You’ve prepped your investor pitch, executive summary, and financial model. You’ve rehearsed your pitch, prepared your Q&A and done the 1:1 investor meeting. Now you’re faced with the thoroughly contrived startup group pitch event. instead of a conversation with a potential investor you now have a timed event with timed Q&A. This can take place in the …
Fundraising as an Enterprise Sales Process. Which means it’s going to take time to get fundraising done and you’ll need a lot of prospects at the top of your sales funnel. As you prepare for your fundraising effort and you need to get the basic tools of the trade completed before you start the process. …
What do first time founders need to know about fundraising mechanics? This post should help you understand the basic lingo of fundraising – so you don’t look surprised or sound like a noob when you’re discussing funding. An attorney will go into a lot more detail and it’s important that you understand investor motivations – not …
Some new investors – or those who aren’t experienced in launching and growing a technology or software business – will ask a Startup Founder, “What is your Sustainable Competitive Advantage?” <Thanks for the reminder of the question from a current #TSSeattle Team.> That question makes you look smart<not>. It reminds me of a college philosophy class …
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 …
Originally posted on Venture Ready Financial Models. I was planning on giving a “Financial Model for Founders” talk at Seattle Startup Week (#SSW2016) in November. As I worked on the presentation, the final version is here on Slideshare, I realized that making this less conceptual and abstract the better so I wanted to use an …
I recently had the opportunity to speak with a group of new developers at Code Fellows on the topic of what they need to know about either doing their own startup and how to think about joining a startup. The checklist includes how to think about: Team Market Traction Idea Business Model Timing