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My new book launches today, 4/13/2021. It’s been quite a journey. Five of my own startups, some success and failures. Working across different programs including Founder Institute, Techstars, and 500 Startups. A season as the SVP of Programs with UP Global (Startup Weekend + Startup America) that included 1200+ events in 120 countries with 74,000

How to do a monthly investor update for Startup Founders.

Over the last year, I’ve looked at >150 deals (for some VC’s that’s tiny, for other’s that’s a lot). In that time a number of phrases have risen to the top of the list that makes my eyes roll or create a queasy wave of nausea that overtakes over me. Near the top of the list is:

It’s time for Seattle to Play Bigger! As a startup community, we’ve had a chip on our shoulder for years. We’re not the valley. VCs would say we need better founders, founders would say we need better (and more) VCs. Both were right. Founders are flogged for thinking too small. But investors don’t want to fund

How much equity should you give early team members and why? This list includes mentors, advisors, board members and potential co-founders in your startup? I’ve personally had challenges on this front and find it an area that benefits from experience (read as mistakes). I know I’ve both over-asked for equity in early days as well as

Thinking about moving to Seattle to start your company? Before you think about leaving Seattle to launch a startup, here are some things you should know about Seattle’s startup ecosystem. The presentation below is from the UW CoMotion ‘FUNdamentals for Startups’ series and was presented Feb 17, 2017. Here’s the video – uncut – Resources referenced:

This post was originally named: Awkward Co-Founder Discussions, I changed the title to make it easier to find from the main site. How should co-founders split equity in a startup? What should you discuss before formation of the company? This post outlines the discussions that you need to have, including a framework for those discussions.

This is the presenation used for the Techstars Seattle Jan 2017 cohort. Shoutout for SEO Research using The Topic Explorer from SEO Monitor. @SEOMonitor Customer Discovery Techstars Seattle 2017.01.25 from Dave Parker

Part 3 – Making your first data driven decision Given what you have discovered so far in your experiment, what’s your next step in investing in your MVP and this idea? Because it’s easy to spend reach cash on advertising it’s important to have a thesis on why you’re investing in this idea. What I’ve

You know when you’ve made your first sale for your new company – it’s when you get a co-founder to join you. Congratulations!  You’ve successfully persuaded someone to join you on this great adventure called a startup. I’m in the middle of evaluating Seattle Startup Next applications, and thought I’d share some scoring feedback on