Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 30, 2014
'When I first met Meredith Perry she was 24. That was three months ago this week. Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning.
Gust
OCTOBER 26, 2014
'Image via Flickr from Food For Thought album. When someone asks me for the best way to fund a startup, I always say bootstrap it, meaning fund it yourself and grow organically. Bootstrapping avoids all the cost, pain, and distractions of finding angels or VCs, and allows you to keep control and all your hard-earned equity for yourself. Despite all the focus you hear on external investors, over 90% of startups today are self-funded.
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Berkonomics
OCTOBER 30, 2014
'One of my books, Extending the Runway , uses parallels to piloting a plane to equate to the process of creating and building a small company, making maximum use of resources to get to and beyond breakeven. It is worth revisiting the most important point of that book, which was written to prompt discussion between entrepreneurs, professional managers and their boards of directors about issues that could unite them or strain the relationships between them.
Tomasz Tunguz
OCTOBER 29, 2014
The real promise of the Internet of Things isn’t simply linking millions of devices together, just like the real innovation of the web wasn’t networking a bunch of computers. Instead, the true and still unrealized potential of IoT is to transform business models; it’s enabling companies to sell products in entirely new and better ways that benefit both the company and the customer.
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Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 26, 2014
'Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV). In that article I talked about how PR drives: recruiting, employee retention, biz dev deals, funding and even M&A and that often “attribution” to your PR activities is unknown.
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
OCTOBER 29, 2014
'I’m pretty on record as saying I don’t think many private-to-private tech mergers make sense. They are often done from a position of weakness. Something in both companies isn’t working, which is why they come together. I often don’t believe in the therm M&A because in my experience mostly A works. But of course there are always exceptions.
Gust
OCTOBER 25, 2014
'The Business of Venture Capital. Insights from Leading Practitioners on the Art of Raising a Fund, Deal Structuring, Value Creation, and Exit Strategies. Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur. Mastering the VC Game. A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get from Start-up to IPO on Your Terms. Term Sheets & Valuations. A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Term Sheets & Valuations.
Gust
OCTOBER 29, 2014
'The first question you need to ask is “What country are you in?” and the second is “Are you an Accredited Investor by that country’s standards?” If we’re talking about the US and you are NOT at the Accredited level ($1 million in investable assets, or $200,000 annual income), then for the moment you are actually not allowed to invest in privately held startups (emerging public companies, Read more >.
Tomasz Tunguz
OCTOBER 25, 2014
When we analyzed the impact of location on a startup’s ability to raise capital, we found no statistically significant difference. Startups in San Francisco, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Austin and many other cities all demonstrated similar ability to raise follow-on rounds. But is the same true for investors of various locations? Do investors across the US invest similarly across Seed, Series A and Series B?
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Gust
OCTOBER 29, 2014
'On October 1st, 2014, after more than two years of partnership and development, Gust proudly joined the Mayor of the City of New York and IBM in announcing the launch of Digital.NYC, NYC’s new official hub for tech and startups. In the first 36 hours, mentions of the hub were viewed more than 42 million times on social media, and Read more >.
Gust
OCTOBER 29, 2014
'The first question you need to ask is “What country are you in?” and the second is “Are you an Accredited Investor by that country’s standards?” If we’re talking about the US and you are NOT at the Accredited level ($1 million in investable assets, or $200,000 annual income), then for the moment you are actually not allowed to invest in privately held startups (emerging public companies, of course, you can buy on the stock market like everyone else.).
Tomasz Tunguz
OCTOBER 30, 2014
It’s Q3 earnings season and about half of the major public tech companies and recent startup IPOs have reported their figures. I keep track of earnings to get a sense for how these companies perceive their markets. Meeting or exceeding earnings indicates companies can forecast their growth and demonstrates how predictable these businesses are.
Tomasz Tunguz
OCTOBER 28, 2014
At some point, most startups will begin to measure their customers’ happiness. Customer satisfaction is an important predictor of loyalty and can foster fantastically efficient word-of-mouth growth. Many companies employ Net Promoter Score to quantify customer satisfaction. NPS measures the fraction of a customer base which are promoters and detractors of a company’s product.
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Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 25, 2014
'I’ve been having this PR discussion with three separate portfolio companies at once so I thought I’d just publish my thoughts more broadly. I have written many times about PR so if you want a deep dive on the “how” of PR you may enjoy reading some of these posts. PR is an insanely valuable activity in early-stage companies. Very few investors understand this and even fewer startups.
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