Often when I meet new SaaS startups they tell me proudly that they have grown their user base without “spending a dime on marketing”. While that is a great accomplishment and a testament to the quality of the product (product = marketing for great web services), it does lead me to ask why! Did the [...]
Feb
01
Recently a CEO in our portfolio asked me a question that I get often: As a startup with limited capital is it better to be cautious and stretch runway or should you be aggressive and reduce runway? The answer of course is “it depends”.
It seems everyone is getting into the incubation/ acceleration game now. According to this list, there are hundreds (and the list is a year old). So, with so many incubators all offering something that appears to be similar, how do you choose which one is right for you? GigaOm posted this week about history repeating [...]
Dec
13
Hearing pitches for a living I get to hear from entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes and all manner of pitching styles. Every investor has their own preferred style that resonates with them. And there is no one “correct” way to pitch. You have to be yourself. But, as I reflect back on the pitches [...]
Nov
10
(photo courtesy of Heri at Montreal Tech Watch) We held a demo day for the first grads of our Founderfuel program this week. It was an amazing event with over 600 people and nine awesome presentations from the teams. While the teams nursed some well-deserved hangovers the next morning I put together some suggestions for [...]
Several months ago I posted a form I use for grading VC presentations. I still use it. But last week I was watching some demo day pitches with the Founderfuel teams as we prepare for our own demo day on November 8. We watched some kick ass presentations from companies that have gone on to [...]
Back when I first entered the startup World, it was hard to create a startup. For starters you needed over $1M just to get going. You had to buy gear, software licenses, etc. And there was no real social web to help you cheaply bring products to market. These days there are effectively no barriers [...]
Sep
20
Fundraising is an art not a science. And as I have really come to appreciate now that I am on the investor side, there are many subjective elements that go into the investment decision. The timing, fit, stage, interpersonal chemistry all have to work. One thing that has killed interest in deals for me is [...]
Raising money is always hard. Especially so if it’s your first time and if your company is brand new. As seed investors, we routinely work with 1st time founders and by default are working with young companies. For the most part, the cap tables and prior financings we see are clean, but more often than [...]
Sep
02
I was traveling with one of my partners (John) yesterday. When you get out of the office with team members you often end up having great conversations that would never happen during the usual office hustle. Yesterday we found ourselves with 45 minutes between meetings and just sat down to shoot the shit about the [...]
Jul
26
I got this e-mail earlier today as a contact submission on my blog. I’m sharing it with names and details removed, not to be mean but because this happens all too often and it shouldn’t. My name is Joe Blow, I have been working on “Acme” project with a friend of mine, built two prototypes [...]
Jul
22
I had a great question from an entrepreneur this week who is deciding whether or not to take VC into his business. He heard that VCs want 10x returns and if you accept VC$ then you need to deliver that. He was worried that VCs block sales that don’t deliver the required returns. This question [...]
Back in March, uber-VC Fred Wilson issued a challenge to startup lawyers in the US to do seed deals for $5K or less. There are some great templates for seed documents in the US and he felt correctly that seed deals should not cost more than $5K. We don’t have such widely accepted templates here [...]
May
16
This post falls under the boring yet crucial category. As a seed fund we are routinely working with companies that are very young. It is common for these companies to have early collaborators come and go before the core founding team gels. You try people out, rely on some outside help and try and bootstrap [...]
May
12
I’m a big mobster movie fan. Just love’em. There’s a lot we can learn from the ways and rules of the Mafia. One of their many lessons comes in making effective intros. If you’re introducing someone new to “the family”, you need to do two things: i.) Vouch for that person; and ii.) Show that [...]
