ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 28, 2010

Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup is the new book by David Cohen , founder and CEO of TechStars, and Brad Feld , managing director of Foundry Group. Below is his chapter, Avoid Co-Founder Conflict. A perennial favorite is to decide that each founder should own an equal share. For what reasons?

Cofounder 128

Cofounder Founder Equity Dilution 128

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 9, 2022

As part of our Founder interview series , The Startup Magazine caught up with Salo Sterental, Co-Founder of the SoStereo, a marketing firm that enables brands and artists alike to unlock the marketing power of music. Salo: Zumba Fitness approached Beto (my co-founder) and I with a unique problem.

Cofounder 158

Cofounder Founder Miami Marketing 158

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 4, 2014

Nowhere is the politics more difficult than with co-founders, which is why for years I’ve spoken publicly about “ the co-founder mythology.” ” Of course we all go into businesses expecting to be aligned with our co-founders but over time life changes. Equity for the future?

Founder 340

Founder Cofounder Sacramento Technical Review 340

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 2, 2011

Jane and Dick, our fearless cofounders of SayAhh, have set up an accounting system and created their first set of financial statements. The founders each have common shares that will vest over four years. Bring Praveena in as a founder and offer 10-20% of the company as stock. Time to update the cap table.

Cap Table 133

Cap Table CTO Hire Technical Cofounder Cofounder 133

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

This is a guest post from Stephano Kim , former co-founder of Web 1.0 Many startup CEOs hire COOs or launch companies with a co-founder carrying the title. When should founders hire one? The needs of each founder are so different from the next, and the challenges his/her business faces are even more diverse.

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Hiring Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder 336

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

I left the meeting and had to attend a 3-hour board meeting where two founders have been fighting and each want the other one fired. But your co-founder had been senior at one of the big enterprise software companies and if I remember correctly American Express had run a big pilot with you. Some were interesting, some weren’t.

Software Review 381

Software Review Churn Rate Due Diligence New York 381

The Next Web

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

With all other things equal, that means that a 50/50 split between two co-founders (evenly split if there are more than two), or a 66/33 split based on the premium for coming up with the original idea, and for starting the initial development efforts and sourcing the original team. Whose idea was it?

Cofounder 136

Cofounder Equity Founder Seed Stage 136

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2010

years ago and told me, “I just got offered the chance to buy this company because the founder doesn’t want to continue. How much dilution should I take for it?&# My friend’s company was pre-revenue. Me: “Zero dilution. Sometimes this involves co-CEO’s. BUT … it’s your company.

Merger 276

Merger Technical Review Early Stage Dilution 276

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2016

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. Giving a co-founder a salary won’t get you the “fire in the belly” you want. Each co-founder should get equity for value, based on these key variables: Lived a key role in a previous startup.

Equity 120

Equity Cofounder Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property 120

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

. “We’re all equal co-founders and we don’t care about titles.&# I usually encourage people to think about titles like, “Founder & CTO&# or “Founder & VP Marketing.&#. Dilute your cash, equity or both. Functional roles provide more clarity around roles and responsibilities.

Operations 292

Operations CTO Hire Startup Early Stage 292

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2011

I covered what I call “the co-founder mythology.&# Either you’re not technical and you think you need a technical co-founder or vice-versa. Conventional wisdom says that you gain far more in working as a team than you lose by diluted by half before you start. Hire your co-founder.

Cofounder 393

Cofounder Founder Vesting Founder Vesting 393

The Next Web

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Andrew is the co-founder and CTO of Parse.ly , a technology startup that provides big data insights to the web’s best publishers. He wrote: When startups die, the official cause of death is always either running out of money or a critical founder bailing. Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Andrew Montalenti.

Cofounder 155

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 155

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As the idea went from innovating on software & systems to launching a company to rolling it out in the field brought on Rahul Gandhi as his co-founder to physically launch the company. Sam & Rahul have worked closely together on “innovate & operate” since the earliest days of MakeSpace. Seriously, this happens.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Up and Running

JUNE 14, 2012

Do I need a co-founder? These are some of the most frequent questions about co-founders that I have heard from entrepreneurs over the years. Do I need a co-founder? How many co-founders should I have? I have seen many successful companies with as few as 2 and as many of 11 co-founders.

Cofounder 90

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Accredited Investor Equity 90

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2017

I read commentary or Twitter or blogs and realize that there are also strongly held convictions that there are these evil VCs who do terrible things to mostly altruistic founders. But unlike the popular press reporting of this conflict — 80% of the time it is founder-to-founder conflict and not investor-to-founder conflict.

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Cofounder Stock Options Equity Technical Review 217

Agile VC

JULY 11, 2012

Some disgruntled younger partners left in the mid-90s… two co-founded Benchmark Capital (Bruce Dunlevie & Andy Rachleff). But eventually some disgruntled younger partners left and two started August Capital (Dave Marquardt & John Johnson) and one co-founded Benchmark (Bob Kagle). But it’s not quite that simple.

Silicon Valley 240

Silicon Valley Carried Interest Cofounder Boston 240

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2009

With open source software (LAMP stack) and cloud computing infrastructure it just wasn’t that expensive to get your company going and founders just wanted to raise less money. I haven’t met a single founder has hasn’t raved about their experience working with Jon Callaghan, Phil Black or Tony Conrad.

Software Review 283

Software Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Southern California 283

blog.nahurst.com

JULY 19, 2010

The graphic below balances the risks cofounders take with their relative contributions to help answer this question. This covers one of the most common situations I encounter: For a pre-funding web startup whose team includes only a non-technical cofounder, how much equity should an incoming technical cofounder get?

Technical Cofounder 43

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Equity Salary 43

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

Some (like your peers or even the founders) don’t understand it, and others (the VCs) realize it’s not in their interest to let you know. Unless you have them capture the unique aspects of the culture, it will become diluted and disappear among the new hires. Declare them cultural co-founders. Loss of Community?

Part-Time VPE 334

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 334

YoungUpstarts

JULY 31, 2019

by Anish Sebastian and Juan Pablo Segura, co-founders of Babyscripts. Founders need seed capital to get their operations up and running, and to begin generating revenue. Ten years ago, Ward Cunningham published a Youtube video that introduced the concept of “technical debt” to the world.

Cofounder 127

Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Cofounder Seed Capital 127

K9 Ventures

MAY 6, 2015

Conventional wisdom in the startup world dictates that two founders are ideal for a startup. There are lots of famous pairs of duo co-founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Hewlett and Packard, Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Having the right co-founder is perhaps the single most valuable thing in a startup.

Cofounder 48

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 48

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

But we weren’t optimizing for dilution – we were building a $1 billion+ company and we wanted the runway to succeed. My co-founder and other management team members wanted us to hold off and see whether we could get the deal done at a higher price. We ended up agreeing a term sheet for $16.5 Yes, this was stupid.

Technical Review 301

Technical Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Venture Capital 301

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2013

One of the challenges for investing in startups has always been the lack of an established way for founders and investors to actually measure and decide on the valuation of the startup concerned. “If you are an angel investor and a venture is seeking capital from you, insist on getting its Worthworm report.

Pre-Money Valuation 150

Pre-Money Valuation Web Technical Review Angel Investor 150

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

If you have a technical background and you are focused on product development, consider a co-founder with a sales and marketing background that can focus on selling your world class product. This helps to better divide the work, make people accountable, and show investors just why each founder/hire is key to the organization.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

Agile VC

DECEMBER 4, 2014

I like to say that “there are only co-founders” — it’s extraordinarily rare for a successful business to have just a sole founder. But not all co-founders are equal in terms of title, ownership, responsibilities, and so forth. Sometimes co-founders put off the equity split question for some time.

Cofounder 255

Cofounder Equity Founder Sweat Equity 255

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

I raised money and traded equity, but with my venture, I had to make one of the toughest decisions, to build it with some assistance of co-founders. Find the right co-founders. Having co-founders provides a strategy to avoid funding your start-up, with the help of investor’s money.

Cofounder 124

Cofounder Sweat Equity Equity Dilution 124

Altgate

DECEMBER 15, 2010

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← No one wants to tell you your baby is ugly More on Liquidation Preferences → Pre-Money Valuation vs Number of Founders Posted on December 15, 2010 by admin Here’s a chart of the day worth sharing.

Pre-Money Valuation 66

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Cofounder Founder 66

thinkspace.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

How to Divide Equity to Startup Founders, Advisors, and Employees. The part that I’d like to zero in on is when you’ve got a high growth company what are some of the best practices out there to distribute equity to the founders, advisors, and employees? Equity for Founders. Should founders have anti-dilution rights?

Equity 62

Equity Employee Founder CTO Hire 62

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. What are the terms of their relationship with the founder?

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Agile VC

DECEMBER 4, 2014

I like to say that “there are only co-founders” — it’s extraordinarily rare for a successful business to have just a sole founder. But not all co-founders are equal in terms of title, ownership, responsibilities, and so forth. Sometimes co-founders put off the equity split question for some time.

Cofounder 173

Cofounder Equity Founder Sweat Equity 173

David Teten

DECEMBER 2, 2019

Now the bad news: some venture capitallists have a bias against startups with an explicit positive social impact, on the grounds that they have a smaller addressable market, and that the founders are not sufficiently focused on creating shareholder wealth. If you think I’ve missed any, please contact me. J.M.Kaplan Innovation Prize. “The

Technical Review 60

Technical Review SBIR Dilution Silicon Valley 60

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

What is it, and how should founders think about it? note: We’d like to be extra clear that founders should not take on venture debt if they don’t have 100% visibility into repaying the loan, as banks that need to recoup their loan my force the company or you as the guarantor into liquidation or bankruptcy.

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. III: Why are Revenue-Based VCs investing in so many women and underrepresented founders?

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. From RBI, Flexible VCs borrow the ability to reap meaningful returns without demanding founders build for an exit. By tying payments to actual revenues, founders and investors remain aligned around the company’s real-time performance, good or bad.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

JANUARY 9, 2014

No clear vision or purpose This should be the starting point for any startup founder, but it’s often overlooked. By trying to appeal to everyone and adding features left, right and centre, you will actually dilute your message and could end up with a complex, bloated product. Life’s too short to build something nobody wants.”

Early Stage 102

Early Stage Startup Cofounder Design 102

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 16, 2016

By Bryan Miles, CEO and co-founder, Miles Advisory Group, Inc. But take it from what a good friend and advisor once said to me: “Ego is dilutive to net worth.”. Bryan Miles is CEO & co-founder of Miles Advisory Group, Inc. When businesses begin booming, that’s typically a good thing.

Cofounder 100

Cofounder Balance Sheet Small Business Administration Technical Review 100

www.avc.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

To be clear, these are hires we are talking about, not co-founders. Co-founders are an entirely different discussion and I am not talking about them in this post. The other important data point is the number of fully diluted shares. Let's say the number is $25mm. This is an important data point for this effort.

Equity 64

Equity Employee CTO Hire Fractional CTO 64