article thumbnail

6 Due Diligence Concerns Before Outside Contracting

Startup Professionals Musings

Leading edge technology software and manufacturing require constant course corrections and iterative restarts. Customer-facing services, like call centers, should rarely be outsourced. Internal services, like marketing and accounting, are more manageable and have less customer visibility. Marty Zwilling.

article thumbnail

7 Due Diligence Checks On Your Idea To Save Some Pain

Startup Professionals Musings

Some analysis and due diligence along the following lines should be performed on every idea, as a reality check, before committing your efforts and other people’s money to building a business: Look for places where competitors are few. Don’t forget to consider customer alternatives, like trains versus airplanes.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

6 Due Diligence Goals When Vetting Business Partners

Startup Professionals Musings

You need to do the due diligence to make that decision before you sign away your equity. As a former startup investor, I was often involved with due diligence on founders, and I felt that founders should do the same on co-founders, as well as investors. The same benefits also apply to a joint venture.

article thumbnail

The Due Diligence Hierarchy of Pain

View from Seed

When a founder is raising money, he/she should expect that any serious investor will conduct some level of due diligence before getting to yes. More mature companies will have to answer more detailed questions around their tech, product, and business. This could look somewhat different depending on the maturity of the business.

article thumbnail

How To Prepare Your New Venture For Investor Scrutiny

Startup Professionals Musings

This is the mysterious and dreaded due diligence process, which can kill the whole deal. Some entrepreneurs do very little to prepare for due diligence, assuming all the talking has already been done, and the business plan and results to-date tell the right story. Visit reference customers, partners, and vendors.

article thumbnail

4 Keys To A Successful Integrity Check With Investors

Startup Professionals Musings

This is the mysterious and dreaded due diligence process, which can kill the whole deal. Some entrepreneurs do very little to prepare for due diligence, assuming all the talking has already been done, and the business plan and results to-date tell the right story. Visit reference customers, partners, and vendors.

article thumbnail

Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition – Class 4- Semiconductors

Steve Blank

We just completed the fourth week of our new national security class at Stanford – Technology, Innovation and Great Power Competition. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed the class to cover how technology will shape all the elements of national power (America’s influence and footprint on the world stage).