Clear in Hindsight: April 2022 ended a Minsky boom for startups
A Minsky boom is a period of economic growth characterized by increasing instability and speculation, ending in startup funding constricting.
Funding
Funding Without Dilution: Introduction to SBIR Grants
Paul Scott of Matrix Information Services gives a briefing on SBIR Grants and how they can be used to secure funding without dilution.
Micro-VC / Angel investor Thomas Ahn on the Effective Investor Pitch
An extract from a highly interactive session with Thomas Ahn at the Lean Culture Meetup on Mar-25-2021 where he answers “what makes for an effective investor pitch?”
Lean Canvas Finances
Lean Canvas Finances is part of a five part series by Ed Ipser where he explains how to use the Lean Canvas and what it is good for. Focus Marketing Operation Finances Experimentation In this Lean Canvas – Finance session, Ed Ipser shares how to identify your own revenue and cost structure and how to create …
Lean Culture: Seed Funding Without Loans – An Introduction to SBIR Grants
Paul Scott shares lesson learned writing SBIR grants. His presentation covers the Grant Writing Application Process.
A Practical Introduction to Financial Capital for Bootstrappers
This post explores meaning of financial capital for bootstrappers. It addresses the real costs of market exploration and product validation and verification.
Recap From “Startups: What’s Hot, What’s Not (2018)” Today at WIC
A summary of my talk at Women in Consulting lunch meeting today on “Startups: What’s Hot / What’s Not (2018).” Includes slides and links to sources.
Investment Presentation Formats
If you have bootstrapped your startup to the point where you have a business that both merits and would benefit from outside investment then you may need to consider seeking investment. Here are some common formats we have seen for an investor presentation.
Successful Bootstrappers Are Trustworthy Salespeople Committed to Customer Satisfaction
If you want to be a succeed as a bootstrapper, start with what you’ve got: you have an insight into an opportunity, a marketing edge, a particular problem where you’re going to bring distinctive value.
Dan Scheinman’s Blue Ocean Venture Strategy: Target Entrepreneurs Over 35
Dan Scheinman (@dscheinm) graduated from Duke Law School in 1988 and went to work as an associate at DLA Piper before joining the Cisco legal department. Once inside he worked his way up to General Counsel, then ran corporate development which included managing minority investments and acquisitions, and finally was general manager for Cisco’s Media Solutions …
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Q: How To Estimate Prospect Counts and Market Sizes
Here are some back of the envelope models to estimate prospect counts and market sizes.
Draper University of Heroes Takes Holistic Approach to Teaching Entrepreneurship
Tim Draper, founder of the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is taking a holistic approach to entrepreneurial education with his “Draper University for Heroes” in San Mateo. Here is a promo video from the school’s website. [vimeo clip_id=”45872530″ width=”400″ height=”300″ frameborder=”0″] In a planning document submitted to the City of San Mateo on March 16, …
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Ryan Waggoner: Maybe Startups Are So Hard Because We’re Doing Them Wrong
Ryan Waggoner wonders if the popularized approach to startups is wrong. Instead of putting health and relationships at risk, try patience and humility.
Three Useful Tools: MyPermissions, SocialMention, HackerFollow
MyPermissions: Checks for third party application access to your Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram, and Flickr accounts. SocialMention: Allows you to do keyword and phrase search across more than one hundred social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google, etc… HackerFollow: follow comments and posts by your favorite Hacker News contributors
Isaac Garcia on “Bootstrapping Central Desktop” at Feb-11 BB in Milpitas
Isaac Garcia, co-founder and CEO of Central Desktop, will share “Lessons Learned Bootstrapping Central Desktop” at the Milpitas Bootstrappers Breakfast® on February 11, 2011 at 7:30am. Central Desktop delivers a SaaS collaboration platform that helps businesses manage projects and documents in the cloud with colleagues, customers and partners. Isaac Garcia (@isaacgarcia) oversees business strategy and …
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The Venture Lifestyle Business
“Some buildings need air conditioning because they have air conditioning. Because they were designed to be air conditioned, they have no natural ventilation and would be miserable to inhabit without air conditioning.” John Cook in “Maybe You Only Need It Because You Have It“ I wonder if the same thing happens to some fraction of …
Steve Blank Plans to Crowdsource E-Schools
Steve Blank gave a thought provoking talk at the Startup Lessons Learned Conference on “Customer Development 2.0: Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups” (slides here and related blog post “Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups” which is part of a category of blog posts on “Durant vs. Sloan“). He also referenced Robert Shedd‘s list of startup accelerators …
8 Tips for Evaluating Funding Alternatives
Many entrepreneurs planning their first software startup get stuck on funding and ownership issues. Here are some simple rules of thumb that may help you reframe an issue: Revenue, especially break even revenue, is never dilutive of your ownership. The right co-founders, while dilutive, substantially increase your chances of success: they give you a smaller …
Do Not Pay to Pitch Investors
Jason Calacanis has gone a little bit off the dial on “why startups shouldn’t have to pay to pitch angel investors” but he is nonetheless correct that you should not pay large fees to potential investors for consideration or the right to present. Our focus is helping bootstrapping technology startups but we do get startups …
Prediction: Angel Investing Down in 2009
I was still mulling over the implications of yesterday’s briefing by Nate Burgess when I came across “Prediction: Angel investing in 2009 will be up?” by Alexander Muse on the Texas Startup blog. Briefly his thesis is: The angel investment market hovers around $12 billion each year. I predict that the turmoil on Wall Street …