The Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan - Open Source Funding « blog maverick
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/02/09/the-mark-cuban-stimulus-plan-open-source-funding/
HOW TO: Raise Money in a Down Economy
http://mashable.com/2009/01/02/how-to-raise-money/

Raising money is never easy, but in a recession it gets even harder. Here's a quick guide to raising money in a down economy.

Start a business

Lean startups - a lesson in bootstrapping.

** Posted using Viigo: Mobile RSS, Sports, Current Events and more **

Google Ventures seeks to discover and grow great companies - we believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. We're studying a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care. We invest anywhere from seed to mezzanine stage and embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the garage to global relevance.

Venture Capital - by Google. We seek to discover and grow great companies - we fundamentally believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things.

1. How will you reach a massive audience? - Every Net entrepreneur should answer these questions: How do we get to one million users? Then how do we get to 10 million users? Then how will you get deep engagement by your users. 2. What is your unique value proposition? 3. Will your business be capital efficient?

ages. How does a company rise above the noise to attract massive discovery and adoption? YouTube did it through existing channels like MySpace, which already reached millions. Yelp had strong SEO, which found them a mass audience searching for restaurants and nightlife. Facebook’s University-centric approach landed them 80% adoption across a campus within 60 days of launch. Every Net entrepreneur should answer these questions: How do we get to one million users? Then how do we get to 10 million users? Then how will you get deep engagement by your users.

Great video & slides from Davie McClure's talk at 'Presentation Camp SF' -

Crowdfunding, or getting many people to donate small amounts of cash to fund a project, startup, or service, is nothing new. Think public radio or television pledge drives. Think political campaigns.

Please do not take the term literally. Living on instant ramen would be very unhealthy. Rice and beans are a better source of food. Start by investing in a rice cooker, if you don't have one.

Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. This is a different form of profitability than startups have traditionally aimed for. Traditional profitability means a big bet is finally paying off, whereas the main importance of ramen profitability is that it buys you time.

** Posted using Viigo: Mobile RSS, Sports, Current Events and more **

good article on basic terms of a first round investment

My last 2 posts were about things to avoid, so I thought it might be helpful to follow up with something more positive. Having been part of or observed about 50 early stage deals, I have come to believe there is a clearly dominant set of deal terms. Here they are:

here are some terms included below that are needed in larger deals and which aren’t absurd for VCs to ask for. So both documents are highly relevant. Start with the Y Combinator docs for your first early angel round, an

If you're an entrepreneur thinking about getting funding, this is a must-read. It outlines very fair guidelines for a first-round term sheet. Often, first-time entrepreneurs only concentrate on the big terms of a term sheet (e.g. round size, valuation) and neglect the "smaller" but often equally important things like stock preferences and triggers.

Now, a lot of people, including prominent angel investors and venture capitalists, are starting to listen to him. Tomorrow Ressi will announce a new, basic term sheet for use by investors and founders. The goal is to protect founders and reduce legal fees, which average $50,000 or more per venture round. (This is an excellent idea. "Free" at work.)

How much money to raise and what to do with it: using mint as a case study

In order to get that seed round, you'll need to understand your competition, and come up with projections. Everyone knows this will change...but you need to show your thinking around it anyway. As an example, MINT originally projected $30/user/year for lead-gen and CPA. (Aaron noted that the company is pretty close to this today. But this is the exception rather than the rule.) Know how the business model works. People do X behavior and it turns into $Y income, add up those $Ys and it's a $Z business. If you can walk people through these assumptions convincingly, you'll get that seed round.

The straight shot: Why should you raise money, and how much? * Step 1: When you're ready with an Idea: Raise $100K from friends and family, and use it to build a prototype. * Step 2: Once the prototype is done: Raise < $1M in seed capital, and get into market with an alpha launch. * Step 3: After that initial launch has traction: Raise $5-10M, and use it to prove/scale the model.

Interesting

It’s hard to express just how much settling those questions has galvanized Redfin to attack the monsters under our bed. Sure, we were dimly aware of those problems before, but we existed in a state of seething, unacknowledged tentativeness. Weeks of contemplating what it will take for us to win prepared Redfin to swallow the red pill, stuff the TaunTaun, hack the Kobayashi Maru. At very few moments in a company’s history does it makes its way so deliberately. Like the recovered patient who saw while sick everything she had always meant to do, we want to make the most of our new lease on life.

For me, the most important point is that whatever questions others ask about your business are worth recording, cataloguing and quantifying

" the questions VCs asked Redfin that changed how we think about our business."

These are an even better idea than the Common Application for college.

open source term sheet templates and share contracts created by Marc Andreessen's company.

Open Source legal documents for startups from Andreesen Horowitz

Free templated – but flexible – legal documents for entrepreneurs to use for seed-stage deals.

Why startup pitches fail

the stage of your business—for example, some businesses are just getting started with an idea, while others are printing money. Focus your pit

Pitches usually fail because they answer the wrong questions. The right questions depend on the stage of your business. post by Eric Ries, a founder of IMVU and an advisor to Kleiner Perkins.

This is a subject near and dear to entrepreneurs, maybe the dearest subject of them all. Founders start out with 100% of the company and every time they raise capital and/or issue stock and options to their management team, that number goes down.

"As the cost of starting a Web company decreases, thanks to cloud computing services and technology that entrepreneurs can rent instead of buy, many founders can finance a new company without the help of venture capitalists, using their savings, money from family and friends and credit card debt, Mr. Hendershott writes. More often, they are choosing to sell small, immature companies instead of taking the longer, riskier path of developing a business that could one day go public. That makes venture capital less relevant."

Interesting read for startups

Do Web Entrepreneurs Still Need Venture Capitalists? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com http://bit.ly/cvc1i [from http://twitter.com/robinklein/statuses/1825392377]

experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks

We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks. We’re a pre-seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas. Our start-up and support process accelerates the route to beta, profitability, and success.

check this out. Cool infographic thing pdf.

"We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks. We’re a pre-seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas. Our start-up and support process accelerates the route to beta, profitability, and success."

"We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks. We’re a pre-seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas. Our start-up and support process accelerates the route to beta, profitability, and success.

“We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and invest in Europe’s most passionate geeks. We’re a pre-seed investment company designed to enable great people to launch great ideas. Our start-up and support process accelerates the route to beta, profitability, and success.”

philanthropy showcase. started by hollywood ppl

via Frank - this is Edward Norton's group fundraising site

Use with Marnie's charity

layout -homepage

vc suster