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3.3

Opus Capital

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$$$$$ Menlo Park, US West

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Rincon Venture Partners

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$$$$$ Santa Barbara, CA, US West

Rated by 20

4.8 4.8 4.5 3.4 4.3

4.4

Foundry Group

Certified

$$$$$ Boulder, US Central

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4.4 4.3 4.1 3.7 4.5

4.2

New Atlantic Ventures

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$$$$$ Reston, US East

Rated by 10

4.8 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.0

4.1

Silverton Partners

 

$$$$$ Austin, US West

Rated by 30

3.5 4.2 4.1 4.0 4.1

4.0

Leapfrog Ventures

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$$$$$ Menlo Park, US West

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3.5 4.0 4.3 4.1 3.9

3.9

True Ventures

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$$$$$ Palo Alto, US West

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4.0 4.2 4.1 2.9 4.2

3.9

406 Ventures

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$$$$$ Boston, US East

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3.8 3.9 3.8 3.4 3.9

3.8

First Round Capital

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$$$$$ San Francisco, US West

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3.8

Mangrove Capital Partners

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$$$$$ Luxembourg, Europe

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3.8 4.1 3.4 3.7 4.1

3.8

RRE Ventures

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DFJ Mercury

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$$$$$ Houston, US Central

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4.7 3.7 3.7 3.0 3.5

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Sequoia Capital

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$$$$$ Menlo Park, US West

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3.9 3.7 3.7 3.3 4.0

3.7

Altos Ventures

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$$$$$ Menlo Park, US West

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3.6 3.7 3.6 3.8 3.4

3.6

Flywheel Ventures

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$$$$$ Santa Fe, US West

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3.7 3.5 3.8 3.7 3.5

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FLOODGATE

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$$$$$ Palo Alto, US West

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3.6 3.5 3.8 3.5 3.5

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August Capital

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$$$$$ Menlo Park, US West

Rated by 10

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Updata Partners

 

$$$$$ Red Bank, US East

Rated by 60

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3.6

Trinity Ventures

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$$$$$ Menlo Park, US West

Rated by 10

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IDG Ventures SF

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$$$$$ San Francisco, US West

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Wellington Partners

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$$$$$ Munich, Europe

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3.2 3.6 3.4 3.0 4.2

3.5

DN Capital

 

$$$$$ London, Europe

Rated by 16

3.9 3.7 3.2 2.9 3.5

3.5

GRP Partners

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$$$$$ Los Angeles, US West

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3.2 3.5 3.3 3.1 3.8

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Blumberg Capital

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$$$$$ San Francisco, US West

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Draper Richards

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$$$$$ San Francisco, US West

Rated by 48

3.8 3.5 3.1 3.4 3.2

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Menlo Ventures

 

$$$$$ Menlo Park, US West

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Clearstone Venture Partners

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$$$$$ Santa Monica, US West

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3.4

Versant Ventures

 

$$$$$ Menlo Park, US West

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3.4

Fidelity Growth Partners Europe

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$$$$$ London, Europe

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3.4

Scale Venture Partners

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$$$$$ Foster City, US West

Rated by 39

3.4 3.4 2.9 3.4 3.5

3.3

Polaris Venture Partners

 

$$$$$ Waltham, US East

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One time I went to a 'fast pitch' speed dating event between investors and entrepreneurs. We were given one minute to tell investors what we did and how we were going to make money. As I waited my turn, I noticed that entrepreneur after entrepreneur would get up and completely failed at communicating exactly that. So much of what they said made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. Why? I'm not a tech geek, but I do know a bit about business. Well, why is this important? Because most investors, while they may be tech savvy, are also business oriented and for the most part, NOT TECH GEEKS.

Another problem with the entrepreneurs - they were also mostly POOR speakers, often looking down at their shoes. Well, NOBODY LIKES SHOE GAZERS. Public speaking is essential at being able to get your message across! If you want someone to invest in your product, you must be CONFIDENT. Standing there nervously stammering what you are trying to do, well, that is not going to inspire anyone to invest in YOU. Even if you think you have the most compelling product/service in the universe. If you come across as a social mis-fit, ugh. Do your pitch first before a mock audience if you must or get coaching. This is really important.

And also, DON'T GO FAST!! If you have so much information, don't run at the mouth. I noticed again, that because they were limited to a minute, they tried to speak AS FAST AS THEY COULD. When you do that, you end up with an audience who could NOT follow a word you said and again, completely MISSED your message.

When I got up to speak. I kept it short, to the point, I spoke TO the audience AND I spoke SLOWLY and CLEARLY with NO GEEK TALK. When I finished, unlike the other entrepreneurs, I was flooded with cards from investors.

So my advice. Keep your pitch short and simple (KISS) Leave them wanting more because if they want to talk to you, you'll have stuff to tell them.

I know this sounds really obvious, but judging from the amount of entrepreneurs who got up (there were close to 100) they all, for the most part, did all of the above. Except me!!

Need advice what to do about a fund that lied about their holdings in other companies

I got two rounds of angel investment (from the same investors) in the form of convertible notes. The second round was made before the expiration date of the first round. The first round expiration date has come and gone. The first round had a conversion to equity valuation of X, the second round was 66% of X, due to lack of progress. The second round expiration date is coming up. The company has made some recent progress, and the market is improving for our product. I'm seeking a larger round from new (and existing) investors. My existing investors are saying they would like to amend the first round notes to match the expiration date and conversion valuation of the second round. Is this fair? It seems to me like renegotiating after the fact, based on perceived leverage. But what is the leverage? If they demand repayment of the first round now, the company would go bankrupt (there is little asset value for them to recover). Any advice is appreciated- I'm happy to clarify if this is unclear.

Here's an article from Inc. Magazine" on myths about startup compensation by Harvard professor Noam Wasserman (and yours truly). Enjoy!

I have used many of the large law firms (Wilson Sonsini, Cooley, MoFo, etc.) and several sole-practitioner attorneys. While the large firms are good for some tasks, they are outrageously expensive, and I have used very experienced sole-practitioners for contract work at about $225/hour (MUCH more cost effective than large firms). Unfortunately, my 'go-to' attorney for this is no longer available, so I am looking for a new one. Ideally, experience with reviewing partner/alliance contracts for open source software, and based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Please share on this board if you know of someone good for this legal work.

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: