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We now have a contract for a project that will eventually pay us 200K. And our patents were just issued. Is this enough to approach a bank for a bridge loan?

Also, can anyone recommend where to go to obtain a bridge loan? Esp one that is sympathetic to start-ups?? thank you

I've raised from known angels but never unknown VCs. Don't have solid inroads to any of those I'm most interested in pitching, so am contacting them cold. Have a world-class team and a solid deck. Anyone have any success/advice about how to get the meetings, who to contact first, what to send first, etc? How to deal with VCs with no email address listed? Thanks!

Does anyone have a negative experience they would care to share with either bank?

I would like to work with one of the larger Silicon Valley firms and preferably one that has a fairly structured process for making VC introductions. Any recommendations would be very much appreciated.

Thank you!

Most folks look at the funding meeting as having a “yes/no” outcome. It is much more realistic to recognize that there are many outcomes:

Funder Doesn’t Get It/ Like It:
1) Don’t get it - go away
2) Don't get it - but I'll learn more

Funder Gets It:
1) Get It, but not are my area of investment – will contact Mr./Mrs. XYZ on your behalf and suggest that they meet with you
2) Get It – I’ll give you some $$ - and I’ll let you run the company until you screw up
3) Get It – I’ll give you some $$ - and I’ll let you run the company until Point XYZ – at which time we’ll bring in a new CEO
4) Get It – I’ll give you some $$ - but I want my EIR to run it from Day One
5) Get It – I won’t give you $$ - but I like what you are doing so much I’ll
a. Tell one of my portfolio companies to do what you are doing
b. I’ll build it myself

New blog post at: http://tinyurl.com/NoCapEx

I am looking to move our web service to a new web hosting. The load is not great, it's just a bootstrap startup. Any recommendations? I would prefer URLs over discussion "if you want that you need this and this".

Dear all,

we would like to implement a stock options plan for employees by issuing a certain number of shares.

Does anybody have any template? Our company is based in Europe and probably this can influence the way the mechanism is implemented.

As a company, we would always retain the right of buying back these options in certain circumstances (e.g. if the employee leave the company).

Thanks in advance for your comments

We are signing a contract where the customer asks for exclusivity in using our product for their purposes. We are fine with that if we can still use our product for other goals.

Has any one any experience with this?

Thanks in advance

I'm in the middle of discussing joining up with a Technical Founder for a B2B play. He found me via linkedin and we've been talking for the last month. He's based on the East Coast and I'm located in Silicon Valley. He seems like a very solid guy, has good experience and seems very passionate and hard working. He's been developing the product for over one year, on his own dime, and has a first meeting with a pretty large tier 1 customer. His idea has competition from some well funded startups and one public company, but i think the market will have a few winners. He's convinced his angle is unique. He proposed that i join up with him with the below terms.

25% ownership, cofounder title
4yr vesting, 1yr cliff
VP BD, he maintains CEO role
Must have milestones to achieve re customer acquisition, funding, partnerships

A couple of issues i'm concerned about:

1. He feels that his majority ownership makes sense since he's spent a year developing the technology and all that's left is customers. He also feels that his technology is valuable because apparently an investor said that they'd give him $1M once he gets 3 customers on board.
2. He wants me to raise money asap, @ $150k, with no customers/traction only one person in the company, lots of established competition in the general space
3. He wants to maintain CEO role and be able to override business decisions if he feels he needs to

I have a few concerns:

1. His proposed split gives me the impression that the hard work in the company is already done and the easy stuff is sales, raising money, building out the company...
2. Getting investors to put money into a first time entrepeneur, with no customers or proof points in the market, no team, is not very realistic and is not the right time to do that.
3. Coming up with milestones that may be affected based on initial market reaction to his product is very tricky. I have no problem with having milestones, but don't want to set myself up for failure

I have 20yrs experience in BD, VC and starting my own sw company and am ready to take on a role like this. I just want to make sure that i'm committing myself to the right partner and not jumping into something that has too many red flags. Any advice/guidance is greatly appreciated!

Remember to reference check them as thoroughly as you would a potential Board member. They are working their way up the ladder and may break a rung or two on the way up :-).

Nobel Prize for Physics was announced today for graphene, after only 6 yrs from it's discovery.
We are working on materials to make graphene nanoribbons and I'd appreciate advice on who best to engage for VC investment (early stage, proprietary materials, good IP position).
Thanks!

When I first heard that we should "Bootstrap" it left a huge question mark on my face. I immediately thought about my statistics courses in the university; why in the world would my start up need to to derive estimates of confidence intervals for estimators of parameters of some statistical distributions. I actually thought about some of the R programs I wrote and started thinking how that could be applied. I eventually said that there was no need for that anytime soon, maybe a few years down the road. That left an even bigger question mark on the face of the guy I was chatting with.

It turns out that Bootstrapping is also a phrase in business finance. It's about keeping a tight fist on all your expenses and knowing that Cash Flow is more important than your mother. Something we've always been keen on doing but never had the correct lingo for it. In the past two years, we've put a huge emphasis on doing stuff that people, especially the people that pay us, like. The team has been very focused on organic growth and building our company the way we want.

In my mind, starting with little to no cash and working your way up is a very healthy start for a young company having to figure out how to make a great product.

Here are my Top 6 reasons why I think it's important to start by bootstrapping:

As part of working with Capital Factory and my day job at Silverton Partners, I've tried to put together two example presentations to help folks who are (1) pitching investors or (2) running board meetings. I received great feedback here last year and much of that has been incorporated into the 2010 versions. I hope this helps:

many companies I meet have very similar questions regarding pitching angel investors and VCs, in particular:
- What topics are required in a pitch deck?
- What depth of information is critical to have in the deck?
- What’s is the best flow from slide to slide?

answers:

http://www.reoverthinking.com/2010/06...

This post covers a presentation outline and discussion for what I believe is a solid starting point for best practices in a typical, periodic board presentation by a start-up CEO. A good board book clearly communicates the state of the business to board members, over the course of 2-3 hours, such that board members are equipped to perform their duties. Starting point:

http://www.reoverthinking.com/2010/07...

any / all questions and comments welcome; hope this is helpful.

-kip

Basically, never let a VC to skip taking a board seat because this means they might be an evidence they want an option to dump the startup or do a Round A on miserable terms.

http://www.greggretsch.com/2010/05/do...

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/201...

7 lessons, and most of them are not usual textbook stuff.

http://www.mightymeeting.com/blog/201...

Seed round in 21 days - they did it (via Founders Institute and Venturehacks in part)

I have a company I have invested in; they've done the heavy lifting in having invested $750K in designing and launching (beta) a SaaS service. The service is narrow in its functional scope, but as we all know, the tactical company is about getting traction to be able to then do the strategic bigger play.
I'm trying to help them find funding, angels likely given investment total to breakeven is $1.5M; I've teed up the usual angels and angel networks here in Silicon valley;
My question is how or is there a source for the accredited angels who may 'get' and be interested in a ONE ROUND planned company; where the play is narrow in functional scope initially; It's execute now on market adoption.

Thanks!

We're looking use a file sharing website to share publications, presentations, etc. with potential investors. Are there any suggestions?

This is self-explanatory. Hi all, can anyone recommend a good key person insurance company/policy?
thanks