Jan
10
One of the least favourite things about raising money from VCs is having to deal with board meetings once you’re funded. Most board meetings suck. I’ve sat through my fair share on the company side. To date, as an investor, I’ve tried to avoid them favouring regular informal interactions. But since board meetings are inevitable [...]
May
30
Last week I spoke with some entrepreneurs at MaRS in Toronto on one of my favourite topics: SaaS Math – covering metrics, pricing and valuations. My slides from that talk are below. Or if you have 90 minutes on your hands, the full video is here. Saas Math View more presentations from Mark MacLeod
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 [...]
Nov
08
BDO hosted on event last week called “Perspectives on the Term Sheet”. Here’s the presentation I gave there on how to get a term sheet. Startup Cfo Bdo Term Sheet Event 051109 View more presentations from Mark MacLeod.
Sites like Crunchbase do a great job of updating us on fundraisings in our space. But sometimes you want to dig further in to the financing transactions of your competitors. Here’s a great way to do it for free: As you probably know, all issuers (in the U.S) must file a Form D with the [...]
This comes courtesy of Yokum, author of the great Startup Company Lawyer blog: The crazy folks at uber-Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini have just published an automatic term sheet generator. I gave it a shot. It’s very comprehensive. If you’re familiar with these deals, you can go through it quickly. If not, it provides step [...]
Raymond Luk from Flow and I gave a presentation today to some of the Montreal Startup portfolio companies. The topic? Tax credits. Not the most exciting stuff, I admit, but this is an important program for all Canadian technology startups. Our presentation is here if you’re interested. Startup Cfo + Flow Sred Presentation 032409 View [...]
This weekend, I was invited to speak at Montreal Startup‘s workshop day for its portfolio companies. The topic? Fundraising and CFO basics for startup companies. Here is the presentation… Startup Cfo Basics View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: bootstrapping finance)
Jul
03
This came to me courtesy of Raymond Luk from Flow. It’s a great little tool from the folks at Ownyourownventure for simulating founder dilution, ownership and share valuation over the life of your startup. With a simple mouse click and no math whatsoever you can accurately model 3 financing rounds, including an employee stock option [...]
Jun
20
If you write a business plan for investors, the executive summary is the only part that matters. Why? Because it’s all they will read. Even if you don’t write a full business plan, many startups will prepare an exec summ that they use in trying to book investor meetings. Needless to say, having a good [...]
