Remove Hiring Remove IPO Remove Revenue Remove Seed Capital
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Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad

Steve Blank

Investors bet that by offering prospective hires a stake in the company’s future growth- with a visible time horizon of a payoff – employees would act more like owners and work harder– and that would align employee interests with the investor interests. Much has changed about the economics of startups in the two decades.

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Startup Fairy Tales and Other Tall Tales That Venture Capitalists Tell

Growthink Blog

With this seed capital – more often than not totaling between $100,000 and $1,000,000 - the company accomplishes a number of key technical milestones, gets a beta customer or two, and then goes on a "road show" to venture capitalists around the country for capital to “scale” the business. Venture capitalists Cut Tough Deals.

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The Fallacy of Channels: Startups Beware

Both Sides of the Table

I’ve seen way too many startups spend all their energy getting channel deals done only to find out that they don’t produce ANY revenue. You decide to go out and hire a sales rep. The price points are not as high as your beautiful Excel spreadsheet had forecasted when you raised your seed capital.

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Accidental VC: The Most Dangerous Question for Founders to Overlook in Pitches

View from Seed

Additionally, if you’re talking to VCs, it’s implied that you’re thinking big and thinking about a large acquisition or IPO, as well as generating hundreds of millions in revenue. Note that many were included in our pitch deck templates for raising seed capital. You can find those here. ).

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Innovation, Change and the Rest of Your Life

Steve Blank

For life sciences it was the Genentech IPO in 1980 that proved to investors that life science startups could make them a ton of money. In this business environment, hiring a new CEO who had experience growing a company around a single technical innovation was a rational decision for venture investors. That’s no longer the case.

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