This talk by Maciej Ceglowski (the founder of Pinboard among other things) is mostly a discussion of ad:tech and privacy issues. But the most biting critique is saved for the end of the talk and aimed at the VC and founder communities and the tech sector more broadly. It raises a number of interesting points and echoes a view of ad blockers that my partner Albert has convinced me is correct (that they are a logical extension of the user agent concept embedded in web browsers). MORE
One of our recent investments, offered by Founder Collective (FC) – an eight-year-old manager with offices in Boston and San Francisco – is an excellent example of what we look for when we invest in funds offered by other managers. Investments fg next founder collective LP MORE
Put differently, there are some founders for whom failure simply isn’t an option. I am so proud and honored to recognize one such founder from the K9 portfolio today. Sooinn Lee is the founder and CEO of LocoMotive Labs. MORE
Having said that, when we talk about founders and startups we often think of it as something intrinsic to the people, something inside them, built into their very beings. In this case, I’ll use the phrase “Founder DNA&# (borrowed from Raymond Luk ). It’s not a perfectly accurate statement, but it serves our purpose well enough and it speaks to the intangibles that are a part of evaluating founders (although there are many tangible criteria too.). MORE
Conventional wisdom says that startups should have two or three founders. Some investors won’t even invest in single founders at all–so understandably for entrepreneurs this is a big issue. Most “business-focused” single founders are told right from the get go that they need to find a technical co-founder. Of the investments I’ve made to-date, six have 2 founders, one has 3 founders, and three have 1 founder. MORE
Let’s say you’re the founder (I use a solo-founder in my example to keep things simple, but this could just as well apply to a founding team) of a startup called Blood, Sweat and Tears, Inc. If there is one piece of advice I would give to the founders of BST, it is to consider selling a part of their personal stock in the company at that stage. The objective is really to be able to get some risk off the table for the founders and not leave all their eggs in one basket. MORE
I recently heard a terrifying stat about founder suicides recently. The post Founder Suicides appeared first on Feld Thoughts. I know this post is going to be a downer but I think there is a lot more to be talked about regarding depression, mental health, and entrepreneurship. MORE
” But my post yesterday about The Power of Passion When Starting Your Company was about “founder market fit.” ” And I’ve come to believe that – especially among first time entrepreneurs – founder market fit is much more important than product market fit at the inception of the company. Founders come in with something they are super excited about. We constantly hear about “product market fit.” MORE
We don’t know how many rounds this company has raised, how many other VCs are on the cap table, nor how much the founders own. Another post from Capshare surfaced this week touching on that last bit about founder ownership at various levels of VC funding. MORE
Looking back to the early days of my first startup attempt, I think something that kept me going was that I continually read books about startups and entrepreneurs and watched as many interviews of founders as I could find. What advice would you give to an aspiring startup founder? MORE
One of these norms is how founder vesting and employee vesting works. Here is a good summary post from Cooley GO on Founder Vesting. There are two main reasons for founder vesting: To ensure founders stick around and build the company. To protect the founders (and investors) when a member of the founding team separates from the company prematurely. IMHO the former — having a cliff, is better for founders than the latter — not having a cliff). MORE
The right answer is to find a co-founder with complementary skills. Network to find co-founders just as you network to find investors. Co-founders are business partners for startups, so don’t be afraid to join and explore sites such as StartupWeekend, StartupAgents and CoFoundersLab. MORE
I covered what I call “the co-founder mythology.&# Either you’re not technical and you think you need a technical co-founder or vice-versa. It is increasingly popular to have “founder dating&# or “startup weekend hackathons&# of some variety or the other. Hire your co-founder. Truly treat them like a co-founder. Publicly call them a co-founder. None of this, “we’re co-founders, we just work well together. MORE
I saw a blog post this weekend that looked at the IPO filings of 79 tech companies and calculated the ownerships of the founders and the VCs at IPO. The result of that analysis is that the average founder ownership at IPO was 17% and the average VC ownership at IPO was 56%. I’ve written a bunch on this topic and here are two posts that address this exact issue: Founder Dilution – How Much Is “Normal”? MORE
Ask a founder of a growing startup what they need most, and you’ll often get an answer along the lines of, “We need great people, and we need them fast.”. Founders furiously work their networks, post open positions on every reasonable-looking job board, and hope to quickly start hiring. MORE
Just like executive recruiters recognize the best executives, a technical expert in your business domain will recognize the right combination of skill, creativity, and experience you need for a co-founder or key team member. entrepreneur recruiting startup technical co-founder MORE
Last week my friend Chris Albinson formed an interesting new firm called Founders Circle Capital. In a nutshell, Founders Circle provides liquidity for the founders and employees of a “breakaway growth companies” so they don’t need to sell or take the company public prematurely. It takes time for the equity value to get to a point where it makes sense for the founders and employees to take a bit of their equity value off the table. MORE
Heather Anne Carson, co-founder @ Repable recently posted this on Facebook: (She didn’t ask me to write this.) WTF does that even mean? It means: You’re not a young white guy. And it’s total b t. It’s not surprising that guys feel / think this way (but saying it out loud really demonstrates a whole […]. Entrepreneurship MORE
The final event at Boulder Startup Week a few months ago was Founder Fights. A bunch of founders got in a boxing ring for a real, USA Boxing sanctioned event (three rounds, two minutes each). The post Founder Fights in Boulder appeared first on Feld Thoughts. MORE
A founder’s skill is knowing how to recognize new patterns and to pivot on a dime. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. Some of the engineers figuring if the founder was declaring they were toast in 90 days were updating their resumes. MORE
Investors know this, hence the saying “Bet on the jockey (founder), not the horse (idea).” Typically this energizes new startup founders, but some struggle trying to live up to their own, as well as everyone else’s expectations. entrepreneur founder jockey role model startup superhuma MORE
Founders often ask me whether they should be asking for stock options in their own company. There’s no one right way to think about founder incentive compensation, but here’s how I have approached it over the years. You will go from being a founder to being an executive in your company. MORE
—– In a recent workshop with a large company focused on the Innovation@50x process, I mentioned that founders and intraprenuers operate more like artists than accountants – on day one they see something no one else does. Startup founders operate in chaos and uncertainty. MORE
There is a bias against solo founders in Startup Land. Many of the top accelerators, like Techstars and Y Combinator, won't accept founding teams that have solo founders. I was at an entrepreneur event the other night talking with a friend who is a solo founder. MORE
The Founder’s Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman is another book that belongs on every entrepreneur’s bookshelf. The Founder’s Dilemmas was the first. I get asked endless questions about founder dynamics, solo founders, optimal number of founders, equity allocations between founders, roles of founders, alignment between founders, and investor – founder relationships. Books hbs noam wasserman the founder's dilemmas MORE
Nowhere is the politics more difficult than with co-founders, which is why for years I’ve spoken publicly about “ the co-founder mythology.” ” Of course we all go into businesses expecting to be aligned with our co-founders but over time life changes. MORE
Editor’s note: Understanding how to divide founder equity at a startup can be tricky, even to the point of reaching emotional riffs between founders. But not all co-founders are equal in terms of title, ownership, responsibilities, and so forth. MORE
How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? “After reading your post on Why Founders Should Know How to Code it looks like web/mobile startups have it easy. Trying to figure out what the right set of co-founders isn’t so clear. MORE
entrepreneur founder leadership startupMost entrepreneurs assume that success is dependent on their product expertise, coupled with some knowledge of how to run a business. MORE
These questions should all be contemplated and understood by every entrepreneur and startup founder, starting on day one of their quest. Even entrepreneurs who have built many startups, or sold their last one for millions of dollars, know they make occasional people leadership mistakes. MORE
Kauffman just launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. Go watch Founders School now. MORE
Though it was only $5,000, it was enough to prove to myself and my co-founder, Lauren Mosenthal, that we could actually fundraise for our startup. The post Raising Capital As A First Time Founder appeared first on The Gust Blog. MORE
I saw a post last week that suggested that VCs competing to win deals is leading to excess amounts of founder liquidity. I also saw this tweet from Sam Altman yesterday: if founders are selling their own stock less than 1 year into the company, you can nearly always safely pass on investing. — So I will try to summarize my thoughts in tweetstorm format: 1/ when I got into the VC business in the mid 80s, there was little to no founder liquidity. MORE
Two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. Giving a co-founder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder. MORE
Conventional wisdom in the startup world dictates that two founders are ideal for a startup. There are lots of famous pairs of duo co-founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Hewlett and Packard, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Three co-founders is acceptable, but anything beyond that the chances of success of the company may actually decrease. Having the right co-founder is perhaps the single most valuable thing in a startup. MORE
On the positive side for a founder, directly stating a high valuation expectation up front can anchor the negotiations to a higher level, assuming that an investor takes the leap of faith to invest. So What Should Founders Do? MORE
We’ve just released our free Co-founder Equity Split tool. It’ll give you a fair and objective recommendation about how to divide your startup’s ownership, so you and your co-founders will have a sensible, real starting point for this notoriously hard, crucially important conversation. Many startup founders find themselves lacking clarity and direction when it comes time to divide their. Starting Your Company co-founders equity starting a company startups MORE
Every new entrepreneur who has not spent years in corporate life has the advantage of an unbiased look at business opportunities, but at the same time has the disadvantage of missing critical business experiences that can cost them dearly in their first startup venture. MORE
Things first-time founders regret saying: “Don’t tell anyone we’re working on a picture sharing startup. We don’t want anyone to steal our idea.” ” “Stop the launch! The forgot password recovery email has a typo!” MORE
One of the free ones is on Founder’s Syndrome and Origin Stories. The post Founder’s Syndrome and Origin Stories appeared first on Feld Thoughts. CEO boulder digital arts ceo founders training video MORE
Let’s say you’re the founder (I use a solo-founder in my example to keep things simple, but this could just as well apply to a founding team) of a startup called Blood, Sweat and Tears, Inc. If there is one piece of advice I would give to the founders of BST, it is to consider selling a part of their personal stock in the company at that stage. The objective is really to be able to get some risk off the table for the founders and not leave all their eggs in one basket. MORE
For one-on-one coaching from the startup founder, I call this approach five-minute mentoring. Your primary responsibility as a startup founder is to provide vision, leadership and communication to all internal and external team members. MORE
I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and had lots of time for a phone call with Dave, an ex student and now a founder who wanted to update me on his Customer Discovery progress. His inability to attract a co-founder who could code was a troubling sign. MORE
Founder Related Topics A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
NOVEMBER 7, 2016
I saw a blog post this weekend that looked at the IPO filings of 79 tech companies and calculated the ownerships of the founders and the VCs at IPO. The result of that analysis is that the average founder ownership at IPO was 17% and the average VC ownership at IPO was 56%. I’ve written a bunch on this topic and here are two posts that address this exact issue: Founder Dilution – How Much Is “Normal”?
Feld Thoughts
OCTOBER 2, 2014
I recently heard a terrifying stat about founder suicides recently. The post Founder Suicides appeared first on Feld Thoughts. I know this post is going to be a downer but I think there is a lot more to be talked about regarding depression, mental health, and entrepreneurship.
Feld Thoughts
MARCH 24, 2017
One of our recent investments, offered by Founder Collective (FC) – an eight-year-old manager with offices in Boston and San Francisco – is an excellent example of what we look for when we invest in funds offered by other managers. Investments fg next founder collective LP
Instigator Blog
JUNE 18, 2014
Conventional wisdom says that startups should have two or three founders. Some investors won’t even invest in single founders at all–so understandably for entrepreneurs this is a big issue. Most “business-focused” single founders are told right from the get go that they need to find a technical co-founder. Of the investments I’ve made to-date, six have 2 founders, one has 3 founders, and three have 1 founder.
Gust
OCTOBER 5, 2015
Though it was only $5,000, it was enough to prove to myself and my co-founder, Lauren Mosenthal, that we could actually fundraise for our startup. The post Raising Capital As A First Time Founder appeared first on The Gust Blog.
A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
OCTOBER 28, 2014
Last week my friend Chris Albinson formed an interesting new firm called Founders Circle Capital. In a nutshell, Founders Circle provides liquidity for the founders and employees of a “breakaway growth companies” so they don’t need to sell or take the company public prematurely. It takes time for the equity value to get to a point where it makes sense for the founders and employees to take a bit of their equity value off the table.
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 27, 2016
Just like executive recruiters recognize the best executives, a technical expert in your business domain will recognize the right combination of skill, creativity, and experience you need for a co-founder or key team member. entrepreneur recruiting startup technical co-founder
A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
DECEMBER 29, 2014
I saw a post last week that suggested that VCs competing to win deals is leading to excess amounts of founder liquidity. I also saw this tweet from Sam Altman yesterday: if founders are selling their own stock less than 1 year into the company, you can nearly always safely pass on investing. — So I will try to summarize my thoughts in tweetstorm format: 1/ when I got into the VC business in the mid 80s, there was little to no founder liquidity.
Gust
NOVEMBER 4, 2016
We’ve just released our free Co-founder Equity Split tool. It’ll give you a fair and objective recommendation about how to divide your startup’s ownership, so you and your co-founders will have a sensible, real starting point for this notoriously hard, crucially important conversation. Many startup founders find themselves lacking clarity and direction when it comes time to divide their. Starting Your Company co-founders equity starting a company startups
Feld Thoughts
JANUARY 9, 2014
One of the free ones is on Founder’s Syndrome and Origin Stories. The post Founder’s Syndrome and Origin Stories appeared first on Feld Thoughts. CEO boulder digital arts ceo founders training video
K9 Ventures
OCTOBER 27, 2016
One of these norms is how founder vesting and employee vesting works. Here is a good summary post from Cooley GO on Founder Vesting. There are two main reasons for founder vesting: To ensure founders stick around and build the company. To protect the founders (and investors) when a member of the founding team separates from the company prematurely. IMHO the former — having a cliff, is better for founders than the latter — not having a cliff).
Startup Professionals Musings
JANUARY 26, 2015
Investors know this, hence the saying “Bet on the jockey (founder), not the horse (idea).” Typically this energizes new startup founders, but some struggle trying to live up to their own, as well as everyone else’s expectations. entrepreneur founder jockey role model startup superhuma
Steve Blank
OCTOBER 27, 2015
—– In a recent workshop with a large company focused on the Innovation@50x process, I mentioned that founders and intraprenuers operate more like artists than accountants – on day one they see something no one else does. Startup founders operate in chaos and uncertainty.
Startup Professionals Musings
APRIL 6, 2015
The right answer is to find a co-founder with complementary skills. Network to find co-founders just as you network to find investors. Co-founders are business partners for startups, so don’t be afraid to join and explore sites such as StartupWeekend, StartupAgents and CoFoundersLab.
Instigator Blog
OCTOBER 27, 2016
Heather Anne Carson, co-founder @ Repable recently posted this on Facebook: (She didn’t ask me to write this.) WTF does that even mean? It means: You’re not a young white guy. And it’s total b t. It’s not surprising that guys feel / think this way (but saying it out loud really demonstrates a whole […]. Entrepreneurship
StartupCFO
JANUARY 26, 2016
Founders often ask me whether they should be asking for stock options in their own company. There’s no one right way to think about founder incentive compensation, but here’s how I have approached it over the years. You will go from being a founder to being an executive in your company.
A VC : Venture Capital and Technology
SEPTEMBER 24, 2015
This talk by Maciej Ceglowski (the founder of Pinboard among other things) is mostly a discussion of ad:tech and privacy issues. But the most biting critique is saved for the end of the talk and aimed at the VC and founder communities and the tech sector more broadly. It raises a number of interesting points and echoes a view of ad blockers that my partner Albert has convinced me is correct (that they are a logical extension of the user agent concept embedded in web browsers).
Startup Professionals Musings
AUGUST 4, 2014
Two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. Giving a co-founder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want. The CTO of many technical startups was the original founder.
View from Seed
OCTOBER 21, 2014
On the positive side for a founder, directly stating a high valuation expectation up front can anchor the negotiations to a higher level, assuming that an investor takes the leap of faith to invest. So What Should Founders Do?
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 25, 2016
Every new entrepreneur who has not spent years in corporate life has the advantage of an unbiased look at business opportunities, but at the same time has the disadvantage of missing critical business experiences that can cost them dearly in their first startup venture.
Both Sides of the Table
JANUARY 4, 2014
Nowhere is the politics more difficult than with co-founders, which is why for years I’ve spoken publicly about “ the co-founder mythology.” ” Of course we all go into businesses expecting to be aligned with our co-founders but over time life changes.
K9 Ventures
MAY 6, 2015
Conventional wisdom in the startup world dictates that two founders are ideal for a startup. There are lots of famous pairs of duo co-founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Hewlett and Packard, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Three co-founders is acceptable, but anything beyond that the chances of success of the company may actually decrease. Having the right co-founder is perhaps the single most valuable thing in a startup.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 16, 2014
How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? “After reading your post on Why Founders Should Know How to Code it looks like web/mobile startups have it easy. Trying to figure out what the right set of co-founders isn’t so clear.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 3, 2014
I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and had lots of time for a phone call with Dave, an ex student and now a founder who wanted to update me on his Customer Discovery progress. His inability to attract a co-founder who could code was a troubling sign.
Feld Thoughts
AUGUST 22, 2012
” But my post yesterday about The Power of Passion When Starting Your Company was about “founder market fit.” ” And I’ve come to believe that – especially among first time entrepreneurs – founder market fit is much more important than product market fit at the inception of the company. Founders come in with something they are super excited about. We constantly hear about “product market fit.”
View from Seed
MARCH 29, 2016
Ask a founder of a growing startup what they need most, and you’ll often get an answer along the lines of, “We need great people, and we need them fast.”. Founders furiously work their networks, post open positions on every reasonable-looking job board, and hope to quickly start hiring.
Startup Professionals Musings
APRIL 27, 2015
For one-on-one coaching from the startup founder, I call this approach five-minute mentoring. Your primary responsibility as a startup founder is to provide vision, leadership and communication to all internal and external team members.
Seeing Both Sides
APRIL 30, 2015
There is a bias against solo founders in Startup Land. Many of the top accelerators, like Techstars and Y Combinator, won't accept founding teams that have solo founders. I was at an entrepreneur event the other night talking with a friend who is a solo founder.
Bryce Dot VC
DECEMBER 22, 2016
We don’t know how many rounds this company has raised, how many other VCs are on the cap table, nor how much the founders own. Another post from Capshare surfaced this week touching on that last bit about founder ownership at various levels of VC funding.
K9 Ventures
FEBRUARY 25, 2015
Put differently, there are some founders for whom failure simply isn’t an option. I am so proud and honored to recognize one such founder from the K9 portfolio today. Sooinn Lee is the founder and CEO of LocoMotive Labs.
View from Seed
DECEMBER 4, 2014
Editor’s note: Understanding how to divide founder equity at a startup can be tricky, even to the point of reaching emotional riffs between founders. But not all co-founders are equal in terms of title, ownership, responsibilities, and so forth.
joel.is
JULY 21, 2013
Looking back to the early days of my first startup attempt, I think something that kept me going was that I continually read books about startups and entrepreneurs and watched as many interviews of founders as I could find. What advice would you give to an aspiring startup founder?
K9 Ventures
NOVEMBER 21, 2011
Let’s say you’re the founder (I use a solo-founder in my example to keep things simple, but this could just as well apply to a founding team) of a startup called Blood, Sweat and Tears, Inc. If there is one piece of advice I would give to the founders of BST, it is to consider selling a part of their personal stock in the company at that stage. The objective is really to be able to get some risk off the table for the founders and not leave all their eggs in one basket.
K9 Ventures
NOVEMBER 21, 2011
Let’s say you’re the founder (I use a solo-founder in my example to keep things simple, but this could just as well apply to a founding team) of a startup called Blood, Sweat and Tears, Inc. If there is one piece of advice I would give to the founders of BST, it is to consider selling a part of their personal stock in the company at that stage. The objective is really to be able to get some risk off the table for the founders and not leave all their eggs in one basket.
Vinicius Vacanti
APRIL 23, 2012
Things first-time founders regret saying: “Don’t tell anyone we’re working on a picture sharing startup. We don’t want anyone to steal our idea.” ” “Stop the launch! The forgot password recovery email has a typo!”
Instigator Blog
OCTOBER 21, 2010
Having said that, when we talk about founders and startups we often think of it as something intrinsic to the people, something inside them, built into their very beings. In this case, I’ll use the phrase “Founder DNA&# (borrowed from Raymond Luk ). It’s not a perfectly accurate statement, but it serves our purpose well enough and it speaks to the intangibles that are a part of evaluating founders (although there are many tangible criteria too.).
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 9, 2014
These questions should all be contemplated and understood by every entrepreneur and startup founder, starting on day one of their quest. Even entrepreneurs who have built many startups, or sold their last one for millions of dollars, know they make occasional people leadership mistakes.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 9, 2011
I covered what I call “the co-founder mythology.&# Either you’re not technical and you think you need a technical co-founder or vice-versa. It is increasingly popular to have “founder dating&# or “startup weekend hackathons&# of some variety or the other. Hire your co-founder. Truly treat them like a co-founder. Publicly call them a co-founder. None of this, “we’re co-founders, we just work well together.
Steve Blank
AUGUST 27, 2012
A founder’s skill is knowing how to recognize new patterns and to pivot on a dime. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. Some of the engineers figuring if the founder was declaring they were toast in 90 days were updating their resumes.
Feld Thoughts
MAY 6, 2012
The Founder’s Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman is another book that belongs on every entrepreneur’s bookshelf. The Founder’s Dilemmas was the first. I get asked endless questions about founder dynamics, solo founders, optimal number of founders, equity allocations between founders, roles of founders, alignment between founders, and investor – founder relationships. Books hbs noam wasserman the founder's dilemmas
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