article thumbnail

What is the Right Burn Rate at a Startup Company?

Both Sides of the Table

otherwise I prefer to invest less and risk less). Your goal is to invest in engineering (to maintain your product lead), new offices / locations (to capture markets before others), marketing (to capture consumer attention before others do) … all of these activities consume cash often in advance of the revenue they generate.

Startup 383
article thumbnail

Some Career Advice for Aspiring Tech CEOs

Both Sides of the Table

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.” ” My friend Ian Sigelow wrote about this last week and advised people not to take on this kind of job. At Upfront we invested in such a company.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

How to Handle a VC Presentation with No Deck

Both Sides of the Table

I would argue that this mostly consists of consumer Internet companies (although not exclusively) and it is predominantly early-stage people who are product gurus and have a mildly technical bend to them. I talked about this in the TWiVC video but I didn’t do a good enough job of writing it up in the summary notes in the post.

article thumbnail

Tech Giants’ Partnership To Explore Ethics, Societal Impacts of AI

Xconomy

Each company is investing untold billions of dollars in developing AI technologies, betting on a future defined by computer systems that can perceive, reason, advise, and decide. General interest, awareness, and discussion about AI has waxed and waned since the field was founded in 1956,” they write ( PDF ). “We

article thumbnail

Roping in the Legal Eagles

InfoChachkie

If you are charged for every nanosecond you spend with your lawyer, consider finding one who is willing to “invest” more aggressively in your success. Your lawyer is a trusted advisor, but in the end, you run your business, your lawyer does not. It is surprising how often entrepreneurs forget this simple fact. Do not do it.

article thumbnail

Frank Addantes FounderBlog: Startup 5.0 – I’m just going to chill out for a bit… (OK, for a month…)

Frank Addante

► August (1) Invest in Transparency & Active Communication ► July (1) The Fear of Success ► May (2) Optimized for Speed = 30% Waste Happy 1st Birthday Rubicon Project! I decided that I was going to consult/advise a few companies and relax for a bit. We invested the first $1 million to develop version 1.0

Startup 40
article thumbnail

Why I F **g Hate Unicorns and the Culture They Breed

Both Sides of the Table

On average they have taken 9-11 years to reach this status and most of our investments have never gotten there. Do you know how many people I meet these days who are “packaging up money in SPVs (special purpose vehicles),” or raising syndicates or doing secondaries or advising high-net-worth individuals how to get into unicorns?