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Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad

Steve Blank

One other thing to note is that all employees – founders, early employees and later ones – all had the same vesting deal – four years – and no one made money on stock options until a “liquidity event ” (a fancy word to mean when the company went public or got sold.) It’s called Growth capital.

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Fund Raising is a Means Not an End

Steve Blank

These are great, but they are not repeatable by a sales organization. The test is: If you add one more sales person or spend more marketing dollars, does your sales revenue go up by more than your expenses? • Business model : A business model answers the basic questions about your entire business: Who are the customers?

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article thumbnail

Fund Raising is a Means Not an End

Steve Blank

These are great, but they are not repeatable by a sales organization. The test is: If you add one more sales person or spend more marketing dollars, does your sales revenue go up by more than your expenses? • Business model : A business model answers the basic questions about your entire business: Who are the customers?

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Convertible Debt: Worst Form Of Seed Financing — Except For All The Others

Gust

Angel investors don’t expect to get repaid, nor do they really want to get repaid; the return on their investment, if the startup proves a success, will come in conversion to equity followed by an eventual liquidity event (sale or IPO of the company), with a return of at least 5x or 10x the initial investment if all goes well.

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