365 Days, $10 Million, 3 Rounds, 2 Companies, All With 5 Magic Slides

Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Socialcast founder Tim Young detailing how he raised 3 rounds totaling $10M in VC money in a year’s time with a 5-slide deck. This was originally published at “Knowledge Is Social.” “I have a short five-slide deck to share that provides a solid framework for understanding our business.” Since moving to San Francisco a little over a year ago, I have spent every day helping to build Socialcast and about.me. During this time, I have raised more than $10 million combined over 3 funding rounds for both Socialcast and about.me. Convincing venture capitalists to invest in two startups in less than 365 days was a challenging task, but one that quickly taught me the dos and don’ts of raising money. Stop using the projector for initial meetings Most of my initial venture partner meetings ended up in a conference room. Understanding an investor’s perspective Every venture partner has his or her own ideal approach to learning about your business. 1. 2.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/02/365-days-10-million-3-rounds-2-companies-all-with-5-magic-slides/

Best practices for raising a VC round Having raised a number of VC rounds personally and observed many more as an investor or friend, I’ve come to think there are a set of dominant best practices that entrepreneurs should follow. 1. Valuation: Come up with what minimum valuation you’d be happy with but never share that number with any investor. Team Janet Browne Janet began her Management Career as a marketing executive with Cap Gemini Ernst and Young where she gained a good understanding of British industry which provided an excellent base for her career in IT and Executive Search. From there she spent fifteen years as a senior director with a leading supplier of large-scale clinical information systems and was an NHS project board member for Women and Children’s Health.

Why You Should Replace Your Sales Reps with Ambassadors Are you building a new product and growing a sales team at your startup business? If you’re using the traditional sales model, you may be losing a ton of customers. Yup, you’re not growing nearly as fast as possible. It’s because your sales team isn’t making the impact it could be making. Nat Turner (Thoughts on best ways to manage a VC round) We spent too much time raising money at Invite. Raising money when running a startup is extremely distracting, because every minute you’re fundraising you’re not working on your product. Sometimes I like to think about what else we could have done at Invite if we didn’t spend probably a third of our company’s lifespan fundraising, either full-time or part-time. However, the flip-side is that if you’re building a startup there’s a pretty damn good chance that you’re going to need to raise money.

Taxicab Legislation Passes, Uber Going Unregulated 'Til Dec. 31 The D.C. Council has passed sweeping taxicab modernization legislation that will institute GPS, credit card readers, a universal color scheme and a slew of driver education and training plans. These policies will start to go into effect by the end of the year. On the other side, Uber, the app-based car hiring service will go unregulated until Dec. 31. If Romeo and Juliet had mobile phones By Wellman and Rainie One of the most inspired writing ideas that we embraced in Networked came from Lee’s boss, Andrew Kohut, CEO of the Pew Research Center. Kohut’s notion was that a fun and powerful way to remind people how much the world had changed since the arrival of mobile phones would be to use popular culture references to life before mobile connectivity had become a widespread consumer reality. At the time he suggested this idea, Kohut had just watched a rerun of the 1970 movie, The Out of Towners, a Neil Simon farce starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis as suburbanites who run into a series of problems in New York City when they try to have a getaway weekend. We took the idea and expanded it in Chapter 4 of our book to include several more examples. Barry adapted the notion to the plot of Romeo and Juliet and has now amplified it even more in a new article for the important, new journal, Mobile Media & Communication, and our friend, Rich Ling.

Why Startups Should Raise Money at the Top End of Normal Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at his Startup Blog, BothSidesoftheTable. I have conversations with entrepreneurs and other VCs on a daily basis about fund raising, the prices of deals, how much companies should raise, etc. I’ve stopped talking about this as much publicly because it’s such a heated, emotional topic where the points-of-view are strictly subjective and for which the answers will only be revealed in the future.

USB Readers "Trusted partner for biometric identity verification solutions" Home Requested URL: ? Business Consort looks at the impact of the Internet in an ever increasing Digital Era £100 billion is the value of GDP brought in by the internet in the UK according to The Connected Kingdom Report by The Boston Consulting Group. Business Consort looks at the impact of the internet in an ever increasing digital era. In an ever increasing digital era Business Consort has discovered some facts that give food for thought when looking at where businesses advertising spend should be allocated. Business Consort - The Digital and Social Media Marketing Academy reviewed 'The Connected Kingdom Report' produced by The Boston Consulting Group to see exactly how important the internet is in today's business world.