article thumbnail

VCs eating our own dog food: Using technology and analytics to make better investments

David Teten

However, in private markets, there is more room to optimize across all 11 steps of the investing process: firm management , marketing, fundraising , origination , manage relationships, due diligence, negotiation, monitoring, portfolio acceleration , reporting, and. They read reviews of the products of target investments.

article thumbnail

The Future of Startup Funding

www.paulgraham.com

In a traditional series A round, before the VCs invest theymake the company set aside a block of stock for future hires—usuallybetween 10 and 30% of the company. Notes [ 1 ]In this essay Im talking mainly about software startups.These points dont apply to types of startups that are still expensiveto start, e.g. in energy or biotech.

Startup 93
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

How to Fund a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

I wassurprised recently when I realized that all the worst problems wefaced in our startup were due not to competitors, but investors.Dealing with competitors was easy by comparison. Your natural tendency when an investor says yes willbe to relax and go back to writing code. They were helpful in negotiating deals, for example.

article thumbnail

How to pick a co-founder

venturehacks.com

What you don’t know Business founders who don’t code use bad proxies for picking technical co-founders (&# 10 years with Java!&# ). However, neither one of us has a coding background. Geeks can always be hired. Read some fun reviews of this site. Be especially careful with the “sales&# guy here.

Cofounder 101
article thumbnail

How to Divide Equity to Startup Founders, Advisors, and Employees

thinkspace.com

Chris Dixon wrote a blog post about “ The one number you should know about your equity grant “ The one number you should know about your equity grant is the percent of the company you are being granted (in options, shares, whatever – it doesn’t matter – just the % matters). Percent of the outstanding option pool: meaningless.

Equity 62
article thumbnail

Everything you ever wanted to know about advisors: Part 2.

venturehacks.com

Advisor compensation Whether you’re hiring a normal advisor or super advisor: Advisory shares are usually issued as common stock options. The options typically vest monthly over 1-2 years with 100% single-trigger acceleration and no cliff. Many advisors want options they can exercise immediately —that’s fine.