Have you followed the latest meme started by Mike Arrington? It began with a post titled, “Startups are hard. So work more, cry less and quit all the whining.” The title seemed innocuous and content to of the post basically explained that startups have always been hard, highlighting a 1994 quote from early Netscape engineer [...]
We just raised $7M, now what?
Back in October I wrote a post titled, “Post Funding, The Real Work Begins…” We had closed on the first million dollars of our eventual $7M round and everyone was spending a lot of time congratulating us. Now that we have closed on the full round (read more about it here) I thought it might [...]
Post Funding, The Real Work Begins. . .
If you have ever attempted to raise capital for your startup idea you are in pretty good company. Once you have actually raised capital for your startup idea you are part of a relatively exclusive club. Your close friends and family (who know how long you have been working on raising a round) will congratulate [...]
Twitter Squared?
March 28, 2011 By 8 Comments
UPDATE: Nicholas Carlson reported today that Sequoia’s Roelof Botha (investor in Square) tweeted, “To do two things at once is to do neither.” ~Publilius Syrus. Soon afterward he deleted the tweet. I agree with him. Dumbest Idea Ever: Twitter (after raising more than $360MM) has decided to hire a part-time head of product. Second Dumbest [...]
Foot in Mouth in Technicolor?
March 25, 2011 By 3 Comments
Like almost everyone else I wrote a post about Color yesterday and couldn’t help but write another. The CEO of the much discussed $41M startup gave an interview with Matt Rosoff and explained that Color is not a photo sharing company, but instead “we’re a data mining company”. Wow. If Bill thought his ratings were [...]
Color: $98M Post-Money Valuation?
March 24, 2011 By 1 Comment
Alternative Title: How to get a lot of users for your app on day one: Raise $41M in Venture Capital. I’ll admit I was terribly curious when I read that a startup called Color had raised $41M to launch a social picture app of the same name. Wow. I even downloaded the app and used [...]
Picking a VC is about picking the partner
March 22, 2011 By 2 Comments
(alternative title: Raising money is like fraternity rush) In this venture capital environment it is likely you will have two or more options for funding your startup and that means sooner or later you are going to have to make a choice. Simply picking the ‘best’ VC is not as easy as you might think. [...]
How to take a “NO” from a VC
March 22, 2011 By 2 Comments
Last night John and I had dinner with a rather prolific venture capital partner who was explaining that over the past 12 months he has met with over 300 companies, done deep dives with 30 and offered term sheets to 6. What struck me was the sheer number of ‘Nos’ he has to deliver each [...]
Is downside risk mitigation important to investors?
September 12, 2010 By 1 Comment
Over the years I have learned that my assumption that all investors seek to minimize downside risk is just plain wrong. For example, venture investors want to ensure their capital has a chance at generating out-sized returns. They have limited resources (time and money) to make the best investments as possible. Mitigating downside risk doesn’t [...]
Should you leave Dallas to get funded?
June 20, 2010 By 2 Comments
Back in the 1990s my father told me to move to the Valley if I wanted to raise money. I proved him wrong, but he was right. It would have been a LOT easier to raise money for my startup in San Francisco. Ryan Roberts, my very own startup lawyer, points to a great paper [...]
