Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 28, 2012

Your startup is now part of someone’s portfolio, and here are a few of the ways in which you should expect to be monitored by your investors: One or more seats on the Board. Maybe you had an informal Advisory Board before, but now you have a formal Board of Directors. Access rights to operational information.

Advisory Board 241

Advisory Board Entrepreneur Venture Capital Angel Investor 241

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 31, 2010

Your startup is now part of someone’s portfolio, and here are a few of the ways in which you should expect to be monitored by your investors: One or more seats on the Board. Maybe you had an informal Advisory Board before, but now you have a formal Board of Directors. Access rights to operational information.

Advisory Board 231

Advisory Board Entrepreneur Venture Capital Angel Investor 231

Gust

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

NONE of that is available with seed stage startups, so that even IF it were legally and economically viable to trade them, and even IF there were analysts who followed every public move the company made, there still would be no way whatsoever for anyone outside the company (or Major Investors, if they have Information Rights) to have the slightest (..)

Seed Stage 131

Seed Stage Hockey Stick Cap Table Liquidation Preference 131

Haystack

JULY 4, 2019

Most folks who are not close to early-stage startups and new company formation would be surprised to discover that a high number of companies, after receiving funding from individuals or institutions, do not send updates to their investors. For me, I am pretty zen about this after six years of early-stage startup investment.

Early Stage 167

Early Stage Deal Flow Finance Metrics 167

Hippoland

AUGUST 21, 2016

But, there are a lot of no-name investors who are former operators - either at their own startups or at larger tech companies - who would still be value-add from an operational perspective even if they are not household famous. If you are the first startup he/she has ever invested in, you need to be extra cautious.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Due Diligence Silicon Valley Portfolio 48

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. I wrote recently about the role of Advisory Boards in startups , which I expected to be a bit controversial. Just to baseline for newer entrepreneurs – there are three types of people you may see involved with a startup that have the title “board&# attached to them.

Advisory Board 215

Advisory Board Strategic Investors Venture Capital Later Stage 215

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 4, 2024

User Empowerment Fintech also empowers users by providing more information right at their fingertips. This access to information helps people make better, more informed decisions about sending and receiving money. Using your phone or computer, you can send or receive money from almost anywhere worldwide.

Security 166

Security Cost Government Technology 166

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

Customers on Etsy provide excellent feedback and can help new businesses hone their customer service experience which makes Etsy great for market testing and startup scalability.Your product may not be the right item for Etsy, but it doesn’t hurt to get it on there to find out, but still take it seriously. Etsy-Related Resources.

eCommerce 60

eCommerce SEO Software Review Social Media 60

Genuine VC

JULY 10, 2012

There are essentially two distinct basic strategies for startup entrepreneurs to raise a seed round of capital: Subscription approach – An entrepreneur sets a structure (usually a convertible note) and recruits individual angel investors who subscribe to the round, all without a term-driving lead investor.

Syndication 207

Syndication Syndicate Seed Stage Portfolio 207

Austin Startup

MAY 17, 2017

It’s pretty well known that startups usually undergo a meaningful change in Board composition at their Series A round. Less has been written about what startup boards tend to look like before a Series A round. Know the difference between a Board Observer, Information Rights, and being a member of the Board of Directors.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Startup Cap Table Angel Investor 48

View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2017

A startup can benefit in various ways from having a strategic investor involved in their company, but there are plenty of drawbacks too, both commonly known and more subtle. On the flip side, simply taking strategic investor capital because it’s there or it’s easier or cheaper than other capital rarely works out well for startups.

Strategic Investors 120

Strategic Investors Post-Money Valuation Seed Stage Cofounder 120

OnlyOnce

APRIL 27, 2021

Last week, I blogged about Bolster’s Board Benchmark survey results , which really laid bare the lack of diversity on startup boards. My new mantra for Startup Boards is simple: 1-1-1. There are signs that this is starting to change slowly — one big one is that of all the board searches we are running at Bolster, about ?

Vesting 48

Vesting Cofounder Startup Term Sheet 48

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2012

Your last slide typically is your contact information, right? With PresentNow, you will have a structured way of getting audience contact information when you present at conferences. We've all been on stage somewhere giving a talk on something.

Audience 78

Audience Information Rights Email 78

Hunter Walker

JULY 19, 2017

The format differs but let’s generally describe Scouts as, individuals using money fully or partially fronted by another VC fund to make investments in early stage companies with hopes of giving the sponsoring fund an advantage in leading a larger round for the startup later on.

Founder 87

Founder Silicon Valley Cap Table LP 87

K9 Ventures

MARCH 23, 2011

It is true that most notes are lighter when it comes to rights and protective provisions for the investors — in fact with most notes there is no Board put into place, no information rights, no pro-rata rights, etc. Every first time founder needs to learn what it means to manage a board.

Pre-Money Valuation 132

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Equity Liquidation Preference 132

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 11, 2019

This article is part of our Business Startup Guide —a curated list of our articles that will get you up and running in no time! Put your contact information right on your invoice. Putting a link to a payment processing form in an invoice is a great way to speed up payments.

Customer 101

Customer Due Diligence Curation B2B 101

onstartups.com

JULY 11, 2012

Aside from those who have always invested small amounts of cash in startups, more and more venture capitalists are making personal side deals, active entrepreneurs are investing in other entrepreneurs, seed funds are cropping up everywhere, and Angel List has emerged for the everyman. Looking for other startup fanatics?

Angel Investor 77

Angel Investor Dilution Investment Bankers Valuation 77

Startup Company Lawyer

JANUARY 31, 2011

The Series AA has a 1x non-participating liquidation preference, weighted-average anti-dilution, basic protective provisions (adverse changes to the Series AA, number of shares of Series AA, or merger/asset sale), right to maintain proportionate ownership, ROFR/Co-Sale rights and basic information rights.

Preferred Stock 60

Preferred Stock Liquidation Preference IPO Common Stock 60

Brandanew

SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

Many small businesses and startups are out there to solve the content puzzle. Yeah, sometimes its a little distracting to have my workflow interrupted by other people, but for the most part it is a benefit because I get involved right away in these conversations about trending topics. So, she finds all this information right away.

Social Media 100

Social Media Channel Lead Generation Community 100

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 20, 2015

Instead I want to comment on what a “10x Angel” looks like – the type of individual investor who delivers value to the startup in ways that are notably different than the average funder. If you just need the money, stick unknown angels in an AngelList Syndicate so they have more limited information rights.

Cap Table 48

Cap Table Warrant Syndication Syndicate 48

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Is it worth spending the time on additional tests to get more accurate information right now? So you could argue that the currently bad performance is still good enough for you to move forward. Might that go wrong? Absolutely. These answers aren’t really clear cut. There’s always too much to do.

Campaign 45

Campaign Information Rights Cost 45

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

First, SlideShare is a fantastic product (that I use on a regular basis) and an impressive company example of Lean Startup practices in action. Second, their story illustrates a key Lean Startup idea: proving the business in micro-scale. “We don’t give you all this Pro plan information right away when you join SlideShare.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167