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Want to Know How VC’s Calculate Valuation Differently from Founders?

Both Sides of the Table

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until we needed to raise money in April 2001 and then we got completely screwed. That’s normal.

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The Audacious Plan to Make Electricity as Easy as WiFi

Both Sides of the Table

Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. Meredith came to see me along with the CTO Marc Berte.

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People Management: Startup Teams Should Dip but not Skip

Both Sides of the Table

As your organization grows and you hire senior staff where you are no longer managing every employee directly the issue of how to manage people that are not your “direct&# reports arises. This applies to both founders and to VC’s that work with them. I see two common mistakes in companies (not just in startups, in fact).

Startup 308
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What Makes an Entrepreneur (7/11) – Detail Orientation

Both Sides of the Table

You can always tell during this discussion whether the entrepreneur has logged into their products, talked to their customers, read all the news stories and gotten all of the back channel info on the competition. You can tell if they have a deep-seated competitive spirit. Can’t go a mile deep on competition?

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8 Tips To Get the Most Out of Your Investors and Board

Both Sides of the Table

By spending more time educating your board on your business you get more valuable advice from them. Your goal should be to turn your VCs into extended members of your team to get real value from them. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. Ask your VC to send a critical email to a contact. Rob does it.

Tips 365
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Announcing a Deal I’ve Wanted to Talk About for a Year

Both Sides of the Table

Because I am true to the hiring practices I preach, I wanted a strong exec who would “ punch above their weightclass ” by taking a job they hadn’t yet done but would hugely aspire to and thus work harder to out perform. In the same year they won Business Insider’s Startup competition. Nice sweep!

CTO Coach 359
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Decoding Signal From Noise For Wall Street, With Bitvore

socalTECH

We''re looking for lighting bolts in time which are important. Whether that''s for competitive analysis or market analysis, our product is basically able to monitor--on a very large scale--things that are important to your particular company. I was hired to head up strategy, marketing development, and product management.