Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

This was the fault of my cofounder since he was in charge of game development, it was the engineers who bailed on me, it was the sales and marketing people who didn’t tell me how bad the games were, it was the VC’s who refused to put any more money in the company, it was Sega’s fault for making a bad gaming platform…. Lessons Learned.

Redemption 222

Redemption Cofounder Silicon Valley Burn Rate 222

View from Seed

JUNE 11, 2019

Aside from the early commitments, the next most important thing to focus on is nailing down your lead investor. I’ve found that the lead investor will end up doing 90% of the work for a startup (or will cause 90% of the pain if you get the decision wrong). Often one of the leads in the mix is a larger, multi-stage fund.

Syndicate 202

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Lead Investor 202

The Next Web

OCTOBER 7, 2013

You might assume the lead investor wants a 20 percent stake and 15 percent option pool each time there’s a Series ‘Blah’ every 12 to 18 months, but this is admittedly too simple. Again this is somewhat simplified as the liquidity event (sale or IPO) may come as cash, stock, or a combination of the two. How much do they cough up?

Engineer 129

Engineer Dilution Option Pool Vesting 129

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 18, 2009

But then I got a call from my lead investor (coincidentally it was GRP Partners where I now am a partner) and they told me not to lose confidence. That was our first year of sales. We started drafting out plans for what we were going to do in order to have an orderly winding up of the company. But we did $2.1

Germany 298

Germany Entrepreneur Merger Los Angeles 298

A Crowded Space

OCTOBER 3, 2018

Very shortly after I joined, Greg Gretsch (now my partner at Jackson Square Ventures) co-led oDesk’s Series A along with Venky Ganesan (partner at Menlo Ventures and lead investor in Rev.com). Since I was young and foolish, that didn’t deter me from joining full time. Since then, the company has gone through an amazing journey.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Bangladesh Ukraine Philippines 60

Hunter Walker

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

And while I passed on leading their seed, I did contribute a smaller amount into the financing, along with three subsequent pro rata/super pro rata investments. We go into more detail in her newsletter which I’ll link here.

Cofounder 96

Cofounder Lead Investor Founder Restful 96

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. Somehow many first-time founders equate “sales” with something that is beneath them. In sales there are also three rules: Qualify, qualify, qualify.

Term Sheet 332

Term Sheet Due Diligence Campaign Sales 332

techcrunch.com

APRIL 26, 2013

First, AngelList Invest is available to any company on AngelList that has a top-tier lead investor. And the lead investor has to be putting in at least $100,000 in capital, says Ravikant. with a $3 sale. Using today’s data on AngelList, that includes 300 startups. The Queue: EDDIE_MURPHY_LAUGH.wav.

SEC 61

SEC Accredited Investor San Diego New York City 61

David Teten

JANUARY 10, 2012

He is an active angel with many successful angel investments including: Rent.com, (purchased by Ebay in 2005 for $415 million), Golfnow.com (purchased by Comcast in June 2008), and Lifelock (lead investors include Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers). and Tweetdeck (purchased by Twitter in June 2011).

Technical Review 128

Technical Review Technology North Carolina Switzerland 128

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Over the past 15 years we’ve built this amazing membership to serve our core clients – leading investors, corporations, consulting firms, and nonprofits. Those interactions vary – from mentorship and product feedback to learning about unmet needs in a market or understanding whether a sales channel is worth pursuing.

New York 114

New York Technical Review Networking Advisory Board 114

View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

Some Series A are very active at the seed stage, with a lot of Series A rounds they lead coming from their seed portfolio (True Ventures and Accomplice are good examples of this). The bottom line is that founders have to understand potential seed and Series A investors. When “Too Early” Isn’t a “No”.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Early Stage Differentiation Lead Investor 120

Hippoland

APRIL 9, 2017

This leads investors to believe that there is something either really wrong with your business or that you, as a founder, are not sharp. Either your existing leads are junk / not qualified, in which case, you should own up to it. But, whatever it is, something doesn’t add up, and you need to be able to address this.

Cofounder 48

Cofounder Early Stage Software Review Naming 48

ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

VCs need to figure out the people side of the company and raising money is a sales job. How many seed investors should you take money from? Typically 5 to 15, with a strong lead investor with relevant expertise, passion, time to work with you and a great rolodex. Which problem are you solving in the market?

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

VC Adventure

MAY 21, 2014

A few months ago AngelList announced Syndicates - enabling investors on AngelList to create fund-like groups of investors to invest together in AngelList companies (following a single lead investor). Investors just have a different pain they are trying to solve – they want a big return on their investment.

Syndicate 93

Syndicate Syndication Technical Review Due Diligence 93

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Vision for B2B, sales-driven technology. Regarding structure, the first deal is a rolling round with committed lead investors. 5% investor experience (to Deal 1). 90% investor product vision. Deal 1 is a sales-driven company. . $250k now, plus 2 tranches for another $1mm based on performance goals.

Term Sheet 31

Term Sheet Dilution Participating Preferred B2C 31

SiliconHills

OCTOBER 30, 2015

The Austin-based startup received the funds from lead investor Austin Ventures and other investors. The company plans to use the money for research and development and sales and marketing. Edgecase, which provides data and analytics for e-commerce sites, announced this week it has received $7.5 million in venture capital.

Venture Capital 48

Venture Capital Austin Lead Investor Analytics 48

VC Adventure

MAY 21, 2014

A few months ago AngelList announced Syndicates – enabling investors on AngelList to create fund-like groups of investors to invest together in AngelList companies (following a single lead investor). Investors just have a different pain they are trying to solve – they want a big return on their investment.

Syndicate 48

Syndicate Syndication Technical Review Due Diligence 48

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Vision for B2B, sales-driven technology. Regarding structure, the first deal is a rolling round with committed lead investors. 5% investor experience (to Deal 1). 90% investor product vision. Deal 1 is a sales-driven company. . $250k now, plus 2 tranches for another $1mm based on performance goals.

Term Sheet 20

Term Sheet Dilution Participating Preferred B2C 20

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

They dropped their number one selling product and switched to a competitor’s product while managing not to lose a single sale. I ask Naval about the importance of a lead investor. What if nobody stands up as a lead investor? Naval agrees that lead investors of these type are important.

Valuation 292

Valuation Deal Flow Lead Investor Cofounder 292

ReadWriteStart

MAY 9, 2018

The company’s growth is largely thanks to its collaborators – Travelport, its first investor and incubator, lead investor 7 Gate Ventures, and Real Venture. Recent funding is being used to develop its product using predictive booking pattern algorithms and to expand its sales and development teams.

Widget 64

Widget France Canada Aggregator 64

Scott Edward Walker

JUNE 9, 2019

Pro rata rights are relatively standard and non-controversial; however, founders should try to limit such rights solely to “Major Investors” (which is typically defined to include only those investors that will own a substantial number of shares – e.g., a lead investor).

Preferred Stock 56

Preferred Stock Term Sheet Dilution Stock 56

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Some corporate funds now lead rounds. Others follow independent financial lead investors and most require that independent investors be part of the syndicate. Teten: What makes for a good vs. bad corporate venture investor? Are they good sales people? They invest alongside financial VCs.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 20, 2014

As the lead investor in the company''s seed round, you''d think I''d be really bullish about the connected home, especially after their record Indiegogo pre-sale netted them almost $2 million in purchases. Canary is the world''s most easy to install home security device , connecting to its homeowners via the cloud.

Venture Capital 104

Venture Capital Cloud Internet Web 104

The Startup Lawyer

JUNE 9, 2010

Earlier this year, this issue presented itself when a client was the lead investor in a Series A round of about $2MM at a $4MM pre-money. In addition, here’s an example of how a startup CEO’s huge salary didn’t help his startup: CEO’s $500,000 Salary Burns Startup Into Fire Sale. Case Study.

Salary 99

Salary Term Sheet Liquidation Preference Liquidity Event 99

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

Turns out if you sleep on couches and remain relatively homeless for five months during your fundraise and initial sales development for a fintech startup that could plausibly be in NYC, your lead investor could get so far down the line in helping you raise that by the time they choose Chicago, you're too far in to complain about it.

Chicago 60

Chicago Security Lead Investor Government 60

leananalyticsbook.com

AUGUST 19, 2012

Later, many of these KPIs become accounting inputs—stuff like sales, margins, and so on. Marketers optimizing campaigns to generate traffic and leads. Investors , when we’re trying to raise money. This is about whether you can grow, or hire, or whether you’re getting the organic growth you expected.

Metrics 58

Metrics Clickthrough Lean Analytics 58

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 13, 2010

StoredIQ , a leading provider of Intelligent Information Management solutions for eDiscovery, records and compliance management, today announced that it has closed $10 million in new investment financing and expanded its management team in preparation for accelerated growth.

Vertical 59

Vertical Early Stage Cofounder Channel 59

Austin Startup

JUNE 4, 2017

Lead Investor : The person or firm who defines the terms of the round. It worked well enough that I ended up buying it for my sales team. Raise enough to get you 12–18 months and hit growth to get you into the larger institutional investors (or profitability if that’s your goal.)

Austin 54

Austin Institutional Investors Angel Groups Deal Flow 54

BeyondVC

JULY 7, 2010

We launched an initial prototype, landed a few customers, and brought in Mission Ventures as a new lead investor for the restart of the company. It was a painful process as we had to let go of the sales team that had built initial momentum and we had to hunker down and restart.

Portfolio 109

Portfolio Architecture Open Source Database 109

BeyondVC

JULY 7, 2010

We launched an initial prototype, landed a few customers, and brought in Mission Ventures as a new lead investor for the restart of the company. It was a painful process as we had to let go of the sales team that had built initial momentum and we had to hunker down and restart.

Portfolio 109

Portfolio Open Source Architecture Database 109

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2020

I think I took the first two or three meetings with Fred's lead investor, which is pretty funny. Eric Ries : So, what was the investor reaction like? Firstly, we've seen investor helpfulness sort of on another level than I've seen previously. Nobody batted their eyelids too much.

Curation 60

Curation Government Los Angeles Partner 60

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

How I Think About Seed Investing As A VC - Feld Thoughts , August 2, 2010 Last week saw an explosion of discussion around seed investing, including plenty of negative comments around VCs as seed investors. While I agree that many VCs are crummy seed investors, I think there are some that are excellent seed investors.

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

Even though we glossed over those slides, investors knew they could come back to those slides later and dig into them if necessary. By this point in the presentation, our goal was to lead investors to believe: A network-empowered people search application could be really valuable.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

Professor VC

JANUARY 20, 2009

This brought in a new set of prospective investors and required a lower investment from the lead investor as our existing investors were committed and on board. Prospective investors have a free look to see how you execute under the gun. Same principle here. With that in mind, new funds are a great place to focus.

Venture Capital 28

Venture Capital Silicon Valley San Jose Bootstrapping 28

Venture Chronicles

JULY 16, 2010

What happens is that the large fund will exercise their majority position in the class to force an orderly shutdown of the company, return of capital to investors, and sale of the intellectual property, if any. This scenario played out just yesterday with a company I am familiar with and the result has been devastating.

Due Diligence 28

Due Diligence Term Sheet Limited Partner LP 28

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

Youllprobably get either preferred stock, which means stock with extrarights like getting your money back first in a sale, or convertibledebt, which means (on paper) youre lending the company money, andthe debt converts to stock at the next sufficiently big fundinground. [ The part I thought was hard, the mechanics of investing, reallyisnt.

Angel Investor 63

Angel Investor Syndicate Syndication Dilution 63