Update on Earlier Post: 15 Common But Avoidable Mistakes
You may have read my earlier post entitled Doing it Right the First Time: The 15 Most Common, but Avoidable, Mistakes Made by High Growth Start-ups. I wanted to add some additional articles/posts I’ve read since then that add some flavor to my post. Check out the following:
When to Fire Your Co-Founders, by Simeon Simeonov [...]
Read more →What Should an Executive Summary Look Like?
Depending on who you are raising money from, your initial contact with the investor(s) will take different forms. If you are raising friends and family money, then you will most likely use a private placement memo format along with a subscription agreement as your initial contact. This is so because at the friends and family level, you [...]
Read more →If You Provide a Strategic Technology or Outsourced Service, Consider Taking Some Equity in Your Fee Structure
I remember the mid to late 90’s well. Everyone was high on the hog and sniffing Internet glue. Kids that couldn’t even shave had a paper net worth in the millions, if not billions in some cases. And some of the most ridiculous deals of the century got funded. The atmosphere was such that everyone believed [...]
Read more →Doing It Right the First Time: The 15 Most Common, but Avoidable, Mistakes Made by High Growth Start-ups
Imagine you are half-way through due diligence on your Series A round and the venture fund’s counsel realizes that you never complied with federal and state securities laws when you raised angel money. Or, imagine your early CTO hire does not have the level of experience he/she professed in the interview or on his/her resume and the company is [...]
Read more →Board of Directors vs. Board of Advisors
The basic difference between a board of directors and a board of advisors is that the former is a legal requirement and has fiduciary duties to the shareholders of the corporation and the latter is not a requirement and bears no legal responsibility to the shareholders of the corporation. The board of advisors concept was [...]
Read more →FashInvest Conference and Presenting to Angel Investors
On November 10, 2009 I attended the inaugural FashInvest conference in New York entitled “From Concept to Capital.” Karen Griffith-Gryga and David Freschman, the founders of FashInvest, put on a wonderful event and are definitely heading in the right direction to bring venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and branded and fashion company executives together under one roof. The [...]
Read more →Should you Take Money from a Strategic Investor?
The fact that anyone is offering you money is a good thing, at least in times like these. But wipe the smile off your face and realize that you have some tough decisions ahead of you - you need laser focus! Not all money is good money, or smart money for that matter. This issue is not [...]
Read more →Being the First Mover or Having No. 1 Market Share Isn’t Everything
I don’t care if your company is bigger than the competition or has what some like to call the “first mover advantage,” beating out the competition is all about differentiation and playing to your strengths. What recently got me thinking about this was an older podcast I was listening to from Stanford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leadership program. The [...]
Read more →Hiring the Right Start-Up Lawyer – No Posers Allowed!
If you are an entrepreneur or the founder of a start-up or emerging growth company, one of the most important decisions you will make is hiring the right lawyer. Like all things in life, there are good lawyers and bad lawyers and telling the difference up front can be difficult. The service they sell (advice) [...]
Read more →Intuit Buys Mint.com for $170M
I was surprised today to hear that Intuit bought Mint.com for $170M. Maybe surprised is the wrong word. From a deal and synergy perspective, I can certainly understand why Intuit would want to do the deal. Reportedly, Mint.com had 1.4M users, tracked $175B in transactions and $47B in assets and identified $300M in potential savings for [...]
Read more →
BloggingStream by 