Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2017

Before the rapid rise of Unicorns, (startups with a valuation over a billion dollars), when boards were still in control, they “encouraged” the hiring of “adult supervision” of the founders after they found product/market fit. The founders. Founders are comfortable in the chaos and disorder. Adult Supervision.

Part-Time VPE 329

Part-Time VPE Liquidity Event Stock Engineer 329

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Was Paul Graham right in his “high resolution” financing post? What the entrepreneurs were really saying is, “I don’t want to take a lower valuation now, while I don’t have customers or a full team. Convertible debt WITH a cap is stupid for founders. Some thoughts on raising angel money.

Ratchet 354

Ratchet Liquidation Preference Equity Stock 354

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

We received so much positive feedback from our This Week in Venture Capital show walking through valuation calculations & term sheets that we decided to do a Q&A show this week to address topics that entrepreneurs want to learn about. The best thing to get is a “right sized&# valuation. A: It’s not best.

Venture Capital 282

Venture Capital Term Sheet Valuation Stock Options 282

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

November 23, 2010 Entrepreneurs, Using Outsourcing to Obtain Capital Efficiency Needs to be Thought Through to be Effective - Robert Ochtel , June 7, 2010 Teen Entrepreneur, Brian Wong, Youngest Founder to Receive Angel Funding - teenentrepreneurblog.com , October 28, 2010 Build Your Own Silicon Valley?

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

A founder asked me what makes a $2M round “pre-seed”? While the answers are somewhat semantic, the pre-seed funding round is making a comeback in 2024 startup financing. especially if the startup already has a product and revenue?

Valuation 186

Valuation Software Review Generative AI Technical Review 186

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

My friend Michael Broukhim, founder & co-CEO of FabFitFun and I recently had a catch-up meeting for 3-miles on the Santa Monica “Bird Trail” No company has ever elicited so many questions by friends, colleagues, entrepreneurs, fellow VCs and journalists as has Bird, the company that pioneered the electronic scooter as a service market.

San Francisco 256

San Francisco Valuation Los Angeles Technical Review 256

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

Mike is a no BS guy, has all the attributes I look for in a founder and says things like, openly shares knowledge and opines without a filter including this one, “whoever invented uncapped convertible debt should be spanked!&# This is an interview you’re not going to want to miss, I promise. Contest details here :

Semantic 302

Semantic Acquisition Valuation Angel Investor 302

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? ” As far as “terms” go I’m 100% aligned to have the most vanilla, founder-friendly terms I can. And I listen to the reasons their co-founders quit their well-payed job to join them.

Deal Flow 347

Deal Flow Early Stage Investment Bankers Technical Review 347

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

Should I trust my instincts for founders and products or should I be more focused on the market size or business plan? ” As far as “terms” go I’m 100% aligned to have the most vanilla, founder-friendly terms I can. And I listen to the reasons their co-founders quit their well-payed job to join them.

Early Stage 361

Early Stage Deal Flow Investment Bankers Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

They should heed the age old advice that raising slightly more money while you can is always better than trying to optimize future valuations. Should VC’s really be impacted by public market valuations when the money that they’re investing today should be for returns in 7-10 years? Short answer – yes.

Burn Rate 263

Burn Rate Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Private Equity 263

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

why the hell has seed financing declined so much in the past 3 years?? And this era ushered in by Amazon changed everything from the age of founders to the skill sets required to the structure of the VC industry and even to the layout of cities (yes, I would proclaim that boldly that Amazon AWS affected city development).

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage IPO 328

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

” If you invested at $8m pre-money and put $2m in (thus you own 20% of a company at a $10m post-money valuation) and if you put another $2m into a round at a $40m valuation raising $10m ($50m post) you end up with half your money at $8m pre and half at $40m pre thus your average price goes up dramatically. Thus begins the dance.

Technical Review 336

Technical Review Later Stage Early Stage LP 336

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. To me, that is no different than financing the business.

Cofounder 136

Cofounder Equity Founder Seed Stage 136

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

View from Seed

OCTOBER 21, 2014

Using NextView as an example, since we both seek to lead the seed round and only lead during this round, I’ve seen this trend manifest in one of two ways: In a priced round, the entrepreneur will often share their valuation ask (or a stated floor) for the pre-money valuation of their company much sooner in the process.

Valuation 336

Valuation Founder Seed Stage Angel Investor 336

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

When you look at a deal so much of what you’re trying to understand are the skills, resiliency , work ethic, motivation and team dynamics of the founders. Nothing blows up great opportunities faster than founders who are constantly fighting. There are times you just need help getting s**t done.

Portfolio 364

Portfolio Chicago Incubator Sales 364

View from Seed

MAY 2, 2019

There may be some twists and turns along the way, like a bridge or seed extension, but I think something like this is plan A for most founders. Unless a founder has angels interested who are not really price sensitive, a founder might find themselves selling a pretty big chunk of their company for not that much money.

Early Stage 214

Early Stage Dilution Valuation .Net 214

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 11, 2023

The following is a condensed explanation of seed funding: Seed money is a form of early-stage financing that new businesses receive from investors in exchange for a share of ownership in the company. The term “seed financing” refers to the stage of funding that comes from first equity. What exactly is the seed funding?

Seed Stage 148

Seed Stage Technical Review Early Stage Due Diligence 148

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

The founders were simply wrong about their assumptions about customer needs. It turns out the term “visionary founder” was usually a synonym for someone who was hallucinating. Founders Need to Run the Company Longer. So, almost like clockwork 20 th century startups fired the innovators/founders when they scaled.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

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.

Cofounder 217

Cofounder Stock Options Equity Technical Review 217

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

If polled a week before the board meeting a good number of founders would say, “I wish we could delay this meeting a couple of weeks” or “I really could do without having this board meeting at all.” The law firm has done its job of preparing the stock option requests, board meeting minutes, 409a valuations. There are too many pages.

Stock Options 226

Stock Options Metrics Stock Valuation 226

The Next Web

OCTOBER 7, 2013

They were referring to non-founder engineers, most commonly the first hire for technology businesses. is frequently granted ownership significantly less than that of the founders. However, at the very early stage, they are taking as much risk with their future as the founders. Engineer #1?

Engineer 129

Engineer Dilution Option Pool Vesting 129

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Here’s the punchline: if you run your company as if you have closed a VC equity financing round even though you actually closed a convertible debt round, you’ll be in much better shape when it comes time to raise your Series A financing. The investors, founders, and “community” are all super excited about ASC.

Burn Rate 155

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 155

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 1, 2020

I have interacted with a lot of founders who funded their initial business expenses through credit cards. If you are facing any problem you can always check out this: Business Loan vs. Equity Financing. The bridge or exit stage is generally of very large transactions and for companies with substantial valuation. Inception stage.

Startup 150

Startup Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Seed Stage 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2016

The startup industry may be “resetting,” which doesn’t mean a “crash” but rather just a resetting of valuations, timescales, winners/losers, capital sources and the relative emphasis of growth rates vs. burn rates. Founders hate them because they’re dilutive. Be realistic on valuation.

Burn Rate 150

Burn Rate Cap Table Startup Dilution 150

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

Also, if there is a lowering of M&A activity this will lead to increased financing needs for startups driving higher failure rates or increases in “adverse terms” entering future financing rounds. Either won’t bode well for angels if they’re also hurting on non tech investments. What does this mean if you’re an investor?

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Technical Review Balance Sheet Government 298

Steve Blank

APRIL 26, 2022

At the turn of the century after the dotcom crash, startup valuations plummeted, burn rates were unsustainable, and startups were quickly running out of cash. They offered desperate founders more cash but insisted on new terms, rewriting all the old stock agreements that previous investors and employees had. They’re Back.

Cram Down 417

Cram Down Founder Venture Capital Recapitalization 417

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 28, 2015

This article highlights their advice on issues ranging from financing to patent trolls: While startups may believe lawyers are too costly, working with one early on avoids potentially serious problems later. “And if you have a valuation cap; a higher cap is always better than a lower cap.” ” The Cost of Financing.

Convertible Security 100

Convertible Security IP Technical Review Software Review 100

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Arif Bhalwani is the co-founder and CEO of Third Eye Capital (TEC) in Toronto, Canada. TEC is one of Canada’s largest and most experienced private credit firms, specializing in providing asset-based capital solutions to companies that are underserved or overlooked by traditional sources of financing, primarily banks.

Technical Review 158

Technical Review Due Diligence Bankruptcy Intellectual Property 158

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” The founders now need a $1M Angel investment to do the marketing for a national NewCo rollout, build a team to manage the rollout, and maybe even pay themselves a salary.

Valuation 270

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation NPV Intellectual Property 270

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

How else can you explain this headline matching a story about a professional social network still trying to explore revenues raising $17mm on an $80mm valuation? Did I mention it only took the founder a month? I suppose, more specifically, the bubble ended in the last two weeks of September--right after this financing.

Venture Capital 117

Venture Capital Marketing Term Sheet Software Review 117

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 24, 2017

Foundry Group is best known for our investments in startups, but our vehicle currently investing in other venture funds, Foundry Group Next, is off to what we believe to be a great start and I wanted to share an update about it by talking about our new investment in a fund managed by Founder Collective.

Founder 77

Founder LP Technical Review Seed Stage 77

View from Seed

DECEMBER 4, 2019

Over the last 10 years, we’ve been in a bull market with considerable froth in late stage financing activity and valuations. The cases of WeWork and Uber cast a cloud of doubt over funds that are largely driven by one or two outlier companies that may have a tremendous valuation, but shaky underlying business metrics.

LP 256

LP IRR Distribution Portfolio 256

Lightspeed Venture Partners

OCTOBER 7, 2012

The founders were very sympathetic; a man, laid off from his job, and his very pregnant wife, who sold their house and investing $150k into the business and are working hard to make a go of it. The two founders invested $40k in the business, and plan to license it rather than manufacture it because manufacturing seems too hard.

Technical Review 110

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 110

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

What Are Your Valuation Expectations? But mainly we did it because these corporate VCs were among the only groups willing to invest at PayPal’s somewhat inflated post-money valuation, during the middle of the dot-com crash when traditional VCs pulled back sharply and other sources of funding were constrained.” ” (Rob Go).

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 6, 2010

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” How much is NewCo worth to investors at this point (pre-money valuation)? This is the most concrete valuation element, usually called the asset approach.

Valuation 234

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation NPV Startup 234

VC Adventure

JUNE 14, 2022

Most founders don’t feel they are getting value from their investors, even in areas like follow on rounds where they would hope to see specialized experience. But how impactful is all of this according to the people who actually matter – venture-backed CEOs? The answer may surprise you. Creandum’s recent article, Do VCs add value?

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Due Diligence Portfolio Venture Capital 150