This is part of my ongoing series “ Start-up Lessons. ” Imagine you pour 5 years of your life into your next gig and it starts to become successful.  Would 8221;  The problem is that you’re opening yourself up to a claim by one of these people that you somehow stole their ideas.  I 8221;  If you want to subscribe to my RSS feed please click here or to get my blog by email click here . In the Beginning …

This is part of my ongoing series called “ Start-up Lessons .” I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. I just completed an exercise where I went out to hire a new associate for my VC firm, GRP Partners.  8221; I

This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC” – the outline is here. You’ve You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s.  Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice startup technology vc venture capita Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks.  Most of them are telling you that they just need to see a bit of traction before they’d be prepared to [...] ...Tags:

This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC” – the outline is here . You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s.  Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue.  Traction really is about Everybody seems to like you but nobody seems to be getting out their checkbooks.  Most of them are telling you that they just need to see a bit of traction before they’d be prepared to invest.

If you plan to set one up – no problem.  Advisory Board Problems : There are several problems that I have encountered myself and in my many discussions with CEO’s who have set up advisory boards. come out of the gate strong and never let up) then you might get some attention.  You’ve This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  Many startup companies hire advisory boards. 

This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital . I’m sure I’ll spark the ire of some VC’s for saying so, but there is certainly such a thing as black-out days in venture capital.  It is very difficult to raising venture capital between November 15 – January 7th.  It’s worth you knowing this so you don’t waste your time.  It’s also very important to understand so that you can properly plan when you raise money.

This is part of my ongoing series about Raising Venture Capital . few years ago it became fashionable for large VC’s to do seed funding.  So they set up seed programs that allowed for rapid decisions for $500k or less, often done as convertible debt for both speed and cost reasons.  If the large VC doesn’t agree This posting was inspired by an email from Rajat Suri who wrote me an email in response to Chris Dixon’s blog post (link below) from August, which recently re-ran on Business Insider and has generated much Twitter chatter. A

This is part of my ongoing series “ Pitching a VC .” The “Triple Play” of VC Presentations large part of my series has been outlining what the typical VC PowerPoint presentation should look like.  Some Can you just show up without one?  Short photo courtesy of Atlanta Braves 8221;

This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC .” 8221;  Getting a meeting with a prominent angel or VC is difficult enough.  Some Some advice on how to do that was covered in this link – Getting Access to a VC .  This I spoke about the topic on Fox Business News yesterday in a great session with TechCrunch50 winner RedBeacon This post covers the day after.  The Day After (the waiting game begins)

Francisco Dao came up with the idea of letting 10 companies that weren’t selected for Twiistup to do a presentation the night before to a group of people and let the audience pick one company to win the final slot at Twiistup.  I I’ll put up the video when they post it on their website. Many of them have their iPhones and laptops Most people suck at presenting to big groups.  It’s It’s a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at key conferences can be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to influence journalists, business partners, potential