Both Sides of the Table
MAY 1, 2014
'Amazon. It’s the company that evokes fear into more startups and venture capitalists looking to fund eCommerce businesses than any other potential competitor. Every pitch I’ve ever seen has led to the, “Would Amazon eventually do this? And could we then compete?” type questions. But what if you could do the reverse of Amazon?
Tomasz Tunguz
MAY 14, 2014
Yesterday, I spoke on a panel at the Gainsight Pulse conference with Aaron Ross, the author of Predictable Revenue , Jason Lemkin of Storm Ventures who authors SaaStr , and Brian Stafford, a customer success expert from McKinsey. It was great fun to be on the panel and discuss how customer success is transforming SaaS companies by increasing revenue growth, decreasing capital needs, building better products and consequently retaining more customers.
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Gust
MAY 18, 2014
'The days are gone when a techie or a genius could build things in his garage and customers would find and buy the product, based purely on the “wow factor” of the technology. New technologies are everywhere today. People have seen so much that they are blasé, or actually fear pure technology. They want a personable brand, before they will consider the product.
Berkonomics
MAY 15, 2014
'By Basil Peters. After being an active angel investor for about fifteen years, I realized that many of the discussions I was involved in were virtually identical to ones I’d had many times before. A good example was during the negotiation of a term sheet. These usually involve a handful of angel investors, and a few entrepreneurs, who all want to build the very best term sheet for their exciting nascent enterprise.
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abovethecrowd.com
MAY 28, 2014
'In early April, Neel Mehta of Google first publicly reported the web vulnerability that we now refer to as the Heartbleed bug. Early analysis suggested that 17% of the servers on the Internet were vulnerable, which represents about half a million unique computers. This list included some of the world’s most heavily trafficked sites including Facebook, Google, and Yahoo.
Startup Catalyst Brief brings together the best content for the entrepreneurial ecosystem from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 18, 2014
'In my Twitter bio is says that I’m “ looking to invest in passionate entrepreneurs ,” which almost sounds like I was just looking for a cliché soundbite to describe myself. Yet along with “authenticity” they are two of the key attributes I look for when I meet with companies I may consider funding one day. Passion is also the featured heavily in nearly every presentation I give to entrepreneurs or on college campuses or in talks with MBA students.
Tomasz Tunguz
MAY 4, 2014
At a board meeting last week, one of the VPs of Marketing I’m lucky to work with presented a brilliantly simple way of explaining the evolution of a startup’s marketing tactics. I’ve drawn a diagram of the idea above, which borrows heavily from McKinsey’s 3 horizons. Startups have many different marketing options at their disposal: SEO/SEM, print, radio, TV, mail, affiliate, content marketing…The list goes on and on.
Gust
MAY 3, 2014
'The facile answer to this assumptive question is “because some women are not seeking funding from venture capital firms” But there is actually quite a bit of truth in both statements. Women-led ventures definitely account for a smaller percentage of venture investments than do ventures led by men, but women-led ventures also account for a MUCH smaller percentage of ventures seeking funding in the first place!
Berkonomics
MAY 8, 2014
'First, here’s a link to my recent TEDx talk, “Smiling at success; laughing at failure.” . I am chairman of a company that, as I write this, is twelve years old and has not yet taken a dollar of outside investment. The company has been funded entirely by grants from the National Institute of Health, amounting to millions of non-dilutive dollars in all.
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Derek Sivers
MAY 4, 2014
Let’s just figure out the meaning of life, once and for all, in under 20 minutes, OK? This is a 19-minute talk I’ve given at four conferences in Ireland, Taiwan, India, and New Zealand. I’ve improved it after each, and finally consider it done, so this is now the best and final recording of it. The video doesn’t add much, so if you would rather just listen, download the MP3.
This is going to be BIG.
MAY 27, 2014
'Last week, for just the second time ever, I passed on an investment opportunity because of the terms of the deal--both the price and the legal structure of the agreement. It was a company whose product I believed in and whose founder I liked, but a firm lobbed in a term sheet at a price 33% higher than what I had offered using a very light agreement meant for a much earlier stage company.
Both Sides of the Table
MAY 10, 2014
'Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a few brands & media properties that I truly love and for which I have huge loyalty. Virgin America. Uber. USAA. Jon Stewart. Fareed Zakaria. David Brooks. And NPR. NPR has been a part of my life for 25 years. As a news junkie and seeker of information, I’m that guy who always has his car tuned to KPCC everyday to get my daily dose of NPR.
Tomasz Tunguz
MAY 26, 2014
Last week, Redpoint held our annual Founder Day gathering. At the event, I listened to the stories of Felix Baumgartner’s record breaking jump from 120,000 feet, heard about the astonishing comeback of the US America’s Cup team and took part in a creativity workshop led by a Stanford Design School professor. In short, the event revolved around doubt.
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Gust
MAY 11, 2014
'In the US, many entrepreneurs see grants as “free money,” since they are not loans and don’t have to be repaid. A grant is not an equity investment, so the entrepreneur doesn’t have to give up a stake in the company either. Typically they can be used to fund product development and commercialization that would otherwise require outside investors. A good place to start looking is the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which is a lifeline for high-tech startups.
Berkonomics
MAY 1, 2014
'Let me tell you the story of how I raised $100,000 to fill a gap needed to purchase a new home for my young family years ago. I had located a beautiful home that would be a stretch to finance, and had arranged for a first mortgage from the bank, and a second from the seller. Home values were rising so fast that I knew I had to move quickly. So I went to visit a number of customer CEOs, told them my story, and asked them to advance some amount against their future billing from me.
Derek Sivers
MAY 17, 2014
Be careful when you say you like or dislike something, because you could change your mind soon. The first time I heard Tom Waits’s music, when he was a guest on David Letterman , I thought it was so horrible that it must be a joke. Even years later, when I heard him again, I hated his music passionately. But then I heard his cover version of the Cole Porter song “It’s All Right With Me”, and loved it.
This is going to be BIG.
MAY 16, 2014
'Dollar Tree. Smucker''s. Uber. If the Bloomberg story is right, all three of these companies are now worth about $10 billion. I don''t know about you, but I''m pretty sure I''d rather own Uber than all of the crappy Dollar Tree stores or a peanut butter company. Plus, I''m more of a almond butter guy anyway. I don''t totally understand why people get obsessed with valuations--especially given that the complete lack of context around a deal.
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Both Sides of the Table
MAY 11, 2014
'Mother’s Day. The one day a year where we recognize this all important figure in our lives who shapes our childhood providing unconditional love through our successes and failures with encouragement and support through our struggles. I’ve written about my own mom before and the role she played in shaping my life but of course you never quite appreciate the full contributions of Mom until you’re much older.
Tomasz Tunguz
MAY 7, 2014
Some of the best content to be found about startups is locked in books. Thomas Kjemperud asked me yesterday for a 140 character recommendation of one book for founders. Reducing my list to just one and condensing an argument for why founders ought to read it in just 117 characters was just too great a challenge for me. Instead I’ve written a blog post about the nine favorite books I’ve read over the last five years have helped me understand startups and the processes that make them s
Gust
MAY 4, 2014
'Barack Obama meets Mark Zuckerberg, photo via Wikimedia. Entrepreneurs are all about firsts, and the most important is you making a great first impression – on investors, customers, new team members, and strategic partners. Poor first impressions can be avoided, but I’m amazed at the number of unnecessary mistakes I see at those critical first introductions, presentations, and meetings.
Berkonomics
MAY 22, 2014
'By Bill Payne. Bill Payne has been actively involved in angel investing since 1980, funding over 50 companies and mentoring over 100 more. He is the recipient of the coveted “Hans Severiens Award form the Angel Capital Association, its highest honor. . The sale of equity in private companies is regulated by the Securities Act of 1933, which requires that the company either register with the SEC or meet one of several exemptions (Regulation D).
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This is going to be BIG.
MAY 22, 2014
'I could spend a lot of time writing a long diatribe about what it means to create a brand, or I could just show you three videos that Tinybop , a company I seeded in 2012, made as part of the marketing for their new app, Plants. Consider the bar raised. As a biased investor, I not-so-humbly submit that this is the most creative thing any startup in New York City has ever produced as part of a launch: Plants by Tinybop from Tinybop on Vimeo.
Gust
MAY 25, 2014
'Image via Flickr by Hobvias Sudoneighm. Every startup with any traction quickly reaches a point where they need to hire employees to grow the business. Unfortunately, this always happens when pressures are the highest, and business processes are ill-defined. At this point you need superstars and versatile future executives, yet your in-house hiring processes and focus are at their weakest.
Gust
MAY 31, 2014
'A company’s board of directors is technically elected by the company’s shareholders. So before a startup receives outside funding, the board is “elected” by—and usually consists of—the founders (although it may exist in name only.). Once a company receives its initial seed, angel or venture funding, the documents prepared for the investment will include a Shareholders Agreement that gets signed by everyone.
Gust
MAY 7, 2014
'The venture capital fund itself makes money… …by investing early in a startup company’s life, when success is not at all assured. In exchange for investing capital to help the company grow, the fund receives an ownership interest in the company. Because in the early days a company will not be worth very much, the fund’s ownership interest will be worth exactly what it paid.
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