Founders and Fundraising
What’s The Right Way To Ask Investors For Money?
Imagine this scene. You’ve just finished your investor pitch, and you think the pitch has gone well. However, you don’t know what to say. More importantly, you don’t know how to ask investors for the money you need. As surprising as it sounds, I’ve witnessed hundreds of startup CEOs not know how to ask for…
Read MoreHow Do You Get Execs To Join Your Startup Without Equity?
“I want missionaries, not mercenaries,” The CEO of a startup I am working with, “Jeff,” said to me the other day. He was frustrated because his VP Sales just asked to increase his base salary, that was at the market rate, by over $100,000 per year. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I…
Read MoreWhat Are The 3 Best Tips For Negotiating Your Term Sheet?
The first term sheet I ever negotiated took just forty minutes in elapsed time to negotiate. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] The longest a term sheet took to negotiate that I’ve been involved with was ten months. And the investor was the same investor in both…
Read MoreUse Your Competitive Analysis Slide To Get Funded
If you want your startup to get funded, then you’d better nail your competitive analysis slide. Your competitive analysis slide is an opportunity for you, the CEO, to shine. Yet sadly, too many CEOs do exactly the wrong thing and don’t take advantage of a golden opportunity. I don’t want that to happen to you. …
Read MoreWhat If Another Startup Is Doing The Same Thing As You?
I’m working with a startup right now that has 50, that’s right 50, direct competitors. 48 of the 50 competitors are startups, and the two other competitors are well known public companies. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. That’s a lot of competition to say the least. The…
Read MoreThe Five Traits You Want In Angel Investors
The one thing that you can almost never recover from is choosing the wrong investor or investors to work with. I’ve seen the wrong investors kill or almost kill too many startups to count. I want you to know what are the five traits of good angel investors. In today’s video, I’m going to explain…
Read MoreWhy You Should Tell Investors About All Your Competitors
I learned a really great lesson years ago about the power of controlling the flow of information. Let me set the scene for you. I was watching a company pitch to the VC fund I was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at. The CEO went out of his way to talk about the competition, the…
Read MoreWhat Should Your Startup Vesting Be?
You and your co-founder start your company, and you divide up the equity between you. It sounds simple enough, right. Then you raise money and your new investors demand you have a vesting schedule for your equity. So the question is are your investors right? Do you really need a vesting schedule for your equity?…
Read MoreCan You Get Investors To Respond To Cold Emails?
When I was feeling really desperate (a common occurrence when I was raising our initial funding), I would build up a list of potential investors I had no way of getting a warm introduction to. You can learn how to develop a cold email that works too. Just follow these three steps: Step 1:…
Read MoreWhen Should Your Startup Raise Funding?
Most CEOs wait too long before they raise their seed funding or venture funding, which almost always results in their startups failing. I don’t want that to happen to you. In today’s video, I’m going to explain to you: Should you raise funding? What you’ll need to raise funding? Who you should raise money from?…
Read More