Startups Fundraising Thursdays - A Forum to Ask About Fundraising, Investors, Accelerators, and Other Sources of Capital |
- Fundraising Thursdays - A Forum to Ask About Fundraising, Investors, Accelerators, and Other Sources of Capital
- Self centered egocentric CEO
- Help, my partner is now actively sabotaging the business.
- The Practical Product Management Framework For SaaS
- Risk of loss due to lawsuit as a startup employee
- How does a new person in a startup curtail “design by committee” among a small team of people who “like” design but have no experience in doing it?
- How to structure our pre-seed SAAS team for future best practice?
- Taking a break as entrepreneur
- Need Help Understanding If I'm Getting Screwed On Shares
- How to connect with potential business partners at business schools?
- Startup Business Plan dilemma
- How to determine the best model
- How did you organize and manage your software or app product development with the team?
- Ex-company not honoring options upon being acquired
- How to provide content verification on an early stage of startup
| Posted: 29 Aug 2019 06:06 AM PDT Welcome to this week's Fundraising Thursdays Thread. Ask about anything related to fundraising, investors, accelerators, grants, and other sources of capital. That includes how to find these sources, how to work with them, and how to negotiate with them. Don't be shy. The purpose of this is to learn and share ideas and methodologies with one another. Any question is a good question! If you are answering questions, remember to be kind and supportive. Many are just starting out and have no idea what they are doing. That's okay! We all knew nothing before we knew something.You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Aug 2019 01:49 PM PDT Here's the situation: I work for a startup that hired a CEO at the begging of the year mainly to, thanks to his vast network, lead the fundraising and to onboard clients. But that's as far as his positive contribution goes. Due to his egocentric and narcissistic nature, he doesn't realize that his capabilities and experience are very limited and should solely be used to leverage his network. He wants to be involved in all aspects of the product development and operations, but failing miserably to do so which has resulted in alienating himself from almost all of the team to the point where some team members do not reply to his emails anymore and doing there own thing. Watching him "lead" the teams makes it look like a caveman running a spacial operation. He's only looking for himself and his personal agenda… but we need his contacts, and nothing else. The chairman/founder's mistake was to not put the limitations of the CEO on paper when she hired him. Has anyone experience that before? How can we "manage" a CEO who has an ego the size of a skyscraper and make him focus on networking and only networking? [link] [comments]  |
| Help, my partner is now actively sabotaging the business. Posted: 29 Aug 2019 11:53 PM PDT So I started a small startup a yr ago. After a month I decided I needed some help and asked a friend to come in with me 60/40. I went out and found a client/investor. Things were going well until he had a mental breakdown after a GF breakup. My wife and I provided comfort, meals, and cleaned his apartment while he was getting over it. Then one day he completely changed, he started doing erratic things, never sleeping, drugs (like the once in a while fun nothing heavy but quit smoking weed), dancing all night, spending all his money, etc. He turned in the same progress report and bills for it. Eventually, I had to confront him and told him he needed professional help. This did not go well. He accused me of being filled with demons and that I am the one who is out of control. After 2 months again of not doing work, I had to confront him again. I tried giving him an ultimatum. Again didn't go well, he claims that he wants to do nothing and retain his 40%. He hasn't spoken to me in 2 weeks now. I ran into him on the street today and he just ran away. All we have is debt with no revenue as we haven't launched yet. But I have gotten everything ready but all the paperwork is in the businesses name. I don't know what to do, please help [link] [comments]  |
| The Practical Product Management Framework For SaaS Posted: 29 Aug 2019 05:10 AM PDT Hey startup founders and founders-to-be! I'd like to share a framework that my team and I have been working on for the past few weeks. Its main goal is to keep us productive and help us focus on the big picture. The Practical Product Management Framework A short summary: Chapter 1: Introduction to Product Management
Chapter 2: Product Strategy
Chapter 3: Product Roadmap
Chapter 4: Product Backlog
Chapter 5: Scrum Sprint
Would appreciate your feedback and thoughts! [link] [comments]  |
| Risk of loss due to lawsuit as a startup employee Posted: 29 Aug 2019 05:40 PM PDT I was offered a job with a U.S. startup. I asked whether I am personally at risk if the company is sued for any issues. I was told:
Can anyone provide insight into what this means? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Aug 2019 08:09 AM PDT Per my title, I am a newly-hired lead designer in a startup, and I am struggling with this very early on. Everything seems to be relegated to "what does each individual think we should do?" democratizing the output for which I am supposed to be reaponsibile and accountable. I go about my work relatively surgically, taking into account market, brand guidelines, demographic, utility, etc, but when thing go to committee, thing devolve into "i like this," or "i think we should do this" irrespective of any arguments I make. Also being new, Im trying to be a team player, and not be obstinate or argumentative with founders, so its a lot of biting my tongue and settling on very sub-optimal work. So my question of "how do I broach the idea of too many cooks spoil the broth (🎶) stands. If anyone has any experience here I would relish your advice! Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| How to structure our pre-seed SAAS team for future best practice? Posted: 29 Aug 2019 10:16 AM PDT Right now we are a CEO + COO, and are looking to bring on a "Junior Partner," which may not be a thing, and we are trying to determine what to call her... The CEO and COO have no agreement on paper yet, we are in the idea stage and working on our pitch deck. We have been at it for about five months, and refining our SAAS plan. BACKGROUND: CEO and COO both have connections to VCs, one at a pretty significant firm. We are also both mid-career with complimentary areas of expertise. The CEO had been running a micro-agency for almost a decade with solid industry clients in an industry that's heating up. The COO has org dev + growth experience, and joined to help restructure the business. The goal initially was to expand and do original work beyond client work. We then pivoted to prioritize the SAAS that the CEO had been developing on paper for a few years. The mini-agency used to rely on a network of freelancers to create the work product, which takes a lot of time and attention to book and schedule, manage, critique, etc. However, the CEO is experienced in talent management and hiring, and has developed some best practices around that. Client work has to continue while we work on the SAAS, and the CEO wants to bring on one of the freelancer who has exceptional experience, despite being 25 and early in her career. The COO is worried that her age would be an issue, when it comes to understanding the risk of working pay-free for a while. The idea is the Junior partner will be paid for any client work, and then contributions to the org/biz/SAAS will be sweat equity, and she will be a founder. She will help to manage client work (paid), execute client work (paid), contribute to SAAS features (sweat equity), contribute to brand identity (sweat equity), help with biz dev (sweat equity), and lend her personal brand to our team (sweat equity) to help us further establish who we are (a woman-founded startup). We know that we will need to hire a CTO at some point as well, but we aren't at that state yet. QUESTION: CEO thinks age is not relevant because the individual has experience founding a passion project, and has proven to be resilient, conscientious, and insightful in the past. CEO thinks the experience of being a founder to put on a resume + the experience of seeing what works and what doesn't, and learning alongside us, is a worthy opportunity for the 25 year old. COO thinks someone at that age has no understanding of the risk of investing her time with no guarantee of success or pay, and only will be taken advantage of. COO has recently been involved with an organization that DID exploit younger individuals. Neither of us are getting paid right now. Is there a way to structure this that makes sense for everyone? What is that structure -- founder + founder + co-founder? Founder + Founder + Junior Partner? Is this just an equity split thing on paper? Thank you in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Taking a break as entrepreneur Posted: 29 Aug 2019 01:23 PM PDT Many people are saying that entrepreneurs are working 24h a day, 7 days a week - trying to explain that we must always be there, available, at least on phone. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me. Why? Because I can work, like, a lot, but sometimes, I need day off, to relief. After that, I am fresh and ready to work again all day along, whole month. My question is, how frequently do you take a day off? What is your relief technique? [link] [comments]  |
| Need Help Understanding If I'm Getting Screwed On Shares Posted: 29 Aug 2019 12:56 PM PDT Hi Everybody, I recently joined a startup a few weeks ago and I'm a bit confused/concerned on my stock options. My base salary is $115,000/yr and I have been given 12,000 stock options. The company has 25,250,000 shares outstanding at "full dilution". At the time of me joining, the last fundraising round was done at a $25M valuation. However, while I was joining they were in the process of securing a Series B round. This Series B closed about 3 weeks after I joined at a $75M valuation. At the time of my offer, the founder explained to me that they were in the midst of raising a Series B and that the strike price of my options would be determined after the third-party audit is conducted. Here is the language around my shares in my offer letter I signed
My concern lies around the fact that there is no strike price outlined for my options. In theory, if I joined at a $25M valuation and they just raised at a $75M valuation the $ value of my shares should 3x? Trying to get a clearer picture here, thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How to connect with potential business partners at business schools? Posted: 29 Aug 2019 11:31 AM PDT I am the technical founder of a (so far) successful brick and mortar adult beverage company. This is my first company and I've learned a lot in the last few years creating it. During this process, I've developed an idea for a second company that I think would do well and I'd like to actively start pursuing it. I'd like to seek out new, separate business partner(s) from my current business and I've heard I might have luck connecting with people just coming out of business schools or alumni. What's the best way to do this? Do business schools have programs to connect their students/alumni with people like me? I'm in NYC if that helps with suggestions. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Aug 2019 05:04 AM PDT I was hoping for some advice in how to structure my startup. A little background--I have over 15 years as a successful IT Support owner/executive and have a couple years executive experience with blockchain/technology startups. I have come to understand how the Machine Learning technologies can be applied to prevalent problems in the IT industry that I was in for so long. The goal is a service/product powered by Machine learning. That's the "here's the product" but due to the need for data--I have to start the strategy off with fully featured IT Support service company so we can start collecting data, development from Day 1. It's 100% critical to derive data from this operation because the data is very unique and can't be sourced from anywhere. So, to get to the point where we can have a fully functioning product/service that I am working toward--we have to start a business that will be our life source in development of the product. So, as in any business, we have to attract customers with marketing, sales, etc...and then we are working with the data derived from this business to develop the product. After this product is developed--we'll be ramping up marketing, sales, etc for this product. The product will be slowly deployed in a structured manner to our end users for feedback, etc and at a certain point, we expect to have a fully developed product that was developed around our service business. We then will turn around and market this product as our main focus and we don't have any plans on focusing on the original business unless it's creating profit under it's own ability--which is something I have success doing with. Here is the dilemma that has me debating to myself.
No matter what--the product that we will be developing is the ultimate goal. I have a network of investors and they have all expressed interest in funding me but I know I am going to be focused on the question of--what's the actual business? A service business or the product? I feel it's a symbiotic need and balance. Any advice? Anyone ever had this strategy? [link] [comments]  |
| How to determine the best model Posted: 29 Aug 2019 08:41 AM PDT Hey all, Wonder if you have an idea on how to choose the best way to go We developed an AI that can make any video shoppable, users can buy any product directly from the video- no need for long process editing etc.. We thought of several options 1. Market it as chrome extension (B2C) with affiliation as the business model 2. Market it as HTML player for brands and e-commerce sites ( SaaS model) 3. Market it as JS tag for publishers integration ( SaaS model or CPM cost) 4. Market it to DSP's (platforms who run video ads) as a feature that can be added to a VAST ( video ad serving protocol) What I'm looking for is a way to choose the best method, we thought about making a site and buy some traffic to see if the chrome extension could work) Would love any creative ideas on how the best way to check product market fit Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| How did you organize and manage your software or app product development with the team? Posted: 29 Aug 2019 08:25 AM PDT What are some effective ways to organize and communicate software or app product development with a team so everyone is on board and understands the tasks at hand? I'm somewhat aware of methodologies like agile but haven't organized or used it before. Is there software that does this and if so what's the most effective to use with a relatively low learning curve? Also, any general product management and development tips for success would be much appreciated. I'm working on a web application/platform. Thanks a bunch! [link] [comments]  |
| Ex-company not honoring options upon being acquired Posted: 29 Aug 2019 08:02 AM PDT I left a company a couple of months ago and was told I had the ability to exercise my options within 3 months of departure. The company was just acquired and upon asking how I can exercise my options, I was told that the acquisition was structured such that option holders don't get anything, only current employees. Is there anything I can do? Location: San Francisco [link] [comments]  |
| How to provide content verification on an early stage of startup Posted: 29 Aug 2019 07:40 AM PDT Hi! I have an idea for an app, where (without much detail) users will upload their own content. I'm concerned with the case, in which someone will upload something offensive/controversial. For example, let's say that someone posts something offensive and some other user reports this via a special system designed for this purpose. I'm thinking about what should happen at the "back-end" of this system. I came up with two ideas: - Hire some admins, which will verify the reported content - to be honest I don't like this idea very much, but this could be a temporary solution before some reliable users will emerge in the community, to whom (after official voting among all users) I could give additional permissions, thanks to which they could delete controversial content. - Create a system, in which each user can vote, if a reported post should be removed permanently, or preserved - let's say, that some post goes to the pool of reported content. Then, each user can go to the appropriate tab in the app and scroll through all of these questionable messages. There, user can up-vote or down-vote each post, and after acquiring some threshold level of up/down votes, the content is deleted or returns to the "main page". There can be an additional condition, that if a reported post doesn't get e.g. 100 up-votes in one day, it is automatically deleted. The second option suits me much better, but it also has its drawbacks. The first one seems much more expensive at the early stage of building startup. Also, in the second idea we can rely on evaluation made by many independent people. Because of this I suppose, that the final decision on the fate of a reported content (on average) might be more objective, than decision made just by one, hired by me person. What do you think? Maybe combination of these two approaches is the best solution? Or maybe you have some even better ideas to solve this problem? [link] [comments]  |
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