Entrepreneur's Handbook

APRIL 24, 2021

Advice for non-technical founders for finding a serious CTO for your startup Finding a co-founder is hard work. Finding a technical co-founder is even harder. Yet, the benefits of having a technical co-founder make it all worthwhile. A good co-founder will serve as a powerful force multiplier.

founder 140

founder startup pitching networking 140

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

We are proud to announce the close of our 7th early-stage fund with $280 million to invest in seed and early stage founders. In fact, I am still active on two boards where I first invested in 2009. We feel blessed to work alongside startup founders who are really rising to the challenge of the more difficult funding environment.

ventures 408

ventures startup peer-to-peer venture capital 408

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Tracy DiNunzio isn’t your typical Silicon Valley startup founder. She did her first tech startup after the age of 30. And through this industry legitimacy she was able to get the ear of Dany Levy, the co-founder of Daily Candy. She now recognizes the need to have co-founders. She focused on her customer.

peer-to-peer 363

peer-to-peer entrepreneurs startup entrepreneurship 363

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

This meant: Less capital to start a company thus the rise of “micro VCs” Younger, more technical founders (not as big of a leap to take a risk on a 24-year-old when it’s $250k and not $5 million. So the startup work moves to where the startup founders live and not vice versa. Welcome to the future.

startup 390

startup communities venture capital angel capital 390

TechCrunch

JULY 5, 2022

John Weaver is CEO of 22 Ventures , an angel firm that offers founders connections, entrepreneurial experience and a genuine concern for their well-being. For founders, this drop may spark concerns around how to secure capital, making them more likely to bend to investors’ terms and ignore details they wouldn’t otherwise.

startup founder 96

startup founder founder startup venture capital 96

TechCrunch

AUGUST 2, 2022

. “ If you’re a bootstrapped company who is not yet on the treadmill , you have that kind of optionality or that ability to choose when to get on,” says Cavan Klinsky, co-founder of payments processor Healthie. Priyanka Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of food tech startup Live Green Co., That’s real money.

board 83

board startup micromobility finance 83

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.” The narrative of this discussion is something like this: I meet a 35-40-year-old founder with two kids and mortgage.

advice 334

advice peer-to-peer VC board 334

Gust

JUNE 8, 2014

Experts on this subject, including Yael Zofi, in her book, “ A Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams ,” has identified eight key characteristics of high-performing virtual teams that I have observed, and every startup founder should understand and enable: Members exhibit a global mindset – they look outward, not inward.

enablement 187

enablement energy entrepreneurs culture 187

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2011

I turned around and there was StockTwits founder (and my favorite Tweeter) Howard Lindzon. Nobody has family duties, board meetings, full schedules. And we’re here with Dan Martell , who like any great startup founder is wearing his company t-shirt for Flowtown. Wendy Tan White, the founder of Moonfruit.

mix-use 294

mix-use accelerator opportunity startup accelerator 294

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

My internal compass has always steered me strongly toward the belief that founders who can scale with their startup companies are better to back that founders who eventually need to hire a CEO. Very few founder CEOs go into the job ever expecting to give up their seat. It’s your baby. So give up the CEO role?

peer-to-peer 303

peer-to-peer energy founder advice 303

Gust

DECEMBER 31, 2012

In addition to being startup founders, like Richard Branson , founder of more than 400 companies and still going strong, there are several other key roles that I see Boomers taking more often these days to drive successful startups: Advisory Board.

startup 177

startup energy construction consulting 177

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

I had a 3-hour board meeting with another. I sent an email to another about what I thought we should cover at his next board meeting and what was missing from the deck he sent. I try to take time out of my week to occasionally meet with startup founders – even those that haven’t been introduced.

advice 314

advice culture board VC 314

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Lak Ananth is founding CEO and managing partner of the global venture capital firm Next47 and serves on the board of several companies that he has helped to grow beyond $1 billion valuations. So, where does this put you — the startup founder, entrepreneur or company executive? It’s a great time to be a founder.

advice 85

advice founder venture capital board 85

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

I advocated LOUDLY at the board that we needed to cut our burn rate. And I asked to leave the board. When your board is eating in the company dining room with silver spoons you certainly don’t want awkward old me at the party asking the tough questions. We were SMOKING cash. The company incinerated cash.

entrepreneurs 306

entrepreneurs board advice consulting 306

TechCrunch

AUGUST 4, 2021

What’s the board’s role in an early-stage startup? Startup founders frequently ask me about the role of a board of directors. A board can be a crucial asset in an early-stage startup. What is a board of directors, anyway? What is a board of directors, anyway?

board 100

board startup strategy frameworks 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

For starters let me use “CEO” as a proxy to include her “inner circle” which might mean co-founders or might just mean senior execs of the business. The Mind of the Founder. The mind of a founder is wired differently than most people. The startup CEO was not the original founder.

startup 417

startup peer-to-peer VC culture 417

TechCrunch

APRIL 20, 2023

In recent years, calling oneself a startup founder was certainly seen as a flex. In addition to having fewer outlets to address mental health issues, founders on the continent are facing a new kind of pressure, the type that comes off the back of a record venture capital year (2021) bolstered by large U.S.

health 79

health capital founder board 79

NZ Entrepreneur

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

It is our startup sector which will drive this innovative progress. Startup founders are our ambitious problem solvers. To generate growth in a startup, it is almost always necessary to raise external capital to run the necessary. In order to understand startup governance, you need to understand risk and reward.

startup 105

startup board culture strategy 105

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

These are the kinds of things you learn when you back founders that are essentially students of agricultural commodities to build a new exchange. If you're a startup investor, you have to take risk somewhere. You might take first time founder risk if you think they're coachable. You can thank the Onion Futures Act of 1954.

investing 179

investing investment innovation board 179

Gust

DECEMBER 8, 2013

If you really want to impress a startup founder as a potential employee, or you want to be a smart investor, you need to know the right questions to ask. These are the questions that get past the hype of a founder “vision to change the world,” and into the realm of real business strengths, weaknesses, and current health.

board 174

board investing investment advice 174

Gust

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Most startup founders already do this, rather than take a salary, to improve their offering. When you let them on board, you lose control of your destiny. Invested Interests bootstrapping entrepreneur startup' Don’t justify over-spending initially with “long-run” thinking. Reinvest gross profit.

startup 176

startup creativity entrepreneurs advice 176

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

I gave him the same advice I give nearly all over-worked, control-freak, do-everything-yourself startup founders: “Your number one priority isn’t any of these things. There’s you and your killer CTO co-founder. It’s a very cool vibe at Founder’s Coop. That’s one model.

communities 317

communities VC innovation entrepreneurs 317

TechCrunch

JUNE 28, 2021

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has announced that he is stepping back from his full-time role at the company. During the first seven years of the company, he was the startup’s Chief Executive Officer. He’ll remain on the Board of Directors as co-chair with Factual founder Gil Elbaz. Foursquare merges with Factual.

founder 83

founder frameworks board enablement 83

Onevest

MAY 21, 2015

By Michael Whitehouse Whether you are an investor browsing through 1000 Angels looking to put money into a startup, or an entrepreneur attempting to bring finances into your project, it is critical that you understand the terms and conditions of any investment. For this reason investors often make the entire amount available immediately.

investing 116

investing investment startup board 116

StartupNation

FEBRUARY 14, 2021

The biggest challenge for a startup founder is knowing where to focus. Though startup coaching has boomed during the pandemic, many founders are turned off by high-pressure sales tactics, a lack of widely accepted industry standards, and as many amateurs as experts. As a founder, it’s your job to listen, adapt and act.

peer-to-peer 135

peer-to-peer startup pitching incubation 135

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 4, 2022

All right, here are the final five business Brahmins who will help judge the Startup Battlefield pitch competition. Mar Hershenson , co-founder and managing partner at Pear VC. Tisch is the chairman of Good Dog, a marketplace to find pets online, and is the co-founder of Techstars NY. Rich Wong joined Accel as a partner in 2006.

disruption 91

disruption VC ventures startup 91

Ecosystem Builder Hub

MAY 21, 2021

What does it say when we tell them their ideas and dreams are unworthy because they don’t fit into some narrow model of a startup founder? In our ecosystem, this includes black, Latinx, LGBTQIA, people living with disabilities, and women founders. Develop program-specific advisory boards from under-represented backgrounds.

peer-to-peer 105

peer-to-peer entrepreneurial ecosystem entrepreneurship board 105

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2009

I worked with the board who encouraged me to bring in heavy weights. The advice to not hire too senior should come as no surprise to anybody who read my views that “ Startup Founders Should Flip Burgers &# or in other words should do many of the detailed jobs themselves. In our second year of sales we did $5.9

startup 327

startup advice SaaS consulting 327

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 24, 2023

The event starts with a conversation with Matt Caulfield , founder and CEO of Oort , and one of his investors, Greg Dracon , partner at.406 Boston has long been home to security companies, and we’re going to talk through the ins and outs of the local ecosystem and why founders should look to Boston when starting a cybersecurity company.

ventures 86

ventures board communities pitching 86

Revolution

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

Startup founders can start positioning themselves now to be acquired in that wave. As an active board member across several companies, I often advise against acquisitions that require additional investments to actualize value. A second non-traditional way to enter the M&A stream is through strategic board enhancements.

startup 130

startup board VC venture capital 130

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

Paul Graham’s assertion that “any startup founder can tell you the most common question they hear from investors is not about the founders or the product, but “who else is investing?&# When I’m in, I’m in. rings true to me. Investors who commit early deserve to have a lower price.

financing 286

financing finance advice VC 286

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2011

And that has had me thinking about the tech sector and how dismissive both startup teams & VCs can be about both their competition and the “hot” companies in any sector. I was at a dinner about a year ago with a few VCs and startup founders. The topic of FourSquare came up.

startup 313

startup board communities startup founder 313

NZ Entrepreneur

MARCH 16, 2025

Watch/listen to the Interview: In this interview Richard Liew talks with James Burnes , Chief Executive at Ministry of Awesome , a Christchurch New Zealand based startup hub helping high growth startups throughout New Zealand to start, grow and scale up.

startup ecosystem 52

startup ecosystem mix-use advice incubation 52

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

As director of Techstars’ startup pipeline, Saba Karim spends much of his time touting the ways entrepreneurs can benefit by joining an accelerator. But is it the right choice for every founder? These founders landed early checks by being savvy about social media. Thanks very much for reading, Walter Thompson. yourprotagonist.

media 77

media founder disruption accelerator 77

TechCrunch

APRIL 9, 2022

Venture capitalists and founders across all fundraising stages spoke to current investment strategies when it comes to investing in this cohort of startups. The days are long but the years are short in crypto,” Stan Miroshnik, partner and co-founder of 10T Holdings, said to TechCrunch. Influx of cash-rich attention.

investing 94

investing investment strategy communities 94

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

DataJoy , an early stage startup, wants to solve that issue. Like many startup founders, CEO Jon Lee has experienced the frustration first hand of trying to gather this financial data, and he decided to start a company to deal with it once and for all. “I spend my life in the board meetings.

SaaS 89

SaaS board creativity advice 89

StartupNation

OCTOBER 11, 2020

Ninety percent of startup founders will not implement a diversity program. Research shows that while 70 percent of startup founders think diversity is important, only 10 percent will actually follow through and implement a diversity program.Nothing will happen unless you set goals. Instead, you need to act.

entrepreneurs 121

entrepreneurs startup board culture 121