Both Sides of the Table

Yes, that is how 'liquidation preferences' work.[1] I strongly recommend reading/watching Mark Suster, who (in my opinion) does a good job at explaining investors and terms.[2][3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidation_preference [2] http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2516 [3] http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/

I follow the following: Buffer - open.bufferapp.com - great insights on culture, work priority and personal development for developers HubSpot - http://blog.hubspot.com/ - great tips on marketing for developers Mark Suster - http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ - Amazing insights on views from developer and VC sides Fred Wilson - http://avc.com/ - not particularly technical but a lot of startup advice. Also, MBA mondays are great.

Chris, it seems like you are a do-er, which is fantastic, as most people have the other problem of having ideas, and not acting on them. but you seem to be approaching this w/o sufficient knowledge/experience in business development aka, "theory stuffs". I highly recommend http://www.mixergy.com to get a well rounded opinions, and anecdotes on startups to get a better feel for the types of things you need to be aware of before/after launching. keep at it, best of luck. p.s) http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/ http://paulgraham.com/articles.html also fantastic places to checkout

There's really not much out there about startup sales, unfortunately. Besides the SalesTie blog, the best I've seen is Mark Suster's blog at http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ - He seems to blog about startup sales issues pretty often.

Although not tech news blogs, I find Chris Dixon (http://cdixon.org) and Mark Suster's (http://bothsidesofthetable.com/) blogs very insightful. You should also check out Suster's weekly video podcast, This Week in Venture Capital (http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-venture-capital/). Even better, imo, is Jason Calacanis' This Week in Startups (http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/).

Mark Suster has really great info on his blog - though it might be a little more geared towards startups seeking funding: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ A post here on HN from a month or so ago pointed to this blog for a number of great resources: http://www.mattmazur.com/2010/12/17-startup-blogs-to-make-you-a-better… Another: http://tappen.posterous.com/nice-summary-stanleytang-256-must-read-con… Don't forget to keep reading this site - you'll learn much, just try to not get addicted to it! Finally, start attending startup events - they come in many shapes and sizes and depending on your location you may have more or less to choose from. Checkout startupweekend.org to see if they have any events coming to a city near you.

in my RSS is also 
Mark Suster http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ who has some great post blogs around startup

I would recommend you check out a few sites like: http://www.venturehacks.com http://answers.onstartups.com http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com To answer your questions directly: 1) You generally tell them how much money you are trying to raise (based on your financial projections). The valuation determines what percentage ownership you end up giving up in exchange for the funding. The total amount you end up with is negotiable. 2) The VC takes a percentage ownership of your company, and generally ends up with a seat on your board, Officer salaries are generally determined by the board. As the founder, you usually specify your salary requirements during the fund raising process....an overly large salary is a red flag and could turn investors off. The total amount of control the investors end up with depends on your specific situation. 3) Usually it is done as one big check. However, it may be split up into 'tranches', which are delivered upon meeting certain milestones. 4) Most startups do end up failing, the investors know the risks associated and factor that in their decisions about what companies to fund. If it fails, it fails. The fact that your company is a separate legal entity protects you from personal liability. 5) Generally investors end up taking a 20%-40% ownership stake in your company per round. If you raise multiple rounds, each new investor takes a new slice of the pie. I would definitely recommend checking out the sites I linked above to get a much…

There is a great blog post by Mark Suster on that topic. He basically argues that you should hire your co-founder. https://bothsidesofthetable.com/the-co-founder-mythology-7919a32e17c8

> In most cases, investors get preferred shares, and founders get common shares. In the great majority of companies, the founder will earn their wages and get nothing for their equity. I've found this post (by a VC!) to be helpful to understand how dilution works. tl;dr: don't do a startup for the $$$. https://bothsidesofthetable.com/understanding-how-dilution-affects-you…

Love this advice. I think it reduces the complexity of a difficult problem to a well-known process. It is also very much in line with Mark Suster's advice on finding a co-founder: Hire him/her. Source: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/the-co-founder-mythology-7919a32e17c8

100% this. I was diagnosed last year (at 33), and it changed my life for the better; specifically, it allowed me to stop being angry at myself every time I did something that was, in fact, a symptom of ADD. Now I had a reason and could work to modify behaviors, as opposed to just feeling guilty and undisciplined. Mark Suster’s posts were what set me on this track of self-realization (along with my best friend and fiancée telling me to consider it), so I’ll leave them here in case they help anyone else too: [1] https://bothsidesofthetable.com/how-to-know-if-you-have-add-and-what-t… [2] https://bothsidesofthetable.com/why-add-might-actually-benefit-startup… [3] https://bothsidesofthetable.com/developing-an-action-plan-for-high-per…

For what it's worth, many investors strongly dislike DocSend. It helps founders track views but adds friction. Here's a good recent post from Mark Suster on the subject: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/i-know-everybody-told-you-to-send-your…

Here are my favorites: Mark Schuster - https://bothsidesofthetable.com/ Jason Cohen - https://blog.asmartbear.com/ Startups for the rest of us (podcast) - http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ The Startup Chat (podcast) https://thestartupchat.com/ Unbounce on marketing - https://unbounce.com/blog/ The Macro - http://blog.ycombinator.com/ There are several more technical ones like CSS-Tricks and API Evangelist Anyone blogging on serverless with node?

https://bothsidesofthetable.com/most-startups-should-be-deer-hunters-7… 2009 post, but still one of my favorite distillations of the issues around b2b customer types. Particular impactful if you read it when you end up going above and beyond with support, feature development, and contract negotiations with both rabbits and whales and you're running out of money.

Great question! It is common for investors to take their pro-rata rights in later rounds. Overview of prorata I found from a quick google search: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/what-all-entrepreneurs-need-to-know-ab…

It's interesting to see how the essay has evolved since the from an earlier version in 2011. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/10/22/lead-follow-or-get-the-f…

Very interesting. Maybe point him to http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ ?

I'm reminded of this[0] excellent post by VC Mark Suster. 0. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/want-to-know-difference-between-a-c…

This is the most sane and sound explanation of Angel funding I have yet to read about. Kudos to the OP for sharing the thought process. > I wouldn’t recommend anyone to put more than 5% of his or her investment assets into startups. It's surprising how many people (for those who have the ability and access to do so) notoriously do not follow this advice (which is personal finance 101) and use angel investing as a status symbol.[0] [0] - http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2015/07/07/how-many-angels-is-the-r…

Another interesting thing to look at is how founders talk about their team - do people work for them or with them? Great passage from this post on leadership and mentoring: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/12/02/whose-life-are-you-going… You looked after me when I got there and treated me like a friend, not an employee. You refused to say “he works for me” you always said, “he works with me.”

Venture Deals by Brad Feld is great for how to fundraise and he does go over most of the basics and how things work. Mark Suster, from Upfront Ventures, has a really great list of blog articles you can read about raising VC: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/pitching-a-vc/ This should give you a general idea of how VC's operate: http://founderequity.com/the-new-reality-of-venture-capital/

Quit your job. Find another one. Leave your current one off your resume. Mark Suster talks about this here: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/04/22/never-hire-job-hoppers-n… "If you worked somewhere for 6 months leave it out. It’s not worth it. Listing it is a negative and unless it was interning for Ted Kennedy or Ronald Reagan it’s most likely a liability. A resume does not require you to list absolutely everything you’ve ever done. Do not lie. If asked in an interview about the gap you can simply say, “I joined a company for 6 months that was a total mistake. I regretted it. I figured I didn’t accomplish enough to put it on my resume. Trying to make what I did there sound good on a resume would have been false."

That's interesting. Many articles I've read state that the VP of Engineering tends to be more hands off, technically, than a CTO. Here's a couple great articles that I've pointed people to on a couple occasions: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/want-to-know-difference-between-a-c… https://medium.com/engineering-leadership/defining-roles-cto-and-or-vp…

Great discussion. Also a great link to Mark Suster's critique of convertible notes. I think the below link should be required reading for anyone who wants to use the SAFE documents for fund raising. I think there is a tendency to think if its good enough for Y Combinator then its good enough for me. Mark points out the numerous ways a convertible note can get you ni trouble. Atleast by reading it, you'll be going in with your eye's open. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/09/17/bad-notes-on-venture-cap…

That's a great article, but I'd like to add that SMB / Enterprise isn't a strictly binary demaracation with clearly defined boundaries. It's more of an analog continuum where lumping a given company into one bucket or the other is somewhat probabilistic. Eg, a 500 person company and a 32,000 person company are both over the stated threshold of250 employees for "SMB", but the 500 person company and the 32,000 person company may behave quite differently. I think this article covers some related ground and may be of interest here: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/09/16/most-startups-should-be-…

As a Co-founder I can attest to the fact that it is a very valuable asset. But with that said, my co-founder and I left our jobs at the same time to start our company and had complementary skill sets. He is the development side of the house and I wear the "biz dev" hat. There is a really good post by Mark Suster that talks about hiring your co-founder. It is a the best of both worlds in some cases because you get someone that is on the same commitment level, but you don't have to give up all the equity that comes with a 50/50 split. Here is the link: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/09/the-co-founder-mythology…

I mistook this site to be that of Mark Suster [0] at first glance. Pretty similar domain names. Just fyi for others. [0] http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/

I found this writeup by Mark Suster, one of the investors, a good read: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/03/24/how-i-got-the-monkey-off…

Take a look at these articles from Mark Suster about enterprise sales: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/03/19/one-of-the-biggest-mista… http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/on-selling/ (look at the PUCKKA links, those are great)