Steve Blank
APRIL 10, 2019
A version of this article first appeared in the Harvard Business Review. 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. Here’s why.
YoungUpstarts
APRIL 9, 2019
We all know that starting a business is hard work, and growing it is even harder. Every step has to be thoroughly thought out, because if you miss even one, it could mean everything. New businesses are started all the time, but only a few of them last beyond five years. Now that the internet has fostered such an accessible and easy way for people to connect and run their own start-ups, competition has skyrocketed.
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Steve Blank
OCTOBER 15, 2019
This article previously appeared in the Harvard Business Review. The type of disruption most companies and government agencies are facing is a once-in-every-few-centuries event. Disruption today is more than just changes in technology, or channel, or competitors – it’s all of them, all at once. And these forces are completely reshaping both commerce and defense.
deal architect
DECEMBER 12, 2019
I had been invited to an SAP Analytics influencer summit earlier in the year. Many of the sessions were under NDA, so I had not written about it. However, my notes showed: Ambitious, exciting vision, but fragmented execution across portfolio.
Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic
Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 23, 2019
Relationships are the key to survival and success for entrepreneurs, and first impressions usually turn into lasting impressions. As an advisor to many early-stage entrepreneurs, I caution them to always be prepared for that chance meeting with a famous investor, a potential partner or an industry guru. It’s not smart to believe that your passion and gift of gab will impress anyone.
View from Seed
NOVEMBER 14, 2019
I sent a tweet out last week that elicited quite a few responses from both founders and investors: seed funds that don’t invest pre-traction =. — Rob Go (@robgo) November 4, 2019. I could hear the internet nodding in violent agreement. I thought I’d share a few additional thoughts on what may be driving this. First – there are a lot of seed investors out there that don’t actually want to invest in seed.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Version One Ventures
DECEMBER 3, 2019
Bessemer started the idea of the “anti-portfolio” – the companies that you passed on, but ended up doing very, very well. . After Honey was acquired by PayPal for $4B a few weeks ago, we thought it was a good time to share the Version One anti-portfolio: Honey. We had a chance to invest in a $500K round at a $12M valuation in 2015. We loved the founders, but didn’t have much conviction around the scalability of a browser plug-in and the fact that this was a bridge round.
Feld Thoughts
JULY 9, 2019
I’ve been thinking a lot about gross profit (and gross margin ) lately. Yeah, I know I can be riveting, but stay with me. When I was in Boston a while ago (it was very cold, so it must have been January), I had a wide-ranging conversation with Eric Paley. This was before the IPO Summer of 2019 when all conventional valuation metrics have entered the land of “suspension of disbelief” which is short-term good and long-term well-we-will-see-…-eventually.
ReadWriteStart
DECEMBER 19, 2019
Silicon Valley gets significant attention for its role in producing tech startups that often go on to see massive, international success. However, it’s far from the only startup hub in the world, and it’s not even the only startup hub in the United States. While Silicon Valley has the advantages of a self-sustaining entrepreneurial reputation and proximity to multiple major universities, other countries have natural advantages that make them highly supportive of new tech entrepreneurs.
VC Cafe
DECEMBER 12, 2019
With its $135 billion market cap, Netflix has approximately 159 million subscribers globally and the best streaming tech. Today, content is king and Netflix has a big chunk of it (see our post on Entertainment as the new Oil ). But for the first time in 12 years, Netflix is also facing real competition. Disney+ successful debut with 10 million subscribers on day one showed the market that it’s possible to compete, if you have the content arsenal, and with the Disney catalog, Marvel, Star W
Haystack
JULY 4, 2019
The topic of “investor updates” has been debated frequently. Most folks who are not close to early-stage startups and new company formation would be surprised to discover that a high number of companies, after receiving funding from individuals or institutions, do not send updates to their investors. Contrast that with a fund manager, who is often required to issue quarterly capital account statements usually paired with a cover note and updates on specific companies.
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 28, 2019
Being a handy-man offers a lot of mobility and freedom. You develop relationships with all your clients and become known in the neighborhood as someone trustworthy. Plus, you know how to fix everything in your own house. This is a huge benefit if you’re trying to do remodeling. No outside costs or discounted costs from co-workers who know parts of the craft that you don’t.
Steve Blank
MAY 7, 2019
Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of this century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the b
deal architect
JUNE 20, 2019
I have heard Zoho talk about doing business in UAE and Nigeria. That is so different from other cloud vendors which tend to mostly focus on N. America and Europe. Over the last decade, their US revenues have steadily declined.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 2, 2019
As a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, the most common question I get is, “I want to be an entrepreneur -- how do I start?” The obvious answer is that you need an idea first, but I’ve come to realize that the process is really much more complex than that. Many people with great ideas never make it as entrepreneurs, and true entrepreneurs can make a business out of anything.
The Next Web
FEBRUARY 7, 2019
It might be everyone’s dream to move to Portugal. Beautiful beaches, amazing food, and weather. Its vibrant startup scene is now another reason to add to the list. Like in neighboring Spain, the country was hit hard with a headache-inducing unemployment rate that was concentrated primarily on Portugal’s youth. Instead of plunging the country into a deeper recession, this moment inspired an entrepreneurial zeitgeist that hurled Portugal headfirst into a technological renaissance.
This is going to be BIG.
FEBRUARY 18, 2019
Brooklyn Bridge Ventures , the pre-seed and seed stage VC fund I run in NYC, has invested in 64 companies in the last six and a half years. Twenty-five of them have at least one female co-founder. Fifteen had co-founders over 40. Five have LGBTQ+ founders. Three teams have African-American founders. Three of the founding teams are married couples. All were backed based on the sole criteria that they had the potential to make my limited partners a lot of money.
Version One Ventures
JULY 30, 2019
We raised our first fund in summer 2012. It was a $15m early-stage fund that we invested in 20 portfolio companies over the course of two and a half years. We’re now seven years in and the portfolio is maturing. I plotted the return multiples (as of June 30, 2019) for all 20 portfolio companies in the chart below. The return multiple for a company is calculated by dividing the current net asset value (unrealized and realized dollar amounts) by the invested capital in that company (often invested
Feld Thoughts
JUNE 13, 2019
I watched HBO’s Chernobyl the past few nights. I finished it last night, took a deep breath, and said out loud to myself, “that was spectacular.” One of the final quotes that stuck with me is the title of this post. The full quote is “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.” Read it again. “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth.
ReadWriteStart
JUNE 20, 2019
For years, the business world lived under the false pretense that open plan offices were a killer idea. I myself even bought into the hype. At Netconcepts, the digital agency I founded (and sold in 2010), only the executives had offices with doors that closed. Open plan offices were a win-win for anyone looking to […]. The post Open Plan Offices Kill Productivity.
VC Cafe
JUNE 19, 2019
The takeover of Corporate Venture Capital - how CVCs passed traditional VC volume in the US in 2018, how does it compare to Europe and Israel and what are the drivers for this unprecedented level of. This is a content summary only. Click on the post title to continue reading this post, share your comments, browse the website and more!
The Startup Magazine
DECEMBER 30, 2019
It’s better to have it and not need it, rather than need it and get caught without it. Insurance is one of the oldest financial businesses, but it’s not what it used to be. Like other sectors such as banking and law firms, insurers are receiving a makeover. The traditional methods now include accuracy, personalization, and efficiency like never before.
Startup Lessons Learned
JUNE 19, 2019
Andy Rachleff co-founded the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital in 1995. In 2005, he retired to focus on giving back, beginning by teaching technology entrepreneurship courses at Stanford, becoming a trustee at the University of Pennsylvania (which he attended undergrad), and funding cancer research with his wife. Then in 2008, he had a revelation from his experience on the Penn endowment board about how to democratize investing advice and “accidentally” founded a new company to do it.
Steve Blank
MAY 29, 2019
I was interviewed by Philip Bouchard , Executive Director of TrustedPeer Entrepreneurship Advisory , about how entrepreneurship education has changed, mission-driven entrepreneurship, and what we’ve learned about corporate innovation. Worth a read. Interview highlights: How is the way that universities teach entrepreneurship evolving? Lean LaunchPad class developed for Stanford.
Haystack
JUNE 30, 2019
There are countless posts on what one should consider when considering a career in VC. The reality today is that, as technology proliferates into all sectors and geographies, venture itself has grown in lockstep with the size of the opportunity. As the economy is now driven by technology, many folks are interested in venture — which I will admit, if you love it, is an incredible role with a fantastic business model (if things work out).
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 15, 2019
Winning customers as an entrepreneur in a startup has many parallels to a young army trying to penetrate some formidable new and unfamiliar territory. You need a strategy as well as a goal, and you need to pick your battles well. Even in this age of purpose before profits, a business won’t survive by pretending there are no competitors out there to worry about.
The Next Web
FEBRUARY 8, 2019
Italy may be a latecomer to the booming startup scene but it’s fast becoming a hotbed of new tech talent. Red tape and bureaucracy were some of the biggest challenges new companies faced. But the government is now on a mission to cut down barriers, launching several new initiatives focused on making it easier to grow hi-tech companies, including the Italian Startup Act and Visa scheme.
YFS Magazine
JANUARY 7, 2019
We asked 15 entrepreneurs to share the worst advice they've received along with tips on what to do instead. Here's a revealing look at what they had to say.
Version One Ventures
APRIL 17, 2019
Over the past few years, the term “managed marketplace” has become so widely used that Bill Gurley from Benchmark recently tweeted that it is not clear to him what the difference is between a “managed marketplace” and a “true marketplace.”. I think this is an important discussion to have and I am trying to develop a framework to differentiate between the different terms.
Feld Thoughts
JUNE 14, 2019
I recently met Renata George through a referral from Katie Rae (MIT Engine CEO, previously Techstars Boston MD). Renata told me about a book she was working on called Women Who Venture and asked me if I’d write the foreword. I was honored to be asked to do this. The foreword I wrote follows. The book is out and available now in hardcover and on the Kindle.
ReadWriteStart
MAY 30, 2019
Starting a business can be a professionally and financially rewarding experience. For founders and early-stage employees, however, it can also be a stress-filled and anxiety-ridden experience. Tight deadlines and thin margins force employees to do more with less and to put in unreasonable hours to keep a startup functioning as it attempts to gain traction […].
VC Cafe
FEBRUARY 1, 2019
According to Pitchbook data, there are about 15,700 venture and corporate venture funds globally, out of which 8,628 venture capital funds in the US alone (54%), and another 4,553 in Europe (29%), This is a content summary only. Click on the post title to continue reading this post, share your comments, browse the website and more!
The Startup Magazine
NOVEMBER 27, 2019
Today’s small and medium-sized businesses run on efficiency just as much as they do market share, and after a half-century of technological revolution, it’s no wonder they are looking for lower-overhead options for technology infrastructure than the traditional mainframe or corporate phone suit can offer. The hardware to support those features in a building can be quite expensive, and with the advent of VOIP, broadband internet, and cloud technology , many of the old infrastructure
Up and Running
JULY 30, 2019
Today we’re sharing what we call “ideas to steal.” They are all real-life ideas from successful businesses—action steps you can pick up and run with right away, without having to research, test, or otherwise delay implementing. And, you don’t need to spend money to do them. . Pick three that you can sink your teeth into, and don’t hesitate to contact us if you want more information or help implementing them—these days we all have to work together. 1.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
This article previously appeared in War On The Rocks. There was a time when much of U.S. academia was engaged in weapon systems research for the Defense Department and intelligence community. Some of the best and brightest wanted to work for defense contractors or corporate research and development labs. And the best startups spun out of Stanford were building components for weapon systems.
Hearpreneur
NOVEMBER 27, 2019
The idea of exactly what your business is going to usually come first. Secondly, most often, is giving a title to your idea. What exactly is going to be the name of your business? Some people turn to their childhood for inspiration or a beloved family pet. It could be a made up word you dream of one night and feel it has the right ring to it. Even still there are some people who study foreign words for the perfect meaning behind their chosen business.
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