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 “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 Startup Advice .  Many startup companies hire advisory boards.  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. It’s very tempting.  It’s mostly done by first-time entrepreneurs who want to persuade (bribe?)

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.

This post is part of my series “ Startup Lessons ” Elephants, Deer and Rabbits – Some thoughts on start-up segmentation know that this advice won’t apply to every possible startup – but I think it applies to many. When you start your company the very first question you need to ask yourself is which Nearly all of the mistakes I made at my first company I fixed by the time of my second company.  This This is the only mistake I repeated twice and it is a mistake that I see many, many companies make.

This is part of my ongoing posts on  Startup Advice .  There are people who tell startups that they should hire the most senior people that they can find.  Please don’t also confuse this with whether a VC should invest in a CEO who’s done it before – that’s a given. It is tempting because you not only see that they were Only Hire A+ People Who Punch Above Their Weight Class I’m not one of those. 

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;

If you’re a startup and you don’t have a close relationship with a few law firms you’re really missing one of the most important relationships that any entrepreneur can have. When to get a lawyer - If you plan to be a venture or angel backed technology company (what I mostly write about) the best time to start meeting and getting to know lawyers is long before you ever start your company.  I recently read a post over on VentureHacks titled, “ Top Ten Reasons Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers ” written by Scott Walker (who blogs on legal issues for entrepreneurs ). 

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

We started with our financial statements.  We So I changed things up and became much happier with my results.  Here 1.        Set two strategic topics per board meeting and start with them – I bet most of you feel that you have pretty talented people around the table but you get stuck talking about the minutiae of your business.  You But they were in a slide and people asked you questions so Like many of you I’ve sat through my fair share of Board Meetings over the past decade.  For For the most part I’d call them Bored Meetings.