July 30th, 2010 — Entrepreneurship, Fundraising
Fun panel at today's CrunchUp with:
- Paul Graham, YCombinator
- Ron Conway, SV Angels
- Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
Here are notes of my favorite nuggets:
Ron Conway on data about his 500 startup investments:
- The success rate in our portfolio is going from 10% to 15% right now...because of the$25 million to $50 million M&A deals.
- Failure Rate was 77% leading up to the Internet Bubble of 2001...and now is about 40% post bubble (2002 to today)
- "Repeat entrepreneurs" have about a 66% rate of success in their second startup.
- Deal flow did not decrease during mortgage bubble.
- Entrepeneurs have the same level of success regardless of the climate...it's
Check out
Ron Conway data here for more on the data from his deals)
Here are some more Ron Conway thoughts:
- "Getting your money back( (from an entrepreneur) is not a
July 25th, 2010 — Entrepreneurship
I'm here at Startup Weekend (taking place at KickLabs' San Francisco office) and a bunch of startups are pitching their mobile-based ideas.
Below are most of the ones that presented with a brief description of their pitch -- I listed the ones that impressed me the most first (though all had massive potential!).
Metayoo -- Finding new connections nearby.
A user can open up their LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles to people 300 meters around them so that users can make new connections.
Users can also have a tag line saying, for example, that they're "interested in a job."
I believe founders Kevin & Megan have enormous potential.
Business Model: Job recruiters pay to list positions.
Flought (This was the judges' choice for winner) -- Letting people broadcast thoughts anonymously
Premise is that people have 50,000 thoughts per…
Continue reading July 25th, 2010 — Getting Things Done
I remember when my friend Eben Pagan shared the concept of Inevitability Thinking with me -- it's such a simple yet powerful approach to achieving your an objective...damn, why didn't I think of that!?
The easiest way for me to share Inevitability Thinking is to give an example (I'm going to use a hypothetical example of an Internet business I want to build).
To do this exercise on your own you would need:
- A Calculator
- Google
- Your Brain
- A half-hour or so of time
But, if you want, you can just read my version of this exercise first.
Ok, so here are the steps:
5 Steps To Invetability Thinking
1) Articulate Your Objective
First step is to articulate your objective.
For this exercise, let's assume your objective is to build a content-based Web site that generates $20,000 per month in advertising revenue.
Sound…
Continue reading July 22nd, 2010 — Leadership
I love to read books on leadership.
The latest one I finished (which I borrowed from the awesome San Francisco Library) was The Score Takes Care of Itself by Steve Jamison & Craig Walsh...about the leadership style of football coach Bill Walsh.
Why should you listen to Coach Walsh: well, among other things, he invented a new offense now widely used in football and turned the worst team in the league (the San Francisco 49ers) into Super Bowl champs (in just two years).
There were four leadership techniques that Walsh shared that I found most useful:
Four Leadership Tips From Bill Walsh
1) Making The Best Of What You Have
"What assets do we have right now that…
Continue reading July 21st, 2010 — Fundraising
A friend of mine recently asked me about the different stages of startup financing -- so I figured I'd write it down for you too!
There are certainly other sources of startup capital besides the ones listed below, but these five are the top ones; and they're typically used roughly in the order I list them.
5 Stages of Startup Funding
1) Seed Capital
This is typically the very first investment of money used to for market research and developing product.
It can come from the founder's personal savings (e.g. from a severance package from the founder's prior job) or from acquaintances (aka a "Friends & Family" or "F&F" Round).
Seed capital can be received as a loan…
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