Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

I think I’ve read Paul Graham’s post on “ Startup = Growth ” three or four times now. And of course on Twitter I’ve seen the Tweets, ReTweets and superlatives on what a great post it is. Viewing the article through the lens of a venture capitalist there’s much to agree with under the mantra of “growth!” And when you read the article carefully it allows for a period of discovery in your business.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

Tweet. Note: I led First Round's investment in Docracy in 2011, but I do not have any financial ties to the company and will not benefit or suffer, other than emotionally, based on the outcome of that investment. Docracy, born out of Techcrunch Disrupt's 2011 Hackathon, just brought legal negotiations into the cloud with their new Super Signing feature release.

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Gust

SEPTEMBER 9, 2012

Amilya Antonetti image via Entertainment Resource Group. It takes a great entrepreneur with a great vision to start a business, but it takes a collaboration of many people to make it a success. That’s where leadership comes in as a key ingredient, to drive the collaborative process to make the whole team better than the sum of the parts. I remember a book from a while back by Amilya Antonetti, titled “ The Recipe: A Fable for Leaders and Teams ” which illustrates the key concepts with stories an

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Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

Who is responsible for the vision that drives the company? This is arguably the primary job of the CEO, with agreement from the board. Many entrepreneurs after taking outside investment defer to their board for matters of direction that include setting the vision, as well as executing the plan. Here is a general rule: The CEO sets the sails and points the ship, creating the vision for the company.

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technology

Tomasz Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

Yesterday, I spoke at Columbia Business School. We had a conversation about the role of incubators and accelerators (or the moniker of your choice) within the startup ecosystem. Given the volume of first time entrepreneurs and the broad growth of interest in entrepreneurship, I think these programs are invaluable. To entrepreneurs, these programs offer up to seven value propositions, listed in order of importance, as I see it.

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incubation founder entrepreneurship education 40

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. Recently I wrote a post arguing to make the definition of a Startup more inclusive than that to which Silicon Valley, fueled by Venture Capital return profiles, would sometimes like to attach to the word. Today I’d like to talk about what startup communities outside of Silicon Valley look like, how they emerge and what makes them take hold.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

The other day, I noticed an eye-catching headline: "Internet Funding Boom Ends as Fast as It Began". It was from the Wall Street Journal--a publication I count on for emphasizing quality journalism over empty linkbaity headlines above hollow stories. Perhaps I need to rethink that. How else can you explain this headline matching a story about a professional social network still trying to explore revenues raising $17mm on an $80mm valuation?

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Gust

SEPTEMBER 2, 2012

Sergey Bin and Larry Page image via Wikipedia for Google. If you are a first-time entrepreneur, I recommend that you team with a co-founder with experiences, connections, and a skill set that complements, but doesn’t duplicate yours. Even experienced entrepreneurs need a partner to back up each other and improve fundability. The question is how to find that elusive perfect-fit partner.

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Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

This one comes straight from football. From experience and from information about the competition, a coach creates a playbook that contains detailed plans for actions or plays that the entire team must know without question and execute without pause in order to win games and advance toward the playoffs. What is different about you as a manager? If you manage with your team knowing the intended results of each action, and if the members of the team have not honed their skills at execution of th

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development

Tomasz Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 29, 2012

Any number of challenges can arise during a startup’s initial years. Some of these changes could be major and may require rethinking strategy. Competitors enter your target market. New products are released into your market which undercut yours. Customer acquisition costs rise dramatically. If faced with these questions, it’s hard to know where to begin or how to structure an analysis to reach an answer.

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frameworks strategy board development 40

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

A lot of people have talked about the need for NYC to have a PayPal--a multi-billion dollar exit that scattered on the rest of the community a bunch of experienced startup talent that scaled a company over time, as well as a host of new angel investors. The key to this, of course, is that PayPal had over 200 employees when it was acquired. As Shai points out , if you sell for a billion dollars and have 13 employees like Instagram, you're really not going to do much for the ecosystem.

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startup incubation communities pitching 288

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

In the early spring of 2009, the fundraising nuclear winter of the previous year hadn't yet thawed. It would be months before Foursquare's first round touched off a NYC venture frenzy. I was out trying to save my startup by talking to as many investors as I could. One particular investor pass--from someone we thought we had a good shot with--felt like a punch in the the stomach.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

I get on a whole host of these tech blogger lists where PR firms just spam a whole bunch of folks trying to get people to write about their book/startup/event. It just creates a To Do in my inbox. It's kind of annoying because I write a personal blog. I'm not a journalist by trade so I'm really not an appropriate person to pitch in such an automated way.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2012

You know the old saying about trust … “It takes years to build and seconds to destroy.” And once destroyed it is very difficult if not impossible to repair. You need to be the guardian of your own reputation. You need to constantly ask yourself whether your actions in rapidly scaling an online community are worth the potential downsides of destroying trust amongst your users.

communities 328

communities advice startup entrepreneurs 328

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

I'm so excited to hear that Indeed.com, a company that Union Square Ventures invested in while I worked there, just exited for a reported billion dollars. Back in 2005, I was a lowly analyst at Union Square Ventures with a million product ideas that I'd blog about all the time. When you're on the VC side, you come up with a lot of ideas, because every company you see inspires three new things you wish someone would build across a wide variety of sectors.

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strategy VC ventures opportunity 262

Gust

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

David Cohen image via Kathleen Lavine, Denver Business Journal. Business incubators for sharing services were all the rage back in the days of the dot-com bubble (700 for profit, many more non-profit). About that time the bubble burst, causing more than 80% of them to disappear. Now they are coming back, and the best even provide networking, technical leadership, and seed funding, as well as investors waving money at graduates.

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startup accelerator accelerator entrepreneurs incubation 147

Gust

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

Gust Startup Map & Trends Analysis – August 2012. Attention startup enthusiasts! Gust is thrilled to have nearly 7,000 new entrepreneurs creating startup profiles each month. To help us visualize the scale and global reach of these entrepreneurs we have put together a monthly startup map, which captures all new startup profiles on Gust. The map showcases new entrepreneur sign ups that chose to publish their startup profiles between August 1 st and August 31 st.

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startup energy education entrepreneurs 134

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SEPTEMBER 16, 2012

Steve Forbes image via Wikipedia. Presenting your startup vision as a founder to a potential investor, or presenting an idea as an employee to an executive, requires that you effectively communicate, or “translate”, the value proposition into terms that the receiver can fully understand and appreciate. If you fail, it’s your loss, not theirs, no matter what the reason.

technology 162

technology peer-to-peer pitching culture 162

Gust

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

How to finance a new seed-stage startup? Equity? Convertible debt? Convertible equity? As of August 2010, Paul Graham famously proclaimed , “Convertible notes have won. Every investment so far in this YC batch (and there have been a lot) has been done on a convertible note.” Yet in my little corner of Wonksville, Founder Institute CEO Adeo Ressi and Yoichiro “Yokum” Taku , a partner at my “alma mater” law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati , created

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Gust

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

Yes and No. The JOBS Act has several pieces, two of which are relevant here. The fascinating thing is that they allow for diametrically opposite activities! The key questions are: Who can you MARKET to? Who can you SELL to? Under the Crowdfunding provisions of the JOBS Act, a startup company will, for the first time, be able to sell shares of stock to anyone (that is, “the crowd”) once the SEC publishes the final rules for the program in January of 2013.

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startup investing investment 121

Gust

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Let’s start by understanding that because we are talking about something called “Convertible Debt”, it means that whatever it is will start out as one thing, and potentially convert (or “change”) into something else. In this case, what the investor receives in exchange for his or her cash starts out as debt, and potentially converts into equity.

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Speaker: Wayne Spivak - President and Chief Financial Officer of SBA * Consulting LTD, Industry Writer, and Public Speaker

The old adages that "cash is king" and "you can’t spend profits" still hold true today. But however well-known these sayings might be, it requires a change in mindset to properly implement a cash flow management system that predicts your business's runaway as accurately as possible. Key to this new mindset is understanding the difference between the Statement of Cash Flows, a historical look at the source and uses of cash, and the Cash Flow Statement, which uses transaction history and forward-l

financing

Gust

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

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ventures investing investment 107

Gust

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

By far the hardest step in all this is getting a term sheet. Once you have a term sheet in hand, and assuming good faith, everything else will follow. The best way to get a term sheet is to concentrate your efforts on an investor who has the ability, history and interest in leading rounds. So one of the very early questions you should be asking a potential investor is “do you typically lead an investment round, or co-invest with other investors on their term sheets?

investing 101

investing investment pitching financing 101

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012

Among the 99 problems that startups have, here are a few: - I have advisors and don't know how to make great use of them. - I have cheap junior people that hustle but they're not very experienced. - I don't have enough money to pay for all the people I need. Here's a solution that can be used in any area: marketing, technology, product, etc. Hire someone cheap who can hustle.

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startup strategy advice pitching 284

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

I think routines are important. Routines help me conserve my mental bandwidth so that I can use it for more things that move the needle. Thinking about when to go to the gym isn't a good use of that bandwidth. Keeping a routine also allows me to optimize based on observation of my own performance. I work out in the mornings, for example, because I'm an energetic early riser and so my best workouts are the ones that start my day.

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Speaker: P. Andrew Sjogren, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Very Good Security, Matt Doka, Co-Founder and CTO of Fivestars, and Steve Andrews, President & CEO of the Western Bankers Association 

PCI compliance can feel challenging and sometimes the result feels like you are optimizing more for security and compliance than you are for business outcomes. The key is to take the right strategy to PCI compliance that gets you both. In this webinar, we have a great set of panelists who will take you through how Zero Data strategies can be used as part of a well-rounded compliance and security approach, and get you to market much sooner by also allowing for payment optimization.

strategy