Category: leadership
July 17, 2018 Chris Savage & Brendan Schwartz via Wistia : How an Offer to Sell Wistia Inspired Us to Take On $17M in Debt
Most founders dream of building a product that eventually becomes a household name and sells for a billion dollars, but chasing that goal comes with some downsides. We chose a different path. (read more…)
CATEGORY: bootstrap, capital, leadership, risk
June 10, 2018 Carl Fritjofsson via Hacker Noon : Do VCs really add value??—?Founders say sometimes.
As venture capitalists, we pride ourselves on being “value-added investors”. We not only provide financial means to scale a company, but it is often accompanied by advice, connections and professional services of various kinds. I always aspire to be the most trusted and helpful investor and advisor to any company I get involved with. But in all honesty, I’m fairly certain that VCs tend to oversell the impact we have at a company and the actual value-add we bring. (read more…)
CATEGORY: leadership, VC
March 5, 2018 Eric Paley via Tech Crunch : When venture capital becomes vanity capital
I’ve written a lot about the benefits of efficient entrepreneurship. I’ve explained my view conceptually, tried to illustrate the mechanics of how excess capital kills promising companies, and shared data from 71 IPOs that demonstrates that even in success, more capital raised is not correlated with better outcomes. Just in case all of that was too conceptual, this blog post is designed to appeal to another emotion—greed. Raising less money or money later doesn’t just lead to better companies, it leads to richer founders. (read more…)
CATEGORY: leadership, valuation, VC
February 5, 2018 Dave Hersh via Medium : Can This Company Be Turned Around?
There are no shortage of companies in need of wholesale transformation, where the strategy or execution didn’t work and they are stuck between capital needs and market realities. (read more…)
CATEGORY: leadership, profitability, resilience
February 3, 2018 Jonathan Lu via Startup Grind : Three profound truths I learned from Silicon Valley Startups
1. There is no correlation between intelligence and bias. 2. Who you raise money from is more important than how much you raise. 3. It’s just as important to be realistic as you are persistent. (read more…)
CATEGORY: leadership, resilience
January 4, 2018 Dave Hersh via Medium : Why Buying a Stalled Startup is Better than Starting From Scratch (Now)
After several years, I learned that the companies are out there, but the stars have to align to make a deal work. Ideally…
- You have a personal connection to the business, including founders and investors.
- The board is ready for a move like this.
- The core R&D team is excited about this move.
- You know and love the category.
- The business stalled due to go-to-market failure, not lack of demand.
- It’s not a competitive M&A process.
- You can move quickly.
- You’re ready to roll up your sleeves and run the business.
CATEGORY: alternative financing, leadership, profitability
December 26, 2017 Fred Wilson : The Second Quartile
The best four to five investments per fund will usually produce greater than 80% of the total returns of a fund (the top quartile). This is where you might imagine that we spend all of our time, but the truth is that these investments generally go well and while we certainly do everything we can to help these companies, they often do not demand a lot of our time. When they do require a lot of our time, it tends to be situational. (read more…)
CATEGORY: leadership, resilience, winner take all
December 6, 2017 First Round Capital : State of Startups 2017
Before we do, though, we want to acknowledge the significance of two ongoing conversations in our industry — both of which are heavily represented in the results we chose to feature. The first is about diversity and inclusion, which we incorporated into last year's survey to get founders' perspectives on root causes and possible solutions. And the second is about sexual harassment. We included a number of questions about this issue in 2017, and the results were stark. At First Round, whenever we ask founders what data they most want and need, they almost always say the same thing: they want to know what other entrepreneurs are thinking and doing (and whether what they're doing is normal or in line with their peers). To answer these questions, we're pleased to publish the industry's largest set of data specific to the founder and startup experience — we hope you find it informative and insightful. (read more…)
CATEGORY: growth, leadership, resilience
October 12, 2017 Jon Westenberg via Medium : No, Trello Didn’t “Fail To Build A Billion Dollar Business
I have no real interest in billion dollar companies. I’m interested in companies that serve their customers, build amazing products and make money. If they happen to reach a billion, that’s great. But getting to a billion is not a goal that keeps me up at night. (read more…)
CATEGORY: growth, leadership, valuation
January 16, 2017 Sramana Mitra : Death By Overfunding
Funding = Success, right? I wish it did. But entrepreneurial tracks are littered with carcasses of dead startups that were very well funded, some to the tune of hundreds of millions (read more…)
CATEGORY: leadership, profitability, VC