If you're a college student, learn more about startup internships and careers. What roles are a fit for interns and recent grads, how do you find them, and how do you pick a good startup to work for? If instead you want to start your own business, how do you fund it?
Tips and techniques for raising your first round of financing from entrepreneur turned VC Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital and Harvard Business School.
What You Need To Know About Raising Venture Capital (By Mark Davis, DFJ Gotham)Mark Davis
A brief presentation on some of the key factors entrepreneurs should consider when seeking to raise venture capital. A detailed manual on raising venture capital can be found at www.markpeterdavis.com.
Summary presentation of the critically acclaimed book on venture capital and entrepreneurship by Flybridge general partner Jeff Bussgang (www.jeffbussgang.com)
Tips and techniques for raising your first round of financing from entrepreneur turned VC Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital and Harvard Business School.
What You Need To Know About Raising Venture Capital (By Mark Davis, DFJ Gotham)Mark Davis
A brief presentation on some of the key factors entrepreneurs should consider when seeking to raise venture capital. A detailed manual on raising venture capital can be found at www.markpeterdavis.com.
Summary presentation of the critically acclaimed book on venture capital and entrepreneurship by Flybridge general partner Jeff Bussgang (www.jeffbussgang.com)
How to define and position your VC brand to attract funding and dealflow.
* note: more recent updated version below:
https://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/branding-strategies-for-better-dealflow-and-fundraising-aka-the-helpful-vc
Have you ever considered becoming an Angel Investor? Wondered why people join angel groups as opposed to going it alone? Then this session is for you.
Join MLA Chair and Angel Investor Gerard Buckley as he leads a session that will answer the following:
What is Angel Investing?
Why would someone be an Angel Investor?
Who are Angel Investors?
What types of companies do Angels invest in?
What is Maple Leaf Angels and what are the benefits of joining?
You are currently preparing your financing round and want to get an overview of a VC's Investment criteria. This checklist contains the main questions we want to touch base on in Seed- and Series A pitch meetings.
Lecture 2 from our 5-Day Lean Launchpad Class discussing how to put customer discovery to work out of the building. Based on the acclaimed book, Talking to Humans, by Giff Constable & Frank Rimalovski. More at http://talkingtohumans.com.
Venture Fast Track - Company Valuation and Metrics - top down or bottom up?The Capital Network
Defending your corporate valuation to Angels & VCs is nearly impossible. In this program, we will discuss valuation methodologies, metrics, tactics, and tips for early-stage corporate valuations.
Ask these basic questions: How much capital does your growth require? What will be your cost of capital over the growth of your venture? Can you afford to grow at all costs? When will growth not be the basis for valuation? What if factors beyond your control impact growth?
How to Raise Your First Round of Capital - January 2020Jeffrey Bussgang
A step by step guide to raising your first round of capital -- from angels or venture capitalists (VCs) -- from a VC veteran and Harvard Business School (HBS) professor
Things startups need to know if they want to raise capital from Silicon ValleyJeff Clavier
I used this deck in a keynote at the Kima Ventures portfolio day, in Paris (France) on Dec 9, 2013. Kima has a very large portfolio of investments, mostly located outside of the US. Founders often hope to raise capital in Silicon Valley over the course of their financing journey, and my goal was to draw their attention to the traps and pitfalls ahead of them.
Babson & Brandeis - Fundraising 101: How to raise a seed roundDavid Chang
Brandeis Innovation Speaker Series: Overview of tech/startup fundraising basics, some how-to tactics on raising a seed round, and general pitch tips/lessons learned for entrepreneurs who are current students and recent grads.
Among all the excitement for the Internet of Things and the resurgence of hardware as an investable category, venture capitalists, many of whom new to the space, have been re-discovering the opportunities and challenges of working alongside entrepreneurs to build hardware companies. Combined with a rapid evolution of the venture financing path across categories over the last couple of years, the increasing importance of crowdfunding and a certain frothiness in the market, this leads to a certain confusion, as both entrepreneurs and VCs try to figure out the best way of financing and scaling hardware startups. Some patterns emerge, however: for example, VCs are mostly interested in opportunities that include a strong software and data component; and they are increasingly demanding when it comes to seeing the product actually shipping and gaining early traction.
Hardware By the Numbers: O'Reilly Solid Keynote Renee DiResta
These are the slides for my Hardware by the Numbers Keynote at O'Reilly Solid. They create a narrative about the hardware startup ecosystem using quantitative data wherever possible.
BEST VIEWED HERE: https://presentate.com/noupside/talks/hardware-trends-hardware-by-the-numbers, on Presentate, which has my speaker notes alongside the content, and contains all sources and citations.
How to define and position your VC brand to attract funding and dealflow.
* note: more recent updated version below:
https://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/branding-strategies-for-better-dealflow-and-fundraising-aka-the-helpful-vc
Have you ever considered becoming an Angel Investor? Wondered why people join angel groups as opposed to going it alone? Then this session is for you.
Join MLA Chair and Angel Investor Gerard Buckley as he leads a session that will answer the following:
What is Angel Investing?
Why would someone be an Angel Investor?
Who are Angel Investors?
What types of companies do Angels invest in?
What is Maple Leaf Angels and what are the benefits of joining?
You are currently preparing your financing round and want to get an overview of a VC's Investment criteria. This checklist contains the main questions we want to touch base on in Seed- and Series A pitch meetings.
Lecture 2 from our 5-Day Lean Launchpad Class discussing how to put customer discovery to work out of the building. Based on the acclaimed book, Talking to Humans, by Giff Constable & Frank Rimalovski. More at http://talkingtohumans.com.
Venture Fast Track - Company Valuation and Metrics - top down or bottom up?The Capital Network
Defending your corporate valuation to Angels & VCs is nearly impossible. In this program, we will discuss valuation methodologies, metrics, tactics, and tips for early-stage corporate valuations.
Ask these basic questions: How much capital does your growth require? What will be your cost of capital over the growth of your venture? Can you afford to grow at all costs? When will growth not be the basis for valuation? What if factors beyond your control impact growth?
How to Raise Your First Round of Capital - January 2020Jeffrey Bussgang
A step by step guide to raising your first round of capital -- from angels or venture capitalists (VCs) -- from a VC veteran and Harvard Business School (HBS) professor
Things startups need to know if they want to raise capital from Silicon ValleyJeff Clavier
I used this deck in a keynote at the Kima Ventures portfolio day, in Paris (France) on Dec 9, 2013. Kima has a very large portfolio of investments, mostly located outside of the US. Founders often hope to raise capital in Silicon Valley over the course of their financing journey, and my goal was to draw their attention to the traps and pitfalls ahead of them.
Babson & Brandeis - Fundraising 101: How to raise a seed roundDavid Chang
Brandeis Innovation Speaker Series: Overview of tech/startup fundraising basics, some how-to tactics on raising a seed round, and general pitch tips/lessons learned for entrepreneurs who are current students and recent grads.
Among all the excitement for the Internet of Things and the resurgence of hardware as an investable category, venture capitalists, many of whom new to the space, have been re-discovering the opportunities and challenges of working alongside entrepreneurs to build hardware companies. Combined with a rapid evolution of the venture financing path across categories over the last couple of years, the increasing importance of crowdfunding and a certain frothiness in the market, this leads to a certain confusion, as both entrepreneurs and VCs try to figure out the best way of financing and scaling hardware startups. Some patterns emerge, however: for example, VCs are mostly interested in opportunities that include a strong software and data component; and they are increasingly demanding when it comes to seeing the product actually shipping and gaining early traction.
Hardware By the Numbers: O'Reilly Solid Keynote Renee DiResta
These are the slides for my Hardware by the Numbers Keynote at O'Reilly Solid. They create a narrative about the hardware startup ecosystem using quantitative data wherever possible.
BEST VIEWED HERE: https://presentate.com/noupside/talks/hardware-trends-hardware-by-the-numbers, on Presentate, which has my speaker notes alongside the content, and contains all sources and citations.
These are the things I learned about Angel Investing. If you're thinking about investing in startups, either directly or via services like AngelList, my hope is that these tips can help you avoid some common mistakes.
2015 Venture Capital & Startup Traction ReportMattermark
Dive into venture funding trends
Take an in-depth look at the funding events, growth signals, exits and other insights into the fastest growing private companies. It’s compiled by our independent, in-house editorial staff to help you make fast, informed and accurate decisions.
Investors historically sit through pitches and evaluate early stage startups on three primary metrics: 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling presentations, and 3) a strong team. Steve Blank, the Godfather of the Lean Startup movement said in his Customer Development Manifesto: “There’s no formal way for an investor to assess project maturity or quantify risks. Other than measuring engineering progress, there’s no standard language to communicate progress.”
What has been missing is a common language to communicate objectives and data that investors and entrepreneurs can use to communicate startup readiness.
Fortunately, the principles developed in the Lean Startup movement can be utilized to help entrepreneurs assess their Investor Readiness Level in a way that allows them to demonstrate “evidence” of their readiness. In this session, Max Green and Heath Naquin, both of the IC2 Institute, will share this new method for entrepreneurs to gauge their own investor readiness using the principles of Steve Blank's Investment Readiness Level and LeanLaunchpad.
Entrepreneurs attending this session will learn a valuable approach helping their start-up team prove their competence and validate their ideas by showing investors “evidence” that there’s a repeatable and scalable business model.
Heath Naquin serves as Executive Director for the SW I-Corps Node at The University of Texas at Austin. He also serves as the Managing Director for a multi-university NSF Industry University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) the Center for Next Generation Photovoltaics. Heath was a founding member of three different start-up business initiatives across sectors. He has helped companies raise more than $30 Million in funding from private and government sources.
Heath actively works on international commercialization initiatives and efforts focusing on industry collaboration, new project development and deployment along with building linkages between industry, government, academia and the venture capital community. Heath has worked in more than 20 countries on international commercialization and entrepreneurship initiatives in countries such as Colombia, Jordan, Iraq, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Armenia, and Turkey. Heath has extensive experience with the NSF, EPA and NIH SBIR programs as an active commercial reviewer for many years. Heath also currently serves as Faculty for the Concordia University Executive MBA program.
WeWork provides small businesses, startups, and freelancers with beautiful workspace, inspiring community, and meaningful services. With weekly events, personalized support, flexibility, and access to thousands of like-minded entrepreneurs around the world - WeWork is the perfect place to grow your business in 2015.
The WeWork Congress location sits in the heart of downtown Austin at 6th St. and Congress Ave. To learn more about joining the community, email joinus@wework.com or call 855.593.9675.
Marty Kaszubowski, Old Dominion University. Oops!... Another Startup Did It A...IT Arena
Martin Kaszubowski currently serves as the Executive Director of the Institution for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Old Dominion University. Marty has over 35 years of experience with a broad spectrum of public- and private-sector organizations promoting new venture formation, early-stage investment, technology commercialization, and innovation-led economic development. Marty has traveled with the CRDF Global STEP team since 2010, having made 12 separate trips to the former Soviet States: Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. In addition, he has spent significant time with CRDF mentoring entrepreneurs remotely, reviewing program applications, judging entrepreneurship competitions, and working with incubators, accelerators, and others interested in promoting innovation-based entrepreneurship in the region. Marty holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a Master’s Degree in Technology Management from George Washington University.
Are you thinking about what you need to fund your company? Where do you start? Funding is not “one size fits all”. Every company has to approach their pathway to funding with a unique approach. Join our fundraising experts for an in-depth discussion of what options you have for funding and how to decide which paths are right for you and your company. Topics covered will include investment criteria, time to closing, investment range, success rates, control features, compliance requirements and the overall costs of capital from each such source.
Jean Hammond – LearnLaunchX, LearnLaunch.org, Hub Angels, Launchpad Venture Group, Golden Seeds
Robert Bishop - Goodwin Procter
In partnership with:
Founders Workbench
From the Women Helping Women in Entrepreneurship on July 24, 2013 at MassChallenge
The Boston entrepreneurial community is home to some of the strongest and most successful women in entrepreneurship. Join the women of Golden Seeds and several local serial entrepreneurs for a discussion on sources of capital for your business. The discussion will be followed by small breakout sessions that focus on the challenges your company may be facing.
www.thecapitalnetwork.org
Fundraising 101 : Are You Ready for an Investment Round? David Ehrenberg
Why raise funds?
What are your funding options?
How much should you raise?
What do you need to do to show investors you're ready for their investment?
These questions are explored in this presentation from Shayne Vermallay from DLA Piper and Sirk Roh of Early Growth Financial Services.
Takeaways include:
- Your fundraising options at every stage of the development process
- Milestone funding
- What investors want to see
- Crafting your financial projections
- Expert pitching tips
- Financial modeling
- and more!
The #1 reason clients leave their CPAs is that they are receiving service instead of proactive advice. Tom will show how firms are exploring new value added services and position their practices for success in a rapidly changing world. He will discuss the major "shift change" and the trends shaping business today and give participants a framework to provide more proactive services and strategic advice and a plan to get started. But these services require new skills and approaches which is a big opportunity for firm HR and Learning Leaders.
Presentation to AGN International in San Diego #NARM16 for Managing Partners in MAP Track
Emerging technology is having a profound impact on the Financial Services sector; from mobile payments, APIs and Open Platforms to Machine Learning, Robo Investment and AI Chatbots.
The Summit will explore technological innovation across the financial services sector, from developments in established institutions to the disruptive innovators within the start-up community that are reshaping the FS market.
Core conference topics:
• Landscape: Trends, Culture, Trust, Transparency, Geo-political Climate
• Regulation: GDPR, MiFID II, PSD2, Open Banking, APIs
• Customer Strategy: Engagement, UX, Data Insight, Marketing & ML
• Emerging Tech: Blockchain, Analytics, AI, Payments, Automation
• National Strategy: Skills, Funding, Collaboration, Cyber Security
• Infrastructure: IT, Digital, Cloud, Mobile, XaaS
Now is the best time to start a company… Now what?Brian Kelly
It used to take years to launch a new software product. Now you can create, launch, and have paying customers getting value from your product in just a few months. This presentation explains why it's never been a better time to start a software company and what you need to consider to make it a reality.
Should you start with a side gig? Should you raise venture capital? How should you think about your cap table and employee options? What's your exit strategy? This presentation tackles these questions.
David Corcoran, cofounder at Third Rail Group, gave this talk at Do it Best Corp.'s annual Techapalooza on March 14, 2017.
Angel Investor Program, by Paul TwomblyMelissa Glass
Effective strategies; Transforming traditional investment environments from risk-averse to risk-embracing. Portfolio Strategy: Top tips for building a successful portfolio.
Funding Options at Harvard iLab
Are you thinking about what you need to fund your company? Where do you start? Funding is not one size fits all. Every company has to approach their pathway to funding with a unique approach. Join our fundraising experts for an in depth discussion of what options you have for funding and how to decide which paths are right for you and your company. Topics covered will include investment criteria, time to closing, investment range, success rates, control features, compliance requirements and the overall costs of capital from each such source.
www.thecapitalnetwork.org
Ncfa Craig Asano Jan 8 equity and funding presentationCraig Asano
Beyond bootstrapping raising capital is critical to launch or grow most ventures. Here's a lean overview of common funding options. Here's to your future success!
Brandeis & Babson - Fundraising 101: How to raise a seed roundDavid Chang
Brandeis Innovation Speaker Series: Overview of tech/startup fundraising basics, some how-to tactics on raising a seed round, and general pitch tips/lessons learned for entrepreneurs who are current students and recent grads.
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
2. Objectives
2
What are the tradeoffs in working for a startup?
How do I find startups?
How do I know a startup is a good one?
What is venture capital?
3. A quick bit about HPVP and me
Happy to chat more any time
3
• Twitter: @guyhturner
• Co-founded HPVP with Ira Weiss
• Mgmt Consultant
• Angel
• Engineer
• Cornell University (BS), Chicago
Booth (MBA)
• 2.0 kids
• Twitter: @hydeparkvp
• Early-stage software startups at
$0-3M ARR raising $1-6M rounds
• Midwest focus
• $25M Fund I, $65M Fund II
• Have invested in multiple
university seeded startups (U of I,
U of C, U of M, U of MN)
4. What Facebook, Google and other
BigCos/BigTechs want you to believe
- Secure
- High pay
- Clear career milestones
- Best senior leadership
- Unbelievable benefits
- Risky
- Low pay
- Undefined career path
- No mentorship
Startups BigTech
5. How I see it
Startups BigTech
“Don’t ask what seat,
just get on the rocket ship”
6. Reality is in the middle and about fit
- Secure
- High pay
- Clear career milestones
- More formal training
- Moderate risk
- Moderate pay with upside
- Accelerated learning curve
- It is what you make it
Startups BigTech
?
What’s the best fit for you?
7. Startup paths: Build or sell!
Developer Sales (and marketing)
Computer science
CE, EE
…or whatever…
Marketing
Communications
Economics
…or whatever…
… also analytics, data scientis, customer success
8. Here or there? …the real economics
Source: Angellist, http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/
95
70 70
115
85 90
$0K
$20K
$40K
$60K
$80K
$100K
$120K
$140K
Developer Sales Marketing
Early Career Salaries - Nominal
Chicago SF
143
105 105
115
85 90
$0K
$20K
$40K
$60K
$80K
$100K
$120K
$140K
$160K
Developer Sales Marketing
Early Career Salaries - SF Dollars
Chicago Adjusted SF
Quality of life a major consideration
9. Where do you find startups?
Startup career fairs
VC Portfolios
Midwest Everywhere
Ann Arbor Minneapolis
CincinnatiNebraska
Madison St. Louis
hydeparkvp.recruiterbox.com
10. What should you look for?
• Do you like the people?
• Do you trust leadership?
• Do you like the culture?
• Can you learn from your
direct supervisor/team?
• Do you love the product?
Fit with you The 5 Ms
• Industry experience
• Leadership/scaling/startup experience
• Been there done that
• Size (>$500M?)
• Growth rate (>10%?)
• Level of competitiveness
• Business model fit to market/customer
• Are they selling? More now than before?
• Are they building barriers? Partnerships?
• DO THEY GET STUFF DONE?
• Strength of business model
• Uniqueness and resulting barriers
• IP
• 18 to 24 months of runway
Market
Mgmt
Momentum
Magic
Money
11. Screening shortcut: the VC screen
VCs invest in <1% of deals they see… but they also make lots of mistake!
Sourcing Screening
Due
Diligence
The Deal
Portco
Mgmt
3000
1000
30
10
5
On the radar
300
Initial meeting
Second meeting
Deep dive
Terms/TS
Deal closed
Let the VCs do the work for you.
Look for funded startups!
12. Now it’s time to negotiate:
Meet TransparentCareer.com
• Find what others exactly like you are getting paid
• Find where your peers are going
• Arm yourself with information
13. Startups or BigTech not interesting?
Then start your own and raise $$$!
…but how?
14. Why raise VC? Growth requires $...
14
Startup
$0-10M
Growth
$10-50M
Developed
$50M+
Amount
Type
Purpose
Friends &
Family Angels
Small
VCs
VCs Venture
lenders
Private
equity
PublicBanks
Test
idea
Test
marketing
approach
SCALE!!
Liquidity for founders,
employees and investors
$250K <$1M $2-3M $5-10M Sky is the limit
What does “scale” mean?
• Build products before they’re sold
• Hire people before they “produce”
• Pursue customers before they pay
Rev
15. … from different types of investors
15
Who they are
Hold
period
Why they invest
Friends
& family
Angels
VCs
Venture
Lenders
Private
equity
Obvious
Individuals and groups
$25M - $1B funds with
institutional money
$100M - $1B funds with
institutional money
$250M - $10B funds with
institutional money
They love you!!
For fun and $$
Want 30%+ returns;
Invest on growth
Want 18%+ returns;
Invest in cash flows
Want 20%+ returns;
Invest in cash flows
with equity and debt
???
5-10 yrs
5-10 yrs
5-7 yrs
2-5 yrs
16. Tiered equity structure grows with $
16
Founders
Founders
Angels
Common
Common
Options
F&F
Founders
Options
F&F
Common
Angels
Founders
Options
F&F
Preferred
Preferred
VCs
Common
Debt?
TechS
TechS TechS
18. Entrepreneurs weigh money/terms and
“value add” when choosing VC
- Strategic and opp advice
- Customer, financing,
acquirer connections
- Brand signal for talent,
other funders, etc
- Valuation
- Size of round
- Other financial terms
- Control terms
Money Value add
In the end, relationship matters the most.
It’s a marriage.
19. So what do VCs look for…
Scalable
- Software
- High fixed cost, low
marginal cost
- Tech dev and customer
acquisition greatest cost
- Invest capital now for
profit at scale later
- >75% gross margin
Not scalable
- Service
- Low to high fixed
cost, high marginal
cost
- Scales with bodies
- <<50% gross margin
- Profitable at small
scale
In between
- Tech enabled service
- Medium fixed and
medium marginal cost
- Scales with bodies
and capital
- 40-60% gross margin
20. … fit and 5Ms (same things you should
look for)
• Stage (seed or A)
• Round size ( $0.75M – $2.5M)
• Industry (any that is “scalable”)
• Geography (Midwest)
Fit with fund strategy The 5 Ms
• Industry experience
• Leadership/scaling/startup experience
• Degrees, etc (eg, signals)
• Size (>$500M?)
• Growth rate (>10%?)
• Level of competitiveness
• Business model fit to market/customer
• Are they selling? More now than before?
• Are they building barriers? Partnerships?
• DO THEY GET STUFF DONE?
• Strength of business model
• Uniqueness and resulting barriers
• IP
• Price and other terms
Market
Mgmt
Momentum
Magic
Money
21. How do I get to VCs?
21
Descendingorderofvalue
1 Current / past portfolio company CEO
Example introduction sources
2 Trusted colleague, partner, friend of investor
3 Another investor in the current round
4 Advisor / mentor from founder’s network
5 An investor who’s not investing
Cold outreach6