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Most innovators don’t have a technical background, so it’s hard to evaluate the truth of the situation. And unless they have a tech background, they can’t look under the hood themselves. The answer is to engage a trusted outside source for a TechnicalReview – a deep-dive assessment that provides a C-suite perspective.
Startup founders make decisions on a daily basis – significant decisions that will have lasting impact on their business. Why do this without the right technical advisor? Just like attorneys, technical advisors can help navigate waters that many find murky. Actually, many startups need two kinds of technical advisors.
I did a presentation this week at Coloft that looked at how Non-Technical Founders can go about getting their MVP built. I promised to do this post as a follow-up to the session to provide additional links and information. The real reason to build an MVP is to do early tests of key Startup Metrics for the business.
In my experience, consummate entrepreneurs tend come up with more startup ideas than they can ever implement, and some of the ideas may not even make business sense. Passion, optimism, and determination are necessary but not sufficient to assure a successful startup. Availability of necessary skills and team members.
But people are still begging for more technology or laws, often to protect them from themselves. Most of these are easy to avoid if you do your homework up front, but can cost you dearly if you get sucked in. If you feel confused by conflicting time zones, differing currencies, and up-front costs, it’s time to run the other way.
The press around the raise & company was fantastic and the promise of their technology – wireless charging that works as easily as WiFi – would positively affect many of our lives. uBeam’s tech does work and I have safely seen it demo’d in the real life many times. It can be one of the strongest motivators.
Business partners can be co-founders in a startup, multiple owners of an existing business, or a joint venture. You need to do the duediligence to make that decision before you sign away your equity. I was pleased to see this approach highlighted as well in a new book for startups, “ Zero to IPO ,” by Frederick Kerrest.
As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. The practical uses for uBeam technology is limitless. Did anybody hold patents that would prevent us from using this technology? We hired IP specialists to review prior art.
I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even techstartups) should be very profit focused. What makes up revenue?
For the elite startups and entrepreneurs who manage to attract the investor they dream of, and survive the term sheet negotiation, there is still one more hurdle before the money is in the bank. This is the mysterious and dreaded duediligence process, which can kill the whole deal.
I think I’ve read Paul Graham’s post on “ Startup = Growth ” three or four times now. “The growth of a successful startup usually has three phases: There’s an initial period of slow or no growth while the startup tries to figure out what it’s doing. I talked about some of that here.
It’s the company that evokes fear into more startups and venture capitalists looking to fund eCommerce businesses than any other potential competitor. He would pick up stuff from your apartment and bring it to storage for you and he could save money by having that facility be off site. And could we then compete?”
Most technologystartups seem to be funded by product people or business people. My first startup was no different. This is why I tell startups that most seasoned sales execs aren’t right for startups. Here’s what I learned in running my first startup. Startups are the art of the possible.
Shallow and superficial and racing from segment to segment in search of some take up has never been a strong strategic plan for me. I have written this up before if you’re interested – I call it Deflationary Economics. LEAN STARTUP MOVEMENT. INNOVATOR’S DILEMMA. He’s awesome to learn from. Business Model.
Andrew & Petri posed a question to me, “If Walt Disney were starting his company today, what kind of company would he build? They had all of their character development started (they showed up mock-ups) and the basic gameplay for Game 1 was through through (but not yet built).
The era of VCs investing in successful consumer Internet startups such as eBay led to a belief system that seemed to permeate many enterprise software startups that hiring sales or implementation people was a bad thing. If you’re an early-stage enterprise startup services revenue is exactly what you need. We like software.
Recently, I’ve seen a lot of discussion about bringing the work back home, since costs have gone up in less-developed countries, there are issues with intellectual property, and time zone and language differences make management difficult. It’s easy to find companies in certain countries that will quote cost reductions up to 75 percent.
When talking to startup founders or other innovators, we always ask questions to better understand their business as a core. Proving your Business Model Works - Build, Define, and Review But how do you prove your numbers? Start by building just enough of your product to get early CAC and CLV signals (they won’t be perfect).
At our mid-year offsite our partnership at Upfront Ventures was discussing what the future of venture capital and the startup ecosystem looked like. First in late-stage tech companies and then it will filter back to Growth and then A and ultimately Seed Rounds. Please follow him & welcome him to Upfront!! <==
Lower costs to start a business (95% reduction), many more companies created & funded by angels / seed. Seed funds now represent 67% of all funds being created now, which is up 100% from 6 years ago. Twitter spread through the tech crowds at SxSW and raised its first venture capital round led by Fred Wilson.
You might like to think that a bunch of savvy venture capitalists saw a market niche for raising smaller funds or perhaps there was a generational shift where disgruntled junior partners spun out of bigger firms to start their own gigs. I launched my first startup in 1999 so I know the economics of launching from first-hand experience.
The E-Myth (“Entrepreneurial Myth”) is the mistaken belief that most businesses are started by people with tangible business skills, when in fact most are started by “technicians” who know nothing about running a business. Perhaps an innate business savvy is no longer a requirement for starting a successful business.
Even though the color of their money is always green, all startup investors are not the same. Struggling entrepreneurs are often so happy to get a funding offer that they neglect the recommended reverse duediligence on the investors. Personally visit another startup funded by this investor. It’s no fun for either side.
I was reading Danielle Morrill’s blog post today on whether one’s “ Startup Burn Rate is Normal. I love how transparently Danielle lives her startup (& encourages other to join in) because it provides much needed transparency to other startups. Let’s set up a framework. Gross Burn vs. Net Burn.
Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened? There was no money train.
Nearly every successful techstartup I’ve observed over the past 20 years has gone through a similar growth pattern: Innovate, systematize then scale operations. Innovate In the early years of a startup there is a lot of kinetic energy of enthusiastic innovators looking to launch a product that changes how an industry works.
I’ll try to get write-ups shortly but for now here is an overview of my interview with Nanea Reeves – President and COO of textPlus. Nanea Reeves has a storied career in senior leadership roles at technology companies. Office politics – including Nanea’s experience being a woman in technology.
He is not a technical person, but is somewhat web savvy. I asked some of the same questions I ask in my Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions and then I get to a very common conversation: Me : Do you have specs? Conversations with a technical advisors or possible developers should be iterative. Go find a new technical resource.
If you’re funding the same stuff as everybody else and if you started your activities when the clues were obvious you’re much less likely to drive enormous returns. In other words, if it seems this obvious to us then it must be this obvious to many other investors and probably to many other teams gearing up to compete.
One startup that aims to help make the process simpler, cheaper and less stressful by helping people manage the home renovation process has raised $6 million to help it grow even faster. Construction techstartups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar trillion-dollar industry.
For the elite startups and entrepreneurs who manage to attract the investor they dream of, and survive the term sheet negotiation, there is still one more hurdle before the money is in the bank. This is the mysterious and dreaded duediligence process, which can kill the whole deal.
VC Partnerships Start by understanding how many partners are at the firm you are approaching. Building models to evaluate the deal and/or reviewing customer files, company financials, business plans, etc. The best companies build a deck and a cadence to use up 50–60% of the time and save buffer for discussions.
The frantic pace of technology cycles, the amount of tech news, the blogs, the conferences, the demo days, the announcements, the fundings, the IPOs. For years I saw myself as the new guy in VC but then you wake up one day and realize that 50% of your peers have been doing it for less time than you and time has moved on.
One of the vivid memories I have from being a startup CEO is the feeling that most people in your company have a look in their eyes that like they can do your job as well as you. But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. They review competitors offerings and analyst reports.
If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded duediligence process. Some startups do nothing to prepare for the duediligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves.
Companies that have leveraged technology to make the procurement and delivery of food more accessible to more people have been seeing a big surge of business this year, as millions of consumers are encouraged (or outright mandated, due to Covid-19) to socially distance or want to avoid the crowds of physical shopping and eating excursions.
Over my many years of mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs and business professionals, I often hear a desire to start a new business, with a big hesitation while waiting for that perfect idea and perfect alignment of the stars. Start today building a bigger network. Success requires a great amount of hard work.
There’s an article making the rounds in tech circles titled “ Growth Hacking is Bull ” written by Muhammad Saleem. His quip to suggest this is all a slight-of-hand, trickery dreamed up by marketing b *s is quite clever if misguided. For starters it brings a mindset to startups that not all of them have innately.
I’ve written a lot about recruiting and hiring at startups including my controversial post on whom not to hire and my rapid response to the flame war. We will have to build (or buy) technology in this area.” She might gladly tell you who gets decisions made, who is a pain in the arse, who is super technical, etc.
Our 3rd fund began investing in March 2009 (raised in 2008) and our 4th fund started in April 2012 so this fund will naturally begin investing around March / April 2015. Our investment strategy has always been to do predominantly Series Seed & A round deals, which makes up > 85% of our first investments. Insurance Companies.
The main thrust of the post is that with YouTube taking a 45% of revenue and talent taking 70% of the remaining revenue, YouTube Networks didn’t have sustainable businesses unless they invested heavily in technology as a tool to increase margin and provide defensibility. That is the definition of Disruptive Technology.
Many startups fail before reaching that magic “cash-flow positive” position they have been striving for, despite seemingly reasonable financial projections. A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. A startup must ensure that the payments are collected per agreed terms.
seems like an unlikely place to grow one of the next billion-dollar startups in the booming Los Angeles tech ecosystem. But it’s here in the (other) Valley’s southernmost edge that investors have found a startup they consider to be the next potential billion-dollar “unicorn” that will come out of Los Angeles.
2023 hasn't been an easy year to be a startup. In fact, according to Crunchbase more than 212 startups closed their shutters in the third fiscal quarter alone – the highest number recorded in the firm's history. Yet, while many early-stage startups crumbled under the pressure, diamonds also emerged.
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