Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2014

'By now you likely know that Marc Andreessen weighed in on anonymous apps in a 12-part Twitter diatribe. Anonymity. As the old joke goes, “on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.” I have been weighing in slowly on the topic over the past few weeks on Twitter but have avoided writing a blog post about it until now. This was in part due to a tremendously busy 30-day period for me (in which my overall writing has been down) and in part the inevitability of knowing that weighing

support 329

support communities networking advice 329

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 17, 2014

'Here are two contrasting startup stories I''ve seen firsthand. With one company, a founder and his super inspirational, creative, and established buddy hatch a plan to build a very strong content brand that serves as a platform for a lot of diverse revenue streams--events, ecommerce, advertising. You could think of it as a spin on Thrillist. With the author staying close as an advisor, they build a real, cashflow positive business and start to think about where they could go with some outside c

pitching 321

pitching consulting VC venture capital 321

Gust

MARCH 16, 2014

'Image via Flickr by BullionVault. In reality, so-called “Founder’s” shares are simply common stock, issued at the time of startup incorporation, for a very low price, and normally allocated to the multiple initial players commensurate with their investment or role. But that’s only the beginning of the story. These shares are allocated and committed, but not really issued and owned (vested) until later.

accelerator 175

accelerator founder investing investment 175

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 20, 2014

Over the past few years, I’ve debated the existence of a Series A crunch and found in that analysis that the volume of Series As was increasing. This trend hasn’t abated. The number of Series As has grown by 31% annually for the past 5 years, reaching more than 831 Series As in 2013, up from 284 in 2009. In short, no founder should be concerned about the Series A market.

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startup pitching founder opportunity 40

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technology

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 19, 2014

'This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. There is an old saying in poker that if you don’t know who the sucker at the table is – it’s you. The same can be said of critical decisions in a board meeting or frankly any other meeting where major decisions are ratified. If you’re turning up to important meetings hoping to persuade the critical people who attend of a decision you’re trying to make and having already “counted your votes” you are sub-opt

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board advice mix-use construction 325

Gust

MARCH 15, 2014

'It’s not great…but it IS part of the business. If you are an angel investor, the only way to do it is to take things very seriously. If you take angel investing seriously, you should aim to develop a portfolio of at least 30-40 investments over 5-10 years of active investing. If you invest in 40 startups, 20 of them (absolute minimum!

investing 168

investing investment angel investing startup 168

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 19, 2014

I’ve been getting a few questions about the tools I use to publish this blog, so I figured I’d write about it and reveal the machinery behind the curtain. I use four main tools Jekyll, Github Mou, and RStudio. Jekyll is the blogging engine; Github is the hosting provider; Mou is the app I use to write these posts; and RStudio is the place I analyze data and make charts.

accelerator 40

accelerator 40

Fink About It

MARCH 19, 2014

In my last post, I wrote about how many startups fail because they try solving problems no one really has or cares enough about to spend money to solve. I mentioned that while poor execution is responsible for many startup failures, you can’t execute your way out of a bad idea. In the venture capital [.]. The post Pinpointing Problems Worth Solving (Part Two of Three) appeared first on Fink About It.

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venture capital capital ventures startup 55

Berkonomics

MARCH 20, 2014

'Here’s more advice from professional investors for aspiring entrepreneurs. Each of us has a list of things we look for early on when identifying whether we want to go to the next step in analyzing a plan. Come to think of it, these are good for challenging any business plan. First: You must address a big market, large enough to allow a new entrant to have a shot at making a dent with a great product or service, and growing to a size that will make the company valuable at the exit.

construction 105

construction advice entrepreneurs opportunity 105

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development

Gust

MARCH 19, 2014

'The disappointing fact is that this is a highly, highly unlikely scenario, for several reasons. The most important is that venture capital firms simply do not fund business plans. They fund companies. There are several excellent explanations hereas to why this is the case, but the bottom line is that VCs are able to fund only one out of every 400 companies who approach them, and thus the bar is set very high for what is considered “fundable” For US VC-level financing, this will

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venture capital capital ventures entrepreneurs 122

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 18, 2014

Each morning’s news seems to bring another fund-raising announcement of ever larger scale. Just a few months ago, Pure Storage raised $150M in the largest ever venture investment in a storage company. These record financings certainly generate significant press interest. But how representative of the fund raising environment are these mega-rounds?

VC 40

VC financing finance enablement 40

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 18, 2014

'Almost every startup company starts off “scrappy” and there’s a well established culture in the tech startup scene to embrace the “be cheap at all costs” mentality. So we have the proverbial garage startup or the small team working on desks that are handmade out of scrap wood or former doors from a construction site. But at want point do you need to flip from scrappy to “scale-y”?

culture 352

culture startup construction health 352

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 16, 2014

Last week, Sean Ellis made an interesting comment in response to this post on public SaaS companies’ growth rates : I’m guilty of giving the same advice to startup founders without providing a transparent rationale. This post is my explanation of why the 15-20% MRR growth number is a reasonably good target for post-Seed/pre-Series A SaaS startups to aim for.

SaaS 41

SaaS startup advice startup founder 41

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