Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 27, 2021

Initial funding. Many incubators do provide seed funding for entrepreneurs selected, usually in small amounts like $10,000 to $20,000, and usually taking 5% to 15% of your equity in return. Every successful incubator has strong leadership and staff with business and investment credentials. Peer support. Learn by doing.

Incubator 146

Incubator Technical Review Entrepreneur Mentor 146

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

The VC industry grew dramatically as a result of the Internet bubble - Before the Internet bubble the people who invested in VC funds (called LPs or Limited Partners) put about $50 billion into the industry and by 2001 this had grown precipitously to around $250 billion. So the people who invest in VC funds have two problems.

Venture Capital 311

Venture Capital Startup Seed Funding Rustic Canyon 311

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

For some aspiring to be tech entrepreneurs, I often suggest a two-step process, as I argued in this post that “ The First Startup Founder You Need to Invest in Is You.” He or she has worked at some very successful big technology or media companies and went to a great school. At Upfront we invested in such a company.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital IP 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. They often create the biggest tensions between investors who are investing at different stages in the business. Put simply – if you invested early in Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

The frantic pace of technology cycles, the amount of tech news, the blogs, the conferences, the demo days, the announcements, the fundings, the IPOs. The only conclusion one can draw from this is that if you start your investment analysis at a YC Demo Day, you are perhaps best reminded of t he famous quip about PT Barnum.

Startup 317

Startup Technical Review Venture Capital Email 317

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

In the startup world, the former happens when a VC makes a bad investment, and the latter occurs when they miss a great opportunity. In contrast, low-volume, high-conviction investors like Rincon only invests in a handful new companies each year, making it much more costly (in dollars and effort expended) to invest in a loser.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

AngelList 101 : As you know, AngelList is a platform where angels can invest in semi-screened tech deals. As an angel you can look for the social proof in deals “Dave Morin is investing …” to make your decision. Less investments, more active. Social proof can be helpful. This is what leads do.

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us. This has led to the creation of incubators, accelerators and seed funds. Thank you, Aaron Sorkin! This never existed a decade ago.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

InfoChachkie

APRIL 14, 2014

It performs "due diligence" before it makes "investments" and it measures results as a "return on its investment.". ABC has even created an incubator-style program in which startup non-profits compete for $100,000 in seed funding. Second, our “investment” in a nonprofit goes well beyond just dollars.

Organization 199

Organization Startup Technical Review Invest 199

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 30, 2014

Initial funding. Many incubators do provide seed funding for entrepreneurs selected, usually in small amounts like $10,000 to $20,000, and usually taking 5% to 15% of your equity in return. Every successful incubator has strong leadership and staff with business and investment credentials. Peer support. Learn by doing.

Incubator 103

Incubator Entrepreneur Technical Review Mentor 103

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2013

Initial funding. Many incubators do provide seed funding for entrepreneurs selected, usually in small amounts like $10,000 to $20,000, and usually taking 5% to 15% of your equity in return. Every successful incubator has strong leadership and staff with business and investment credentials. Peer support. Learn by doing.

Incubator 115

Incubator Help Startup Technical Review 115

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 12, 2010

In the technology world there are a few websites that most startups track to keep up with the latest financings, acquisitions, product announcements and gossip: BusinessInsider, TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOm, etc. A large part of this is due to Sarbanes Oxley which has made running a public company so much more difficult.

Venture Capital 232

Venture Capital Slides Seed Funding Google 232

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My original thinking from Oct ’09 was, while I didn’t (and still don’t) have a crystal ball I worried that: consumers were over-stretched with debt (and make up 77% of the economy), unemployment would continue to rise, which in turn would drive the stock market south and cut the rate of M&A activity and VC investment even further.

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298

socalTECH

JUNE 25, 2013

What are the details on your seed funding? We''ve been bootstrapped since we launched, and already got to half a million in revenues on a total initial investment of $13,000. However, our users and target audience are really the younger, web-savvy, college educated, and very technologically comfortable consumers.

Services 215

Services Technical Review Startup Pricing 215

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

Not an investment philosophy “ I understand the sentiment of this post and it’s how I view AngelList (like email), but I feel like it loses a nuance about AngelList. Since I invest in lines, not dots , I worry about the rushed decision-making and over-hyping of deals. Relationships with VCs to get downstream funding.

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

There’s too much PR and too many tech blogs and too many newsletters and aggregators and Twitter summarizers to even try to catch everything that’s going on and equally there’s so much noise that it becomes harder to be heard. I still plan to keep more normal pace of investment which is 1-2 deals per year.

Software Review 150

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Invest 150

socalTECH

OCTOBER 30, 2013

The startup--which is part of MuckerLab--landed a seed funding round last week, so we thought we''d catch up with founder and CEO Farbod Shoraka to dig deeper into the company''s goals and service. I have such respect for other platforms and technology. What is BloomNation? What''s the biggest lesson you''ve learned so far?

Beverly Hills 157

Beverly Hills Technical Review Design Startup 157

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 7, 2013

Yet 2013 is still projected by The Fiscal Times as a difficult IPO opportunity for startups, due to choppy markets, continuing fiscal uncertainty, and the Facebook fiasco. Sure, there will always some seed funding (10% of overall deal flow), but you can bet that this money goes to entrepreneurs who have been there before and won.

Venture Capital 101

Venture Capital Startup Capital Seed Funding 101

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

otherwise I prefer to invest less and risk less). We want money to make some acquisitions (investors would prefer to fund M&A if they know specific deals – not to encourage bad behavior. You technically have more gas left but you never know if some unexpected circumstance causes you to run out of gas.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

I know you’re not a tech guy and haven’t done anything other than an HTML course you once took, but if you’re inspirational and a leader you’ll find somebody to moonlight for free to get your prototype built. They know that the money they invest may be lost. That’s OK. of people aren’t.

Angel 291

Angel Funding Venture Capital Startup 291

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Some of the big milestones we did, include a seed round of financing in the fall of 2015, which was led by Upfront Ventures. That was an insider round, where ssetnailly, Upfront led and angel Brian Spaly, the former co-founder of Bonobos and the CEO of Trunk Club ended up investing. That money was meant for us to expand.

Training 100

Training Customer Custom Software Review 100

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Well … I have had many late nights and I really didn’t contemplate writing many blog postings this month because I spent November in this interesting venture capital / fund raising dance involving lots of late night sessions reviewing legal documents, rewriting business plans and preparing for pitches. We have invested heavily in this.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , July 11, 2010 I just reviewed several hundred startup pitches for Capital Factory. Between this blog and reviewing applications to Capital Factory I see hundreds of pitches a year. Most were on paper and video; 20 were invited to pitch in person.

Startup 217

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Software Review 217