Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 16, 2020

Too many of you business owners think success only means being the next Amazon, or you stress yourself out trying to be everything to every customer. Just because you want to start a business doesn’t mean you are entitled to outside equity, loans, or crowdfunding. Keep the initial scope within bootstrapping limits.

Customer 125

Customer Custom Tool Writing 125

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

Your historical trading information including financials and a “customer file” which shows the history of your transactions so that investors can run “cohort” analyses Customer reference, personal references, key team members, compensation, cap table, stock option plan, etc. It doesn’t. The data room is where your process goes to die.

Funding 336

Funding Venture Capital Startup Email 336

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 12, 2015

Every investor in your startup, even friends and family, normally expects a share of your company (equity), which means your return for all your effort goes down quickly. This is at least double the time required for most equity investments, and may be a delay you can’t afford in keeping up with the market and your competitors.

Pricing 100

Pricing Equity Technical Review Research 100

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 6, 2014

Although this approach requires a significant investment of a startup''s time during the early phases of the patent process, it can reduce the overall time you expend on the process, by creating a solid foundation upon which the IP lawyers can draft the legal language. Do not rely on the IP lawyer to coax such vital information from you.

IP 210

IP Patents Journal Equity 210

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 8, 2017

Since this document is outward facing, it is important to keep the terminology and tone consistent with that of your customer set, investors, and business partners. Providing your product or service free to customers may sound attractive in marketing materials, but you need revenue sources to survive. Skip the acronyms and jargon.

Startup 65

Startup Writing Patents Competition 65

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 2, 2011

I’m sitting at my computer now at 9.00pm writing this – which is an hour earlier than I normally write (there are about 8 women at my kitchen table having a book club (aka excuse to drink wine & gossip so I’m locked in another room writing. Should entrepreneurs have convertible debt or priced equity?

Email 287

Email Blogging Venture Capital Writing 287

InfoChachkie

MAY 16, 2011

Thus, you must first create the playbook by which an independent sales rep can readily sell your product, including: identifying objections and developing strategies to overcome them, creating reference accounts and establishing meaningful customer adoption. 5) Allow Partners To Write Your Agreements. 3) Attempt To License An Idea.

Startup 242

Startup Outsource Development Outsource Sales 242

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2013

The reality is that angel investors are humans, and personal traits often make or break the relationship, even before the investment is considered. On the top line, angel investors look to invest in entrepreneurs that have an almost unwavering passion and sense of urgency. Here are some key ones they look for: Talks and writes well.

Technical Review 109

Technical Review Entrepreneur Course Patents 109

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2012

After you have successfully attracted angels or venture capital with your business case, your million dollar product idea, and you have a signed term sheet, there is still one more hurdle to overcome before investors write the check. A dysfunctional team, or even one naysayer in a critical position can stall your investment.

Technical Review 94

Technical Review Startup Writing Competition 94

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. 3. We then addressed competition in the context of SiteAdvisor and how it is important for journalists, customers, and the companies themselves. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

InfoChachkie

JUNE 4, 2012

Fallacy: Startup ventures tend to evolve, especially after you begin speaking with pesky customers and demanding partners. In addition to paying the consultant, you must invest time to educate them. Evaluate their sincerity by asking them to accept equity in exchange for all or a portion of their overall compensation.

Entrepreneur 272

Entrepreneur Outsource Ideas Technical Review 272

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

Yesterdays’ equity round of $1.6 25 Years of Writing Code. Adam Sroka, an agile software innovator, is a self-taught programmer with 25 years of writing code and previously combined his coding skills with his knowledge of agile and lean management techniques as a coach and technical trainer. million Raised.

Technical Review 88

Technical Review Software Review Bertelsmann Technology 88

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2012

The reality is that angel investors are humans, and personal traits often make or break the relationship, even before the investment is considered. On the top line, angel investors look to invest in entrepreneurs that have an almost unwavering passion and sense of urgency. Here are some key ones they look for: Talks and writes well.

Entrepreneur 117

Entrepreneur Technical Review Course Patents 117

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. The idea that the course asks students to write public blog posts is a testament to its more modern teaching style. As you grow you need process-driven people.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. Each of your angels or seed investors may have 20-30 investments. He is very pleasant when he calls and writes. What Rob wrote in his post is right.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

If you truly believe that you, your company and your products are exceptional and your company will be valuable then you’re actually doing them a FAVOR by helping them invest in your startup. If you don’t believe in your bones that you’re amazing then it’s no wonder you don’t want to sell them on making the investment.”

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

socalTECH

AUGUST 4, 2011

We've developed technology, originally developed at YLighting, which enables us to understand that if a customer comes to a website via marketing, and a cookie was deleted, then subsequently comes back and converts, we know what marketing happened before that cookie deletion. What kind of customers are using the tool? Jeff Zwelling.

Startup 210

Startup Marketing Customer Custom 210

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2016

We want to invest in early-stage technology enabled startup businesses – upfront in the funding cycle. In fact, 90% of our investments are either Seed or A-round investments (10% are B-round). We’re a national venture capital investment firm but with our roots firmly in Los Angeles. That’s healthy.

Startup 150

Startup Coach Course Invest 150

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 16, 2018

We have customers from so many different industries like software, financial services, healthcare, and media. We could also spend time talking with customers rather than updating investors. We both made personal investments in the company. We’re now used by thousands of product and IT teams all over the world.

Venture Capital 115

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 22, 2010

After you have successfully attracted angels or venture capital with your business case, your million dollar product idea, and you have a signed term sheet, there is still one more hurdle to overcome before investors write the check. A dysfunctional team, or even one naysayer in a critical position can stall your investment.

Technical Review 90

Technical Review Writing Competition Tips 90

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2013

Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually have a plan. For a business, you must define the absolute minimum features you need to satisfy the customer problem, and test it in the market. Get a real customer and real revenue. Show personal investment.

Funding 112

Funding Entrepreneur Startup CTO Hire 112

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

I’m not saying I don’t spend time trying to help entrepreneurs that I am not planning to invest it – anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I do. Don’t get me wrong – I still feel the pressure to ensure that the companies I’ve invested in perform well. But there’s a big difference.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

otherwise I prefer to invest less and risk less). You are particularly vulnerable if: You have revenue concentration (few customers each providing a large total of percentage of your revenue). So money spent should add equity value or create IP that eventually will. We want a strong balance sheet (um, ok.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

Even when you do sign-up initial customers it’s still not clear that your company will be a success and you’re still likely paying yourself under market rates. At Upfront we invested in such a company. And one that you get to write. ” The punch line from this post was “angel yourself.”

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital IP 150

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 27, 2010

The reality is that angel investors are humans, and personal traits often make or break the relationship, even before the investment is considered. On the top line, angel investors look to invest in entrepreneurs that have an almost unwavering passion and sense of urgency. Here are some key ones they look for: Talks and writes well.

Entrepreneur 96

Entrepreneur Angel Technical Review Course 96

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually have a plan. For a business, you must define the absolute minimum features you need to satisfy the customer problem, and test it in the market. Get a real customer and real revenue. Show personal investment.

Startup 104

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 104

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

When venture capitalists scale back investing activities it can be very swift and leave many companies that are in the process of fund raising hung out to dry. Should VC’s really be impacted by public market valuations when the money that they’re investing today should be for returns in 7-10 years?

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 19, 2010

Most advisors will tell you to write the business plan first (20-30 pages), then distill the key points into a set of Microsoft PowerPoint slides for standup presentations to potential investors. Here is how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. What is the timeframe of return on investment?

Slides 94

Slides Competition Sample Sales 94

InfoChachkie

JUNE 27, 2011

My response was brief and straightforward, which is common of popular Quora answers (as discussed in How To Write An Effective Quora Answer ). Although my answer was off-the-cuff, the question caused me to consider the issue of raising entrepreneurial children in greater depth, which led me to write this series.

Entrepreneur 270

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Resource 270

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2012

…” I’ll write soon on my views of why I believe Instagram took off as a social network and what I think comes next. You are either bought for stock or for equity. At least for a couple of years until you’ve grown into your new valuation / made enough revenue / captured enough customers / etc.

Venture Capital 316

Venture Capital Pricing Social Network Acquisition 316

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. But this mania to not miss out on the next big thing is driving some investors to pay growth-equity prices for traditional market risk (as in, they’re paying up before it is clear there is product / market fit). So people sell or at least don’t invest. I believe that.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually have a plan. For a business, you must define the absolute minimum features you need to satisfy the customer problem, and test it in the market. Get a real customer and real revenue. Show personal investment.

Startup 101

Startup CTO Hire Press Customer 101

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 17, 2016

Of course, you can’t predict everything, but writing down what you know will identify existing problems sooner, and allow other team members to help. It could be a natural disaster, like a flood or wind storm, or loss of key personnel, equipment failure, or a major customer complaint on the Internet.

Startup 64

Startup Sales Layoffs Slides 64

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 2, 2016

Clarify up front the potential for a conflict of interest or violation of a non-compete clause, and confirm the answer in writing. Give away more equity than required to drive the business. A common myth these days is that every startup needs an investor, and large investments are better than small ones.

Startup 62

Startup Patents Entrepreneur Writing 62

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

When to get a lawyer - If you plan to be a venture or angel backed technology company (what I mostly write about) the best time to start meeting and getting to know lawyers is long before you ever start your company. I write about some of the lessons in my post on Startup Mistakes. Many people start companies arse backwards.

Startup 318

Startup IP Southern California Entrepreneur 318

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 11, 2012

agreeing whether or not to top up a founder’s equity. negotiating with other VCs over who gets to invest how much. As a result I’ve really resisted writing about negotiations. If I forget to write, “Don’t Negotiation Piecemeal” after that then remind me. submitting term sheets. And so on.

Pricing 305

Pricing Startup Examples Writing 305

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

Forcing yourself to write down a plan is actually the only way to make sure you actually have a plan. For a business, you must define the absolute minimum features you need to satisfy the customer problem, and test it in the market. Get a real customer and real revenue. Show personal investment.

Tips 88

Tips Startup CTO Hire Press 88