Be a Top Decile Company
When I was a founder raising capital for my first company, I had no idea what proper fundraising looked like. I thought you just tried to get as many meetings as you could with investors. Any investors. This was 2000 in Seattle and there weren't many successful founders looking to share their wisdom. The [...]
Featured Member: Kyle Newman of Numis Global Solutions
Kyle Newman, CEO and Founder of Numis Global Solutions Q: Describe what your company does? A: I'm the founder of Numis Global Solutions. We created a PLA straw that looked and felt like plastic, but was industrial and home compostable. So we took a need that we found in the market for a biodegradable [...]
Featured Member: Ravi Vangapalli of Arvy Capital
Ravi Vangapalli, General Partner of Arvy Capital Q: Describe what your current company does? A: My current company is Arvy Capital. It is a quant fund company, primarily focusing on building quantitative trading algorithms. Traditionally, there are only two ways to make money - fundamental analysis and technical analysis. But both models are not [...]
Who Should Raise $1M? Fewer than you think.
When I hear that a startup is raising $1M for their first non-friends-and-family round, my immediate thought is, "Oh, so you didn't actually think about how much you should raise." Of course, this is a ridiculous thing to think, given that I don't actually know how the founder landed on the (magical) $1M number. [...]
Half a round? Try half a bridge
It is not uncommon for a startup to raise less than the full amount of capital they set out to raise originally. This has some obvious implications, but there are also some less obvious ones that I see many startup founders missing. When an investor commits, they are committing with the expectation that the [...]