

Today, Mark Attanasio gets to flex his full range of expertise and interests as co-founder and Managing Partner of Hillcrest Merchant Partners, a Toronto-based merchant bank focused on early stage and mid market growth companies. One of the advisory areas Hillcrest Merchant Partners works in is electric metals.

Partner 113

Partner Technical Review Management Due Diligence 113

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

by TX Zhuo , managing partner at Karlin Ventures. Because of these nuances, startups selling to enterprise customers must be even more diligent in tracking the right growth metrics. Here are a few metrics your startup should be watching: 1. TX Zhuo is a managing partner of Karlin Ventures , an L.A.-based

Metrics 219

Metrics Churn Rate Startup Acquisition 219

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2020

For early-stage startups, the goodwill component can easily exceed the size of all the financial elements together, or can just as easily mark a company with good financials as not investable. In the investment community, these leadership elements are often called “goodwill.” Focus on talent and people growth.

Valuation 311

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Leadership 311

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

One question that keeps coming up when speaking with early stage entrepreneurs when it comes to funding, is what metrics the company needs to hit to raise seed/series A/B etc: What’s a good conversion rate? Investors look beyond top line metrics to assess other important factors. What should our MRR growth be?

B2C 141

B2C Technical Review Startup Retention 141

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Or, if you can’t skip a round, when should you try to work extra hard to minimize dilution and when should you be prepared to take more dilution for the right partner/situation? Also, the benefit of raising a pre-seed from great partners probably outweighs the cost. Founders with limited experience. Experienced founders: B2B.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 4, 2019

by Bruce Cleveland, Founding Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners and author of “ Traversing the Traction Gap “ As we continue our exploration of the Traction Gap Framework® – a step-by-step approach that startup teams can use to go from ideation to preparing to scale – I will walk you through the principles.

Framework 127

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 127

NZ Entrepreneur

MAY 31, 2021

The Angel Association of New Zealand ( AANZ ) is co-hosting with New Zealand Growth Capital Partners ( NZGCP ) a series of workshops on early-stage investment. Jason Graham from Movac provided an early-stage venture capital fund perspective, detailing 35 investments made across 5 funds and 22 years.

Portfolio 81

Portfolio New Zealand Management Technical Review 81

YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2019

by Bruce Cleveland, Founding Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners and author of “ Traversing the Traction Gap “ As we continue our exploration of the Traction Gap Framework® – a step-by-step approach that startup teams can use to go from ideation to preparing to scale – I will walk you through the principles.

Framework 113

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 113

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2019

by Bruce Cleveland, Founding Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners and author of “ Traversing the Traction Gap “. And given the paucity of business metrics at this point in a startup’s lifecycle, spreadsheet analysis is of little help. At this stage, the team is seeking market and customer validation metrics.

Cleveland 150

Cleveland Framework Marketing Early Stage 150

VC Cafe

JANUARY 14, 2022

Plenty of fresh powder in the market across stages. This includes: Softbank Vision Fund – the with the appointment of former head of Mossad, Yossi Cohen , as partner Blackstone – with $619 billion under management globally. This is even before serial entrepreneur Liad Agmon joins as partner.

Technical Review 159

Technical Review Lock-up Period South Korea 159

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. Among these opportunities, the chance to pitch an investor and secure funding is perhaps the greatest of all — at least in the early stages of your startup career — as it can ultimately determine the long-term fate of your company. Tailor your pitch deck.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Reid Hoffman

AUGUST 6, 2020

The term “early-stage” covers a lot of territory in venture investing, from incubating a brand-new idea, to investing in a Series A. WHAT METRICS SHOULD A FOUNDER SHOW TO RAISE A SERIES A FROM A VC FIRM LIKE GREYLOCK? Reid and I have both done Series A investments in companies that have no metrics to speak of.

Technical Review 69

Technical Review Seed Stage Software Review Early Stage 69

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. This structure allows for alignment on the front end, and real-time flexibility for performance metrics,” says Samira Salman , a family office investor and advisor. . Novel Growth Partners, Lighter Capital, Rev Up, Corl, Flow Capital. Of the Inc.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. What are your key Startup Metrics ? Analytics/Metrics - what are the key startup metrics that you will need to track? Where’s the mystery (see Matching Algorithm )? Administrators?

Developer 396

Developer Founder Viral Oauth 396

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2014

” It’s a standard line I use at our partners meetings. For all the things he’s likely known for, he probably hasn’t yet built a strong relationship as an early stage venture investor (he invests often in later-stage deals where he is very respected). It’s not that I lack confidence.

Silicon Valley 333

Silicon Valley Early Stage Later Stage Technical Review 333

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. What are your key Startup Metrics ? Analytics/Metrics - what are the key startup metrics that you will need to track? Where’s the mystery (see Matching Algorithm )? Administrators?

Developer 384

Developer Founder Viral Oauth 384

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Max and his partners interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. Today they released the first Startup Genome Report — a 67 page in-depth analysis on what makes early-stage Internet startups successful. They went to work gathering deep knowledege of what makes successful Internet startups.

Technical Cofounder 334

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 334

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

For early-stage startups, the goodwill component can easily exceed the size of all the financial elements together, or can just as easily mark a company with good financials as not investable. In the investment community, these leadership elements are often called “goodwill.” Focus on talent and people growth.

Leadership 120

Leadership Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation 120

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 18, 2021

Especially in the early stages of growth, standing up to competition means that your business also needs to minimize the cost of acquiring new customers. We’ll cover the following strategies: Retargeting and remarketing Partner programs A/B testing Customer retention Automated processes. Partner program.

Acquisition 127

Acquisition Cost Affiliate Customer 127

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Dan Kozikowski, Partner and Head of Platform, First Mark Capital , said to me, “Firms should match services to the stage-specific needs of companies. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. Real Ventures , an early-stage, Canadian-based fund, runs a two-day Founder Camp every six months.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. I would say the norm for many early-stage companies is somewhere between 6-10 in-person meetings per year. What Rob wrote in his post is right.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Up and Running

AUGUST 21, 2018

If you’re in the early stages of fleshing out your business idea, don’t worry too much about detailed market research. You’ll be thinking about sales, marketing, the team you might need, and any partners or outside resources you’ll need to leverage. Key partners and resources. Your ideal customer. Your sales strategy.

Lean 134

Lean Forecast Software Review Business Plan 134

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

What I love about my job is getting to see teams of super-early-stage companies develop ideas that while raw have potential to make an impact on the market. The full financial details and metrics were in the deck. Establishing Metrics & Monitoring Success (or Failures). It literally can put you out of business.

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

But in business, you want a lot of partners. In the private equity universe, most Partners have primary training as deal-makers, not as managers. See Bessemer Venture Partners’ A comprehensive guide to security for startups. Cobalt for General Partners helps GPs to optimize their fundraising strategy. 1) Manage the firm

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 31, 2022

This early stage is often called the idea stage, best populated by people who see the need for change early, or always have a vision for unmet opportunities, or a better way to do things. Some people are very good as defining metrics, roll-out programs, and reward systems for marketing and sales programs.

Metrics 272

Metrics Early Stage Finance Programming 272

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 26, 2010

I’ve been having discussions with several people recently about the role of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in very early stage companies. However, I’ve now begun questioning how and what an early-stage / startup CTO should be. It makes this early stage challenging. Where and how will we host the systems?

CTO 225

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 225

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

One of the most important decisions for a founder of an early stage company is deciding who should be on the cap table. We’ve written about doing your due diligence on investors and funds to make sure you find the right partners for the journey. For a seed fund like us, our primary focus is to get a company from “seed” to “A.”

Cap Table 350

Cap Table Due Diligence Early Stage Portfolio 350

NZ Entrepreneur

AUGUST 4, 2021

Byron van Vugt from NZ Growth Capital Partners explains. Capital raising can be challenging and time-consuming, but it forces you to evaluate the real metrics and areas of your business that are often overlooked.” – Bex Rempel, ZeroJet. Byron van Vugt is a senior investment analyst at NZ Growth Capital Partners.

Technical Review 61

Technical Review Software Review Founder Due Diligence 61

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015

by John Vrionis, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. The goal was to set quantifiable metrics to hit in each category and to reverse engineer how many people and dollars would be required to get there. Then they broke each category down into six-week sprints.

Valuation 100

Valuation Dilution Chicago Technical Review 100

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

PEVCTech is partnering with Blue Future Partners to run the first large-scale survey of VCs’ technology stack. Johann Kratzer of Blue Future Partners , a fund of funds, observed, “The majority of the hundreds of funds we’ve diligenced rely predominantly on their relationships to source deals.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

YoungUpstarts

MAY 7, 2019

If followed, we believe it can help startup teams navigate the critical early stages of development – and avoid joining a majority of early stage companies that end up on the entrepreneurial scrap heap. Read on to discover why successfully traversing the Traction Gap is critical to early stage companies.

Cleveland 217

Cleveland Early Stage Framework Startup 217

ConversionXL

MARCH 31, 2021

For example, if organic traffic is a priority for you, include a statement like this: From an SEO perspective, our primary goal in the early stages of this content strategy is to focus on low-volume, high-buyer intent keywords and queries related to specific pain points. This sets the intention for your early-stage priorities.

Audience 127

Audience Non-Compete Distribution Channel 127

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2020

See below for a good description of what we like to see in deals at Forward Partners and what makes us different from other VCs. An interview with Nic Brisbourne, Forward Partners. I think we differ a little from the rest of the industry, though, particularly with our focus on early stage companies.

Partner 68

Partner Early Stage Portfolio Metrics 68

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

We back very early stage companies and work alongside executive teams as their build their teams, launch their products, announce their companies and raise their first downstream capital rounds. The biggest change for us in early-stage investing is that we now need to commit earlier. each with partners as the lead.

Pre-Money Valuation 471

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

Up and Running

OCTOBER 1, 2019

Marketing is an expense, so finding someone who can attach real success metrics to their campaigns will help you stay focused on what’s going to work best for your target market. . A mentor or partner who can share their power of experience. Traits and skills to look for: Find a mentor or partner with direct experience with startups.

Hiring 77

Hiring Technical Review Small Business Forecast 77

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

For most of my career, I’ve served startups and early-stage companies as an operating executive or advisor. Do you need highly skilled functional managers or do you need a true partner? someone to be that true partner). This is why I encourage almost every startup founder to find a partner or a cofounder.

Hiring 336

Hiring Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder 336

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

Though RBI will displace some traditional equity VC, its much bigger impact will be to expand the pool of capital available for early-stage entrepreneurs. . However, only recently have early-stage companies started to use this model at any scale. . So what is Revenue Based Investing?

Revenue 60

Revenue Term Sheet Founder Technical Review 60