Mucker Lab

OCTOBER 10, 2023

SDR Strategy & Model Checklist In the intricate world of sales development, finding the balance between art and science is crucial for a startup's success. Instead, identifying a narrow target market and focusing efforts there is key, especially for startups with limited resources.

Early Stage 78

Early Stage Sales Developer Development Team Review 78

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

I challenge any entrepreneur, for example, to define the difference between "seed-stage" and "early-stage" financing. Asking for early-stage money before you have customers and revenue will likely kill your credibility with real investors. A seed-stage “super angel.”

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Finance Early Stage Startup 120

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

This is a question startup founders ask themselves multiple times a week. They encompass the effectiveness of marketing (the startup’s ability to reach and resonate with target customers) and stickiness (the product’s ability to deliver value to customers over time). How are we doing?

Retention 109

Retention Conversion Churn Rate B2C 109

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 25, 2024

We must #BRINGTHEMHOME It’s been a slower news week in Israeli startups due to the holidays of Sukkot and Simchat Torah. Way to go Raz Zohar and team Mave on your $2 pre-seed for your AI Assistant for the Real Estate Industry! creator economy startups fell nearly 16% to $253.1 Funding for U.S. million in Q3 year over year.

Israel 78

Israel Generative AI Taiwan Arizona 78

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 22, 2024

This is not only helpful for startups and investors who are actively deploying in those sectors, but also to founders at the beginning of their journeys who are looking for ‘requests for startups’ or problem areas worth diving into. I chose to focus on 5 areas that are particularly relevant to us at Remagine Ventures.

Generative AI 78

Generative AI Technical Review Vertical Government 78

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2023

Many entrepreneurs have a passion and an idea, or even invent a new product, but are never able to execute to the point of creating a startup. Even fewer are able to grow the startup into a viable business. Here is a summary of the key stages along the way: Idea and seed stage. Startup and development stage.

Matching 270

Matching Entrepreneur Startup Seed Stage 270

Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

Hila Qu joined Mucker’s Tony Yang for an Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) conversation about Product-Led Growth (PLG) for Startups to kickoff the 2023 Mucker Growth Series. Hila Qu has been the Head of Growth or VP of Growth at a number of different companies and startups, most notably Acorns and GitLab. should you be focusing on first?

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Startup Fractional CTO 78

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 22, 2020

Luckily, not all investors are looking for the same thing, so it pays to know what type of investors are most interested in what your startup brings to the table. The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. Congratulations!

Angel Investor 370

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 370

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Startups are the search to find order in chaos. At a board meeting last week I watched as the young startup CEO delivered bad news. A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Investors bet on a startup CEO to find the repeatable and scalable business model. Steve Blank.

Business Model 335

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 335

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2023

Luckily, not all investors are looking for the same thing, so it pays to know what type of investors are most interested in what your startup brings to the table. The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. Congratulations!

Angel Investor 313

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 313

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 14, 2020

Getting investors to trust you with their money is always a challenge, and it’s even more difficult in the early stages, where you don’t have a significant revenue stream, a few customers, or maybe even a product yet. At these stages, it’s all about you, and your ability to communicate and execute effectively.

Due Diligence 308

Due Diligence Intellectual Property Preferred Stock Startup 308

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 5, 2014

This is a logical thing to do… when we started LinkedIn, my mentor Reid Hoffman instilled a mantra of Growth –> Usage –> Revenue which still holds for many consumer companies. But B2B startups need to take a different tack. Arguably revenue is the best signal of product-market fit for B2B startups.

Revenue 234

Revenue Product B2B Marketing 234

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Most of these rhyme with what we’ve said in the past, but some have also evolved to fit the changing landscape and our own convictions about what really matters for founders and their investors at the seed stage. However, our overall goal is to invest in the full spectrum of seed. Belief #1: The best time to invest is early.

North America 120

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 120

Austin Startup

MAY 8, 2018

Background reading: Founder Compensation: Cash, Equity, Liquidity Fatal Errors in Early Startup Hiring Early Hires: Options or Stock Given how deeply involved we are with early-stage startups hiring their first key employees, I figured it would be helpful to outline a few key principles to help entrepreneurs navigate the topic.

Employee 48

Employee Startup Seed Stage Equity 48

The Startup Magazine

JULY 25, 2024

link] Business News Daily reports that a startup needs around $184,830 a year at its initial stages, with around five employees on board. However, as told by FasterCapital, seed-stage startups can usually raise between $500,000 and $2 million from investors and venture capitalists.

Security 130

Security Hungary Poland Startup 130

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

There’s been a lot of digital ink spilled around the various types of capital available to startups today. At NextView, for instance, one of our more popular posts centers on atypical seed rounds to know. As a startup grows, venture debt becomes a viable option to continue that growth. Traction and revenue?

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Getting investors to trust you with their money is always a challenge, and it’s even more difficult in the early stages, where you don’t have a significant revenue stream, a few customers, or maybe even a product yet. At these stages, it’s all about you, and your ability to communicate and execute effectively.

Due Diligence 271

Due Diligence Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Preferred Stock 271

View from Seed

MAY 21, 2020

Fundraising for startups is a mix of selling both promise and reality. In some respects, one of the often non-intuitive privileges of a seed stage fundraising process is that the company is so new. We hit an clear inflection point in our revenue trajectory 14 months ago when we radically changed our marketing positioning”. “$1M

Seed Stage 274

Seed Stage Finance Lean Revenue 274

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

So angel and seed stage investors’ returns will be dependent on good times continuing or on the ability of their portfolio companies to get financed. Revenue must come from a primary source (as opposed to advertising or other third party sources). Importantly, what does this all mean for startups?

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

Hunter Walker

JULY 22, 2014

Hey founders, want to hear something incredibly frustrating about seed financing? You know the one that inevitably has you at $100 million in revenue by Year Three? Just* committing to grow customers or revenue or usage can still create a hollow company. I don’t believe the forecast you show me. Yeah, that one.

Forecast 97

Forecast Early Stage Seed Stage Startup 97

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

Everyone has their own definition of momentum (user numbers, revenue, channel partners, biz dev deals, whatever). If you save the punch line that you’re from the industry, did CS at MIT, worked for 3 startups, whatever, then they don’t have that powerful knowledge as part of their evaluation set.

Early Stage 360

Early Stage Startup Venture Capital Seed Stage 360

David Teten

JULY 10, 2019

Do you have a great team at your seed startup, but your product just isn’t working? Would you like to have a salary from day one that you work full-time on your startup? As a VC, I’m interested in working with companies with large-scale revenue potential, and that’s the company we envision. Q: Is this civic tech?

America 60

America Technical Review Advisory Board Due Diligence 60

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Once a startup has raised seed capital, plenty of theories and advice exist on how to successfully raise a Series A. Recently, we looked at our own portfolio at NextView Ventures to dig a little deeper on how startups actually raise that next round of financing. More on these below.). There was no meaningful difference.

Syndicate 333

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Startup 333

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. Flexible VC 101: Equity Meets Revenue Share. By tying payments to actual revenues, founders and investors remain aligned around the company’s real-time performance, good or bad. Flexible VC: Revenue -based. Of the Inc.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2012

How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Both companies generate direct revenue from their platform in the form of a revenue share / platform tax (typically 30%) on software and digital goods sold through the respective platforms. Apple generated nearly $130B in revenue in 2011.

Java 170

Java Flash Software Azure 170

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

My internal compass has always steered me strongly toward the belief that founders who can scale with their startup companies are better to back that founders who eventually need to hire a CEO. Jonathan Strauss took this issue head on in a blog post that I believe every startup founder should read on “ Replacing Oneself as CEO.”

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

Gust

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

And there are others that people think are teeny little wannabes with a dozen or so employees…that have $25 million in highly profitable revenues with hockey stick growth and zero debt!

Seed Stage 131

Seed Stage Hockey Stick Cap Table Liquidation Preference 131

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2011

If you are new to the entrepreneurial world of startups, you are likely confused by the terminology of seed-stage, lean startups, micro-VCs, and Super Angels. The good news is that he is all about helping early-stage startups, the hard part for entrepreneurs is figuring out what it takes to play.

Early Stage 231

Early Stage Seed Stage Angel Investor Silicon Valley 231

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. Now it’s time to set the stage with the early traction you have. Seed stage VCs are realistic about how much traction a very raw company might have. A) Pre-Product Companies.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 10, 2020

Many entrepreneurs have a passion and an idea, or even invent a new product, but are never able to execute to the point of creating a startup. Even fewer are able to grow the startup into a viable business. Here is a summary of the key stages along the way: Idea and seed stage. Startup and development stage.

Matching 317

Matching Seed Stage Angel Investor Business Model 317

VC Cafe

JULY 5, 2010

Janvest , a new seed fund of $5 million backed by American angel investors and chaired by the former head of the Mossad (Danny Yatom), saw an opportunity to fill the gap by making offering US-based angel investors the opportunity to tap into the Israeli startup industry. VCs are investing in later stage companies.

Israel 106

Israel Technical Review Software Review Seed Stage 106

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Over the summer, based on feedback from our portfolio and the broader startup community, NextView created pre-formatted board deck templates for seed-stage startups — part of our Growth Guides series. As Rob Go wrote , board decks and board meetings can waste loads of time at the seed stage.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

View from Seed

MARCH 15, 2017

VC evaluation of seed-stage startups can seem arbitrary or imitative at times. Internally, the scarcity of tangible business metrics – product usage or revenue multiples for example – can make an investment decision feel daunting. Any seed stage company’s strategy is a constant work-in-progress.

Due Diligence 265

Due Diligence Seed Stage Portfolio Metrics 265

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

The rise of “micro VCs” or seed-stage funds. When you think about the trends of faster-growing startups due to social networking, credit card enable and mobile first consumers – the reality is that many startups are becoming very large financially before needing to go public. more than 5 years ago?—?and

Technical Review 398

Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 398

BeyondVC

JANUARY 29, 2017

It is truly an art form when it comes to striking that steady balance between developer and community love versus generating revenue and potentially alienating those who supported you. This is also an important question as it relates to fundraising for dev-focused startups. Optimizing for Price at Seed Stage is a Mistake.

Revenue 60

Revenue Developer Open Source Seed Stage 60

Hippoland

JULY 24, 2016

Valuation is a nebulous topic amongst early stage startups, so I thought I’d really spell it out in detail. In short: Valuations for seed stage companies are fairly arbitrary and driven solely by supply and demand. Your startup’s valuation is not based on a proforma of your revenue.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Valuation Vertical Demand 48

Hippoland

DECEMBER 15, 2015

From my purview at 500 Startups in talking with many seed investors – both angels and VCs – this is what I predict will happen in 2016. Note: these are my opinions and not my employer’s): 1) Raising seed capital from VCs who invest in all stages will become challenging. Image credit: Giphy.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Angel Investor Bootstrapping Startup 48