If you’re an entrepreneur, working at a startup, or thinking about starting a company, you should read Early Exits: Exit Strategies for Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors by Basil Peters. Basil is leading the charge on demonstrating the values and benefits of early exits. He’s definitely showing people — with concrete examples — that early exits […]
Mastering the VC Game: An Important Read for Startup Entrepreneurs
Mastering the VC Game: A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get from Start-up to IPO on Your Terms is written by Jeff Bussgang, General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners. Follow him on Twitter here, and read his own thoughts about the book here. Jeff has been a VC for a number of years, but […]
An Introduction to Pitching Investors
Kudos to the students at McGill University for putting on some great events. I’m a big fan and advocate of anything that bridges the gap between students and startups. I was invited to speak along with Daniel Drouet at an event entitled, “The Perfect Pitch”. I’m not sure such a thing exists, but I was […]
No One Can Raise Funding for Your Startup Except You
One of the big roadblocks that first-time entrepreneurs face is the issue of raising capital. There are no easy answers. But one thing is certain, the only person that can raise financing for your startup is you. There are enough high quality resources out there on raising venture capital and angel investment. And there are […]
Using Mega Trends When Pitching Your Startup
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about “mega trends” and how to use them when pitching your startup. Investors like mega trends. After all, they’re big. And most of us are aware of them and have been affected by them (or expect to be in the future). Tens of millions of baby boomers getting set […]
Don’t Try to Get Funding Before You Know How It’s Done
If you don’t know how the process works to raise capital and get funding from angel investors or venture capital investors, you will never succeed at raising capital. What this means is that if you feel like raising angel investment or venture investment is critical for the success of your business, you need to go […]
Raising Startup Capital is an Achievement, But Not the Most Important One
HubSpot recently raised $16M dollars in a new funding round. The total capital they’ve raised to date: $33M. That’s a huge amount of money. Dharmesh Shah, one of HubSpot’s founders isn’t in love with the idea of raising venture capital (but he did it, and explains why too.) He considers himself a bootstrapping guy. After […]
Changing Equity Structures for Early Startup Employees
Recently someone asked me for advice on how much equity they should give to their early employees. His company had just closed an early round of funding and he wanted to cement the employee relationships. I gave him similar numbers to what I had been given when I was hiring the first few employees for […]
Is the Venture Capital Model Broken?
Lots of people are asking this question: Is the VC model broken? It’s an important question, regardless of what you believe, because it creates debate and change. Few things ever stay the same, and the VC model is no different. And without a doubt, I believe the VC model and startup investment in general will […]
8 Tips for Successful Venture Capital Meetings
Having recently participated in Montreal Startup’s first workshop day for the companies it has invested in, I wanted to share some of the input I provided. The Montreal Startup guys asked me to sit on a panel with serial entrepreneur, Frederic Lalonde and equally-experienced entrepreneur (and ex-VC) Marc Gingras. The panel was moderated by Mark […]
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