Funding - Opportunity - XW
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
To Raise, Or Not To Raise | @MapleButter
There must be something in the air because over the past 3 weeks I’ve gotten 30+ emails from startups that are actively looking to raise $500K+ and want “advice”. Well, here’s my advice. Go out there and make some money!
Time vs Money Trade-off for Startups
When I started my company I would pinch pennies whenever I could. I still do. The big difference now is that I’ve come to realize that many things are better done by paying full price instead of laboring through different strategies to save a few dollars. Here are a few examples: There are many do-it-yourself kits to incorporate a business, but it is worth paying a lawyer to walk you through the many considerations and setting it up right the first time. This is a tough one because it can easily be $1,000-$2,000 dollars – it is money well spent.
When, Where, and How to Raise Venture Capital
By Dave Lavinsky, President and Co-Founder of Growthink At one point or another, most entrepreneurs find themselves in a place where they could use money. And oftentimes, they could use a lot of money. These entrepreneurs often dream about how much they could accomplish if they had millions in the bank. All the people they could hire. All the products they could develop.
Determining size and timing of investment rounds
At each funding round, investors will expect companies to have achieved key milestones , and to demonstrate more sales traction. A hierarchy exists for sales traction, as follows: The higher you find yourself in the hierarchy, the better for fundraising.
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He started his first company in 1999 and was headquartered in London, leaving in 2005 and selling to a publicly traded French services company. He founded his second company in Palo Alto in 2005 and sold this company to Salesforce.com, becoming VP of Product Management. He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner focusing on early-stage technology companies.
How Many Investors Are Too Many?
Funding - Timeline
Funding - Amounts
Once you take money, the clock starts ticking - Chris Dixon
One of the interesting things about having been investing in startups for a number of years is that at any moment you get an inside peek at startups at a variety of different stages. In the course of a few weeks, I might talk to people who are ideating around new business ideas, people raising seed rounds, people raising later (VC) rounds, people whose products are blowing up, people whose product are struggling, people getting acquired, people leaving acquirers to start new companies, etc. Sadly, there are also usually a few companies that are struggling and facing the serious possibility of running out of money and being forced to shut down. One side-by-side comparison struck me recently. Company A is just now raising a seed round.
Why Startups Need Capital Discipline
While reading through Seth Godin’s free e-book recently, I noticed that Fred Wilson had dedicated an entire page of his blog to the concept of “ slow capital .” I like the notion of slow capital; it strikes me as the other side of the coin of agile, capitally disciplined startups. Since more often than not, a startup’s model and/or product will change from the point of founding and funding, early-stage startups need to have the ability to make informed progress in the face of all challenges. How capital flows into and out of a startup in order to enable such progress is absolutely critical and yet very difficult to manage. And execution in the presence of too much capital, too little capital, or poorly applied capital defines both the health of the business and the relationship between a startup and its investors. Together, the concepts of slow capital and capital discipline provide a framework for managing this relationship.Today I was talking to a journalist who asked a variety of questions about my startup. One of the things he was surprised by was that we’d gotten to our decent size without raising money from VCs. Normally, people mention that it’s unusual and then move on to the next question.
