Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2014

'Everybody has a blog these days and there is much advice to be had. Many startups now go through accelerators and have mentors passing through each day with advice – usually it’s conflicting. WTF? There are bootcamps, startup classes, video interviews – the sources are now endless. What is a founder to do? There are some smart if not somewhat cerebral bloggers I read who say that you shouldn’t take any startup advice at all because it’s too generalized to be useful

advice 407

advice frameworks startup mix-use 407

Gust

AUGUST 17, 2014

'Zappos logo via Flickr by Ben Spark. One of the most common failures I see in startups is lack of focus. Unfocused entrepreneurs boast that their new technology will generate multiple disruptive products for consumers as well as enterprises around the world. Investors hear this as trying to do too many things with limited resources, meaning the startup will not shine at anything, and will not survive the competition.

entrepreneurs 182

entrepreneurs mix-use disruption education 182

Berkonomics

AUGUST 14, 2014

'Over the years, as I managed my several computer companies as CEO or executive chairman, I made the decision to go to market with a brand new product that had never before been exposed to my customer’s marketplace. In each case, after overwhelming publicity, certainly noticed by a great number of potential decision makers, and after record-breaking sessions at industry trade shows to introduce these to the potential buyers, the products failed in the marketplace.

education 79

education board 79

Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 13, 2014

Yesterday, I spoke to a small group of people at Google. By coincidence, the presentation was held in the same building I used to work in, and a wave of nostalgia swept over me. Participating in Google’s speaker series brought back memories of when I was in the audience seven or eight years ago. I’ll never forget the first time I met Paul Graham in that very same room right after the first Startup School.

investing 40

investing investment startup education 40

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strategy

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 6, 2014

'There''s a saying. "There''s nothing worse than rich white people living in luxury housing in a park than the rich white people living in luxury housing protesting against them.". Ok, well, there wasn''t a saying, but there should be. Maybe you''ve heard about " The Battle of Brooklyn Bridge Park." It''s a long and winding tale that basically amounts to this: There once were some unused commercial piers.

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real estate sustainability mix-use communities 363

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 2, 2014

'Last Wednesday I had coffee with an old friend and former colleague. We haven’t worked together in a while and were reminiscing about the old days. I miss the old days when we used to be locked in battle together on the issues affecting our company. Seeing him again also reminded me of one of my first big lessons as a VC – knowing when giving in is more important than being right.

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VC advice financing finance 346

Gust

AUGUST 3, 2014

'Thomas Edison image via Wikipedia. In my experience, inventors and technologists aren’t interested or aren’t very good at building a business, and entrepreneurs aren’t usually good scientists. These people need to find each other, and can jointly make a great team for a new startup. Without the synergy, companies like Apple might never have gotten off the ground.

entrepreneurs 165

entrepreneurs creativity investment investing 165

Berkonomics

AUGUST 7, 2014

'Let’s focus not upon the process of marketing and positioning, but on you. How should you become the best marketer you can be, even if you are a first time entrepreneur or a seasoned CEO? There’s an answer for that. The title of this insight helps us find a formula: LALA. Berkonomics books available at www.berkus.com. Listen! The first rule of marketing and positioning is to listen to the marketplace.

consulting 70

consulting education entrepreneurs 70

Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 11, 2014

When I started in the venture business and met software companies, I never heard the words customer success during pitches or throughout diligence or in board meetings. A few years later, customer success has become equal in importance to sales and marketing and engineering and product within SaaS companies. The steady increasing drumbeat of the Customer Success mantra is reflected in Google search traffic, whose volumes have tripled since 2009.

peer-to-peer 40

peer-to-peer SaaS education pitching 40

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startup

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 21, 2014

'No one wants to be *that* founder--the non-technical founder poking around developer meetups asking for a unicorn with a Github account. It''s not that there aren''t great technical people willing to take a lot of risk to join a small team--it''s just that there are *so many* people out there looking for them that it''s hard to figure out who to take seriously.

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founder venture capital pitching development 345

Gust

AUGUST 24, 2014

'Image via Wikipedia. One of the toughest decisions for a startup is how to price their product or service. The alternatives range from giving it away for free, to pricing based on costs, to charging what the market will bear (premium pricing). The implications of the decision you make are huge, defining your brand image, your funding requirements, and your long-term business viability.

startup 184

startup strategy investing investment 184

Gust

AUGUST 27, 2014

'The two sites you mentioned are both secondary listing services, for later stage companies. For a new angel investor, by far the best thing to do is to join a local angel investor group that belongs to the Angel Capital Association. There are hundreds of them, with at least one in every state. Major metropolitan areas typically have more than one. Some groups specialize, investing primarily in life sciences or tech companies or women-led ventures or other areas.

investing 133

investing investment real estate angel capital 133

Gust

AUGUST 10, 2014

'Image via pixabay.com. Most entrepreneurs struggle with financial projections, not wanting to commit to numbers they cant deliver, and having no clue what investors might consider reasonable. However, making no projections, or non-credible projections will get your startup marked as unfundable. I recommend a simple set of guidelines, which work for at least 80% of the business domains I see.

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angel capital venture capital entrepreneurs investment 176

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financing

Gust

AUGUST 6, 2014

'Technically, a “funding round” simply means a company accepting one or more investments from one or more investors on similar terms within a certain period of time. As such, this could cover many different things, such as: Your parents loaning you money to cover your expenses while you code your product. 25 individual angel investors funding a startup on a convertible note. two angel groups investing money in Series Seed Preferred stock purchase. a single venture capital fund puttin

investment 170

investment investing entrepreneurs networking 170

Gust

AUGUST 16, 2014

'As Peter Van Dijck noted, the answer is 0%. “Ideas” are simply not compensated in today’s business world, because there are so many of them out there—even good ones. *original post can be found on Quora @ [link] *.

investment 160

investment investing 160

Gust

AUGUST 30, 2014

'Unfortunately, a private company in the US may not take investment money from “anyone” The only people who are legally eligible to purchase an equity interest in a private company without a great deal of special paperwork are, as you noted, Accredited Investors. These are defined as a person with net assets of over $1 million (not including the value of his or her primary residence), or an income of $200,000 (not $250,000) annually for the past two years and a reasonable expecta

investing 149

investing investment ventures 149

Gust

AUGUST 13, 2014

'There are a [very] few companies, mostly on the West Coast, that have done convertible rounds with differing caps, but it’s unusual, hard to do, and not something that will endear you to the less-fortunate investors. If you find yourself in a situation where (a) you absolutely need/want the $4 m investor, and (b) those are the only terms on which s/he will come in, then typically you would unilaterally lower the cap for all other investors in the round as well.

board 140

board investing investment 140

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technology

Gust

AUGUST 23, 2014

'Professional investors typically have a range of information rights that they negotiate for when making an investment. While not every investor will have every right (or every right with the same frequency), the types of things we’re talking about include: Seat on the Board of Directors. Non-voting Board Observer Seat. Monthly, quarterly or annual financial statements (audited or unaudited).

investing 139

investing investment VC board 139

Gust

AUGUST 2, 2014

'In the United States, equity-based crowdfunding will not be legal until January, 2013 at the earliest, when the SEC issues its rules regarding the process. It will then be permitted, provided that it is done in strict compliance with those SEC rules, and the provisions of the JOBS Act, which was signed by President Obama earlier this year. *original post can be found on Quora @ [link] *.

investment 133

investment investing 133

Gust

AUGUST 9, 2014

'Take your choice (these are both real, honest-to-God pitches, and I’ve got the originals in my possession): Contestant A. CluelessCo is an internet startup company seeking $2 million of equity financing to fund our company for at least one year. CluelessCo will become the main consumer outlet for the internet, digital cable and satellite TV, and cell phones and PDAs.

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pitching startup collaboration finance 131

Gust

AUGUST 20, 2014

'You certainly don’t need a full executive suite if it is only a few co-founders. However, in my experience every organization needs one person on whose desk the buck stops. You can call this the President, or General Manager, or Executive Director, or Chairman, or Man in the Moon…but it has to be one person who is at the very least the tie-breaker, and ultimately will make the hard calls.

startup 122

startup investment investing founder 122

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opportunity

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2014

'Just back from vacation and also some work travel and want to get back to blogging so expect a few posts over the next couple weeks. During my absence I posted a couple new episodes of Bothsides TV recently. I’ll try to get write-ups shortly but for now here is an overview of my interview with Nanea Reeves – President and COO of textPlus.

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leadership board development enablement 315

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 15, 2014

'The other day, I found this neat inbox stats tool from Front App called Inbox Checkup. (Thanks Product Hunt !) I''ve been wanting something like this for a while. Apparently, I respond to 18% of my e-mails, way above the average of 11%, and was #62 out of over 4,000 in terms of e-mails sent. It was happy to know that I''m getting to a lot of things.

pitching 287

pitching VC entrepreneurs startup 287

Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 26, 2014

One of the best ways I’ve found to understand SaaS companies is to pore through their public filings. A few months ago, I analyzed Box’s S-1. In this post, we’ll look at HubSpot’s IPO filing and compare their journey to a public company with a basket of about 40 other publicly traded companies, in the hopes that this data will help other founders chart their path to IPO.

SaaS 44

SaaS investing investment support 44

Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 20, 2014

Earlier this week, Google celebrated the tenth anniversary of its IPO. I re-read the Founder’s IPO Letter and found this passage which captured so much about Google’s values: Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one…We will not shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects because of short-term earnings pressure.

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culture education technology founder 40

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