TechCrunch

APRIL 25, 2023

I asked five early-stage investors to share frank advice for first-timers, and I’m going to save you some time: many (if not most) of you are probably not ready to pitch an investor. But, of course, part of my job as a board director and investor is making it feasible, as it is essential for maximizing the business’ success.

pitching 98

pitching incubation board opportunity 98

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

And one of my biggest advice to those folks is, look, presumably, we all have the technical and functional skill set for this job. And then I also think with references, founders are typically showing up with their 5 to 7 reference questions. Let’s go ahead and figure out who’s gonna be able to do the job with you.

energy 86

energy entrepreneurs leadership advice 86

Feedough

APRIL 14, 2021

Acqui-hiring is one such strategy that changes the game and has gained popularity in recent years. Acqui-hiring refers to buying a company or organisation mainly for its employees’ skills and proficiency rather than for its products or services. Acquisition is when one company buys another, and hiring refers to taking on employees.

strategy 98

strategy board startup ecosystem innovation 98

TechCrunch

MARCH 7, 2023

Plus, they were gracious enough to share some of the advice they’re giving to their portfolio companies. We also work hard to perform due diligence on every investment opportunity we pursue by spending significant time with the company, with a deep market study, and as many references as possible on the teams we back.

advice 110

advice ventures sustainability investing 110

StartupNation

OCTOBER 19, 2021

Administrative tasks can take up much of your time — time that would be better spent developing your product, designing a marketing strategy or performing other tasks that encourage growth. If your company offers legal advice, there’s no need to employ a full-time copywriter. The ancillary tasks you can’t automate?

startup 117

startup consulting advice strategy 117

Onevest

MAY 21, 2015

While legal advice is of paramount importance to ensure that any contract of investment is above board, you still need to know what is being asked of you so that you can decide whether such stipulations are acceptable or not. Board Seat In some cases an investor may request a presence on a company's board of directors, if it has one.

investing 116

investing investment startup board 116

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2009

When people refer to a strategic investor they are usually talking about an investor that comes from the industry you serve as opposed to an independent venture capital investor. It’s true that many VCs over promise how helpful they’ll be with introductions / strategic advice / recruiting, etc. What’s the difference?

advice 279

advice venture capital frameworks VC 279

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2014

This was customer interaction at its finest and as a result they invited him to meet with our entire sales staff and offer advice on the sales process from a customer’s perspective. Who else is going to tell a VC if he got a bad reference from an entrepreneur or fellow VC? Contrast that with a VC conversation I had.

peer-to-peer 341

peer-to-peer VC entrepreneurs support 341

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

But if you’re a concentrated investor who takes board seats then you know the hard bit starts the day after. And why my advice to newer VCs would be not to feel bad if you’re missing out on what is perceived as a few hot deals. You can’t reference check your way into a “yes.” Price matters.

VC 374

VC investing investment entrepreneurs 374

Y Combinator

JANUARY 30, 2023

Responding to that feedback with a killer feature was a great way to ultimately get them on board. You had to get deep into the problem set to see the opportunity and develop the right strategy—and that ultimately worked to our advantage. As a bootstrapped company, what was your strategy around hiring?

peer-to-peer 98

peer-to-peer culture strategy real estate 98

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

This is an updated post from my ongoing series on Startup Advice that I learned from founding two companies. . By Monday morning after their board meeting in NorCal I didn’t get a return phone call. We assumed they would take our advice and upgrade. In the corporate world this strategy is flawed. I HATE LOSING.

consulting 328

consulting advice collaboration VC 328

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

This is an updated post from my ongoing series on Startup Advice that I learned from founding two companies. . By Monday morning after their board meeting in NorCal I didn’t get a return phone call. We assumed they would take our advice and upgrade. In the corporate world this strategy is flawed. I HATE LOSING.

consulting 333

consulting advice collaboration VC 333

Dream It

APRIL 3, 2020

Duncan Davidson , General Partner of Bullpen Capital , is a highly experienced VC and a serial entrepreneur, having founded, been on the executive team, or a Board member of multiple billion-dollar companies. Newer businesses can elect to use the first two calendar months of 2020 as their reference period. You can borrow 2.5x

startup 286

startup board VC ventures 286

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

Some advice on how to do that was covered in this link – Getting Access to a VC. The partner you saw is probably sitting on 5-6 boards which means he or she will be busy helping existing portfolio companies. Or a major shift in strategy. They said they’d call references but haven’t? What, what?

VC 277

VC pitching advice strategy 277

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

There is all sorts of advice on the Internet about how to raise capital. I’ve tried to make this advice as well-rounded and biased free as I can. Every company is different so it’s hard to listen to advice from the uber-successful fund raisers. So they go out of their way to offer advice and introductions.

strategy 366

strategy development VC advice 366

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

The business is pivoting its product strategy to grow beyond recorded meditations. I think it caught her off guard,” Krassner said, who is still a board member at the company. Right now, the site has a number of references to “motherhood” and women. Even if it was just for a few months. The new Expectful.

peer-to-peer 85

peer-to-peer health networking financing 85

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

Bijan Sabet – investor & board member in some small companies you might have heard of like Twitter, Tumblr, Boxee & OMGPOP – took issue with the whole notion that you even need a Powerpoint deck anymore. In Bijan’s post he references Bryce Roberts who recommends getting up and white-boarding.

VC 299

VC board pitching venture capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2009

We had every reference client we worked with call their senior team members (we had already won a major project at Scottish Water, Anglian Water and another at a large water company in Paris, France). We assumed they would take our advice and upgrade. In the corporate world this strategy is flawed. We talked with lawyers.

consulting 151

consulting advice collaboration support 151

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

Over the last week, I've sat down with a handful of entreprenuers and given the same advice--to construct the fantasy model. When we launched Path 101, the startup I worked on for two years, my board suggested building a traffic model, including a detailed funnel. A lot of people try to launch and just see what happens.

construction 279

construction board frameworks strategy 279

Entrepreneur's Handbook

JULY 8, 2022

Internal stakeholders include other teams or board members. My advice is that even the senior team should set its own distinctive purpose so that it can set its own performance goals to measure itself against. Once you are clear on why you are here, you can set the strategy and the goals.

leadership 52

leadership founder sustainability collaboration 52

Entrepreneur's Handbook

APRIL 28, 2022

( Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions. ) Remember that the Fed has an institutional reference point for implementing YCC. We never expected that the U.S.

energy 134

energy mix-use financing finance 134

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

I was meeting regularly with entrepreneurs and offering (for better or for worse) advice on how to run a startup and how to raise venture capital from my experience in doing so at two companies. Or “I’m a new entrepreneur, why would I offer advice on how to run a startup?&#. People often ask me why I started blogging.

startup 373

startup advice communities VC 373

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 9, 2024

The number one input to whether or not someone buys that next incremental piece of software or potentially engages that service provider is actually how well it interacts and interoperates with the other technology decisions they’ve already made to drive it some kind of bigger strategy. And that is absolutely transformational and huge.

SaaS 115

SaaS strategy disruption energy 115

NZ Entrepreneur

MAY 16, 2019

When sales are humming along, many business owners forget how long it took to get all those customers on board. What technology is available to you, to analyse your database, your customers or to deploy as part of your digital marketing strategy? Many people don’t think about their liver until there’s problem with it.

health 49

health consulting media strategy 49

Y Combinator

JUNE 24, 2020

This is because the Series A is usually a company’s first priced round, which is when crucial terms around governance and control (like board composition) are decided. It’s also much harder to negotiate with multiple parties to find terms and pick a board member that everyone will be happy with. Get bigger name investors to set terms.

board 76

board strategy founder investing 76

Entrepreneur's Handbook

MARCH 20, 2023

(Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.) (Any Nothing wrong with this asset liability management strategy so far. Obviously, that strategy didn’t work.

real estate 141

real estate energy investing investment 141

Tomasz Tunguz

OCTOBER 24, 2021

My advice would be actually, start something and then keep drafting it. And then we do score ourselves with the board, but also with the company. ” That’s reported to the board. I do my own reference calls. ” And I would say it’s kind of 50% adoption of people who take me up on that.

leadership 50

leadership culture strategy frameworks 50

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 30, 2016

I have been evangelizing to founders for years to be more thoughtful about how startups update investors and run board meetings so I would be pretty hypocritical if I wasn’t willing to try and be more effective myself. Before making this change I called our LPs to ask for advice and input.

communities 193

communities strategy peer-to-peer VC 193

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 2, 2021

Interestingly, many years later, Square would use other innovative “cash giveaway” strategies to steal market share from Paypal (in addition to copying the give $5, get $5 model ). Is it disrespectful to imply that the founders, executives, VC-backers, and the boards of these companies are gullible or naive? I don’t think so.

peer-to-peer 82

peer-to-peer VC advice capital 82