Riding in the fight against cancer

It has been some time since I’ve posted. And this post is not about technology but about life.

Each year thousands and thousands of people are affected by cancer.

Some are survivors.
Some are caregivers.
And yet too many are lost.

The statistics are numbing.

But the names are not.

Grandpa
Angie
Bob
Aunt Rose
Bud
David’s Brother in Law
Mauricio’s Mom
Julie
Folia

And many many more.

Even in these tough times, we can not give up in the fight against cancer.  Read more... (165 words, 2 images, estimated 40 secs reading time)

Startup 131: Term Sheet Dilution Calculator

Well, it’s been a little long since my last post and I apologize.  Life sometimes has a way of getting busy but it’s been great.  Anyway, given all the interest and posts about Startup Term sheets, I thought it would be useful to share a tool that Charlie Fortenbach, Vontu’s head of finance and operations extraordinaire, created for calculating dilution at various stages of investments.

It’s an excel spreadsheet and fairly straight forward.  Please consider it a beta release and we would love feedback, comments, bug fixes, and suggestions for improvement.  Also, if you make changes, it would be great if you can send them back to me and then we can incorporate them for everyone.  Read more... (445 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

Startup 130: 10 Questions for Ray Rothrock of Venrock

This post is an “email interview” I did with Ray Rothrock of Venrock.   I sent Ray 10 questions on venture capital, what he looks for in his investments and the people he backs, as well as what are his favorite iPhone apps.  Enjoy.

On Venture Capital

1.  Venrock is celebrating it’s 40th anniversary this year.  That’s a long time in the Venture Capital business and does not even include Laurance Rockefeller’s “venture” investments in the 1930s in Eastern Airlines and McDonnell Aircraft.  How has the venture capital business changed since those early days and in what ways has it stayed the same?  Read more... (1241 words, 1 image, estimated 4:58 mins reading time)

Startup 129: Term Sheet – Board of Directors

This post is a continuation of the series about venture capital term sheets.  If you have not yet read the previous posts on Valuation and Dilution, Liquidation Preferences, Anti-Dilution, and Voting Rights and Protective Provisions, you might want to start with them.  In particular, when thinking about the Board it’s important to understand investors Voting Rights and Protective Provisions, and the requirement of investors’ consent on certain decision.   (The links are at the bottom of the post as well…)

There are lots of things to consider for a startup’s Board of Directors including its role, who should be on it, and how to best work with the board.  Read more... (945 words, estimated 3:47 mins reading time)

Startup 128: An Interview with Bill Gurley of Benchmark

This post is an email interview with Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital.  I sent Bill 10 questions on what he looks for in his investments, the people he backs, the state of the venture capital business and why Benchmark invested in Twitter.  Enjoy.

On Venture Capital investing today

1.  What are your top investment areas going forward?

We don’t really work that way.  All I could tell you is what are the three most common investment themes looking back.  We simply don’t sit around planning the future.  We try to meet with as many great entrepreneurs as we can and then make a judgment on the quality of their vision versus the state of the market. Recent themes have been cloud computing, open source, user generated content (UGC) Internet plays.  Read more... (1167 words, 2 images, estimated 4:40 mins reading time)

Startup 127: Term Sheet – Voting Rights and Protective Provisions

This is the latest in a continuing series of posts about venture capital term sheets.  The first three dealt with term sheet issues around ownership, dilution and the impact of Valuation, Liquidation Preferences, and Anti-dilution.   You might want to start with those three posts before diving into this latest which covers Voting Rights and Protective Provisions that venture capitalists require in their term sheets.

Voting Rights – What’s the Big Idea?
Voting Rights are pretty straightforward.   The language you will find in a term sheet usually looks something like this:  Read more... (997 words, estimated 3:59 mins reading time)

Startup 126: Term Sheet – Anti-Dilution

This is the third post in a series attempting to demystify venture capital term sheets.  The first two posts are on Valuation and Liquidation Preferences and are a good place to start.

Delusional on Dilution
As mentioned in the previous posts, a venture capital (VC) term sheet is a non-binding letter of intent that outlines a potential investment in a startup.  Much of what a term sheet covers is the value of the company and how much ownership the founders and other shareholders give up in order to get the investment.  The amount of ownership a company gives up is called dilution.  And between valuation discussions, liquidation preferences and especially with the math for anti-dilution, this whole process might start to make you a little delusional.  But hang in there, as this is the last big term dealing with dilution.  Read more... (1545 words, 1 image, estimated 6:11 mins reading time)

Startup 125: Term Sheet – Liquidation Preferences

This is the second post in a series attempting to demystify venture capital term sheets.  If you have not read the first post about Valuation, you can find it here.

Talking Stock
As mentioned in the previous post, a venture capital term sheet is a letter of intent that outlines a potential investment in a startup.  The first and usually most debated item is the valuation as it has the largest effect on the dilution or amount of ownership you give up in order to receive funding.  Once you agree on valuation (while keeping in mind the option pool twist), it’s important to understand what you have actually sold.  Read more... (1375 words, 1 image, estimated 5:30 mins reading time)

Startup 124: Term Sheet – Valuation and Dilution

Lots of folks have asked a very common question about startups: “What is a Venture Capital Term Sheet and what do all the terms mean?”  Since there are lots of terms to discuss, I will break the answers into multiple posts to get the content out more quickly and in smaller digestible chunks.

What’s the Big Idea?

Before jumping into post-money valuations, liquidity preferences and other legal mumbo jumbo, you must first decide whether you want to go down the path of taking venture capital.  Read more... (1758 words, 2 images, estimated 7:02 mins reading time)

Startup 123: Another Reason Startups Kick Corporate Butt

As a previous post discussed, some of the reasons startups win are people, freedom and failure.  In addition to these cultural differences, there are some inherent challenges for “entrenched” companies which startups often exploit to ensure their success.  One of the challenges (among others…) is that entrenched companies have a set of assumptions that become out of date and incorrect.  That often leads them to confuse the product they provide with the value customers perceive. And as a result, they become blinded by their existing business model success until it’s too late.  Read more... (895 words, 4 images, estimated 3:35 mins reading time)

Startup 122: Speech – The Final Frontier

OK, I’ll admit it.  I am psyched to see the new Star Trek Movie.  Check out the new preview.  This is clearly not your Father’s Star Trek…

But what does Star Trek have to do with startups?  It turns out that Star Trek has successfully “predicted” quite a few modern day inventions.   The most famous being the Communicator and the Cell Phone.

Yet even with all this forward looking Star Trek technology, what we never saw on The Enterprise are the crackberry, text messaging, facebook updating, tweetering, iphone addicts we’ve become.  Look around and what do we do each day instead of talking?  Read more... (1323 words, 3 images, estimated 5:18 mins reading time)

Startup 121: Lessons for the Recession from Rice Krispies

The past few months have been, how shall I say, pretty crappy and have caused lots of cut backs for most startups (and companies of every size).  Mostly, this has meant laying people off, cutting expenses, and generally “battening down the hatches to weather the storm”.

I randomly had several conversations with people on the topic of what a startup (or any organization) should do in times like these and some basic things came up each time:  Read more... (1217 words, 2 images, estimated 4:52 mins reading time)

1. Measure to manage
2. Mix it up
3. Take calculated risks

Econ 120: What Taxes and Splitting the Restaurant Bill Have in Common

Since it’s tax day and all, I figured why not post something that I am sure will spur lots of conversation (or maybe controversy?)

There are so many (mis?)perceptions on the tax system, I decided to get some facts about how it all works, or at least, to see what of the rhetoric is true.   In particular, in most of the press and political speak out there, the common perception is:

1. Tax cuts only benefit the “rich”
2. The “rich” actually pay fewer taxes

Startup 119: Why Startup Innovation Kicks Corporate Booty

I recently had coffee with David, a friend from college that was an advisor at Trio Development and an early employee at Connectify.  As he now works in the incubation group of a large enterprise software company, he was lamenting about how hard it is for large corporations to innovate.  That got me thinking about what it is about startups that leads them to “out-innovate” large corporations.

It ain’t about the technology
To start, I believe innovation is simply about creating significant new value though some combination of unique products, processes, and services.  I do not think innovation is solely about creating new products or technology.  That is simply invention.  Read more... (1462 words, 4 images, estimated 5:51 mins reading time)

Control Freaks Are Us

Let’s face it, startup entrepreneurs tend to be “control freaks”.  I certainly have that tendency (Yes, that’s right, I admit I can be a control freak!).

The fact is that when you start something, sweating the details is important.  By sweating the details, you establish a culture that important details matter and also that the highest quality of execution is expected.  And sometimes, when the going gets tough, digging in is important to help ensure success.  We all know this will drive the team quite crazy, and you have to know when to let go go, but that is the topic for a future post…  Read more... (853 words, 1 image, estimated 3:25 mins reading time)

Can You Count?

Good execution is a corner stone for success. The following post is a little execution test.  Let’s see how good you are at the simple task of counting

Your goal is to count how many times the team in white passes the ball.  It’s going to get complicated so keep an eye on the white team.  Click the video and start counting.

Now scroll down to read more once you’ve watched and help me answer the question, if you “can count”?

How many of you saw  “it”?  I’ll admit it. I missed it.  Read more... (1444 words, estimated 5:47 mins reading time)

Startup Life 103: Love

Successful startups (or any other successful company or adventure) cause memory loss. Yes, memory loss. It’s fascinating how success tends to make all the late nights, struggles, frustrations, fears, anxiety and stress fade away. Yet the fact is that startup life is hard and not for the faint of heart.  Read more... (785 words, 1 image, estimated 3:08 mins reading time)

Startup Life 102: Leadership

I recently posted Startup Life 101 which suggested that in order to succeed in having a successful life while in a startup, you need to have a plan and to set the right pace. This is akin to running a marathon or even better succeeding in the Tour De France.

Re-connecting with Stew Friedman from the Wharton school, who has a book and teaches a class titled Total Leadership, is what got me thinking about this topic.  Read more... (1264 words, 3 images, estimated 5:03 mins reading time)

Startup Life 101: The Marathon

Being successful in all aspects of your life – your work, your relationships, your community and your personal life – is not easy especially when working at a startup. Conventional wisdom is you have to work 18 hour days, 7 days a week to succeed. Yet maybe it’s not necessarily the best way to succeed?

What got me thinking about writing about this was re-connecting with a professor I knew from the Wharton school, Stewart Friedman. He recently wrote a book and teaches a class titled Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life.  Read more... (916 words, 2 images, estimated 3:40 mins reading time)

A few golden rules for a great Board relationship

Working with a Board of Directors can be, well, scary.  Why?  Because they ultimately have the responsibility to hire and fire you.  That’s really one of their only jobs.  You say you don’t have a Board?  A Board might be a group of people or maybe just an individual to whom you are responsible to report on your job results.  If you think about it like that, we all have a Board.  

Many people have asked how I ensured a successful Board relationship at Vontu.  To be honest, I tried to keep it simple and follow a few golden rules:  Read more... (1075 words, 1 image, estimated 4:18 mins reading time)

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