From the category archives:
Every startup has its own natural level of startup costs. It’s built into the circumstances, like strategy, location, and resources. Call it the natural startup level; or maybe the sweet spot.
1. The Plan
For example, Mabel’s Thai restaurant in San Francisco is going to need about $950,000, while Ralph’s new catering business needs only about $50,000. [...]
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There was a nice piece in Small Biz Labs yesterday, in which Steve King notes that you should have a business plan whether or not you expect investors to read it. He offers this summary in that post:
In my opinion, the best way to prepare for the pitch process is to develop a business [...]
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Imagine, if you will, this scene:
You are in a group of angel investors talking with entrepreneurs looking for funding. Or you are in a group of venture competition judges giving feedback to teams after the judging is over. The entrepreneurs listen intently, nod, they’re understanding, and then suddenly one or more of their faces change, [...]
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(I posted Organizing Angel Investors Monday on Up and Running about positive developments in angel funding. David Rose, CEO of angelsoft.net, added the following as a comment to that post. Although I haven’t had guest posts on this blog, David’s comment is worth it. And I’ve been using angelsoft.net for a while now, I know [...]
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Business plans everywhere. I’m reading, annotating, filling in score sheets, and getting cranky. I explained that on this blog last Monday.
So what’s with the unrealistically high profitability projections? This year it seems like I’ve discovered a new 50-50 rule of profitability in business plans, as in, 50% of the plans I’m looking at project 50% [...]
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Isn’t this about as dumb as saying a screenplay doesn’t matter because the audience won’t read it:
Small businesses seeking financing from venture-capital firms need not worry about writing up a solid business plan, since it doesn’t sway funding decisions anyway, concludes a new study by researchers at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School [...]
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Billionaire Mark Cuban announced his own stimulus plan earlier this week. It’s sheer genius. Here’s how he describes it in his blog post, The Mark Cuban stimulus plan: Rather than trying to be a Venture Capitalist, I was looking for…
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I think valuation is fascinating. What is a company worth? With the larger publicly traded companies you can easily calculate a valuation using the wisdom of the crowd, the market itself, by multiplying shares outstanding times price per share. But…
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I highly recommend watching this video of a conversation between John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) and John Heilemann (New York Magazine), at the Web 2.0 summit last week John Doerr is a smart person who’s been leading Kleiner…
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Times are tough for venture capitalists too. You may have already seen the Sequoia Capital slide show that’s been circulating for a few weeks now. It’s pretty stark. You may also have seen the great Survival Matrix piece Fred Wilson…
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