Entrepreneurship & Fundraising

For your attention

Entrepreneurship & Fundraising

View more presentations from Ariel Poler

The Big Bang of Crowdfunding: Startups as a Public Asset Class - Part 3

[ By Kevin Lawton from TrendCaller ]

View more presentations from trendcaller.

For your attention also Part 1 and Part Part 2

Do not care about business plan, care about business model

[ By Steve Blank Woodstock for Entrepreneurs – the Startup Lessons Learned Conference ]

Why accountants don’t run startups

If you wanted to know what I’ve been thinking about after Customer Development, you can see and hear it in the talk I gave at the conference. Watch the expanded version of “Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups below.
- The first story, Shifts in Entrepreneurship starts at 4:20
- Not All Startups Are Equal starts at 7:30
- What VC’s Don’t Tell You starts at 12:00
- Business Plans Versus Business Models at 14:08
- Startups Search Companies Execute at 17:05
- Leadership Versus Management at 24:50
- Durant Versus Sloan at 30:13
- E-School Versus B-School at 33:41

View more presentations from Steve Blank.

The New Face Of Venture Capital

[ By Kevin Lawton from TrendCaller ]

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Raising Venture Capital - More Tips ...

[ By OnStartups ]

There’s already lots of great content on the web about raising capital and understanding deal terms. My favorite is the content on Venture Hacks (a must read, if you’re raising capital). But, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to share some of the “lessons learned” from my own experiences. Some of these you’ve probably heard before, but one or two will likely be new to you

Read here full story 9 Quick Tips Learned While Raising $33 Million In Venture Capital

A tool for building your Elevator Pitch

In continue to previous post...

[By holyexposures.com]

At the meeting we heard from one VC, Blumberg Capital, who specializes in seed round investments of internet companies.
The partner of the firm who spoke, Bruce Tarragin, said that they were closing a deal in Tel Aviv now, and had already closed another deal earlier this quarter.

The Capital Market Bulls Return
There had been several months, since last October, with virtually no dealflow that was actually leading to investment. Now, there seems to be a reawakening of the capital markets. The negative sentiment of the market has been replaced with a feeling that we have already reached bottom, and now there are good ideas out there that are worthy of investment.


Continue here Israel Economy for Start Ups – Signs of Improvement

Sell High, Buy Low: Israeli Start Ups Get Funded

[By VCCafe.com]

Despite the exit drought, more Israeli start ups have reported to recieve venture rounds from the last 60 days. You’ll notice the common thread: lots of private investor involvement and almost always participation of the previous investors as well.

Read more: >>>

10 steps to catch VC cash

[By CNN Money]

Looking for funding for your big idea? Follow our 10-point guide to landing the right investors.


"The entrepreneur is the Pied Piper of a company," says Chip Hazard, general partner at Boston-based Flybridge Capital Partners. "We want an articulate, passionate CEO who can excite others - employees, customers, business partners."
Flybridge joined the syndicate that backed Goby Technologies, a Boston-based search startup that provides comprehensive leisure and travel information in a single site - first with a seed round to build a prototype, then with a multimillion-dollar Series A round to fund longer-term operations. >>>

Draper helps take companies "prublic"

[By David Lawsky and Anupreeta Das]

"It's an opportunity for an entrepreneur to get a little bit of liquidity and ... for a venture capitalist to either show that these companies have some real value to them or to sell some."

Venture capitalists invest in fledgling companies and hope to make a return several times that investment by taking the company public or selling it to a larger competitor.

There are 85 companies that have had to pull their initial public offerings because of inhospitable markets, Draper said. He said 200 start-up companies of the "highest quality" are ready to participate in the XChange.

Continue here ...

Venture Capital Under Attack

The journey to find these ideas has taken me from inventors’ basements, to obscure research labs, to, in one case, a smoky Milwaukee bowling alley renowned for its fried Twinkies. With a lot of hard work and a little luck that journey ends on the floor of a stock exchange, witnessing a company you helped build go public. It’s a helluva ride.

Great article by Adam Grosser with interesting statistics about the value of VCs to economic prosperity. The challenge is - what can be learned from the current financial crisis that will improve the VC industry.

CREATE is a key theme!

Job creation, innovation and new technologies will help lead global economy back to a growing and successful economy. Venture Capital plays an incredibly important role in the global economy, and thanks to VCs (in both time and money), entrepreneurs and start-ups management have indeed been able to grow seedling ideas employing many and driving worldwide competitiveness.

There is a lot to be said for a creative and transformative approach to take the best of what the VC’s do and creatively use it as one of the solutions to rebuild the economy through creation.

We will miss you Yossi ...

Not for Kids!!!
Do not try this at home!!!
For GURUs only...

Back to blogging - Video from Business of Software

Hello to all my friends and readers, long time (since November 26, 2008)I have not published any articles … Sorry, I am investigating some new (at least for me) frameworks and technologies (Websphere, WII, DOJO, etc ...) on the fly while working on some interesting Web 2.0 project. So, there is absolutely no free time.

But anyway, I like to share with you some excellent video I have found - Everything I Know About Startups by Dharmesh Shah - OnStartups.com

1. Your idea can suck. Just get started.
2. You can be in the middle of nowhere and still build a great business.
3. Not having cash breeds good behavior. It’s helpful to have constraints.
4. In defense of the modest outcome: You don’t HAVE to build the next Facebook. Modest liquidity events are highly under-rated.
5. “I’m a complete introvert. It’s not that I don’t like people, I just don’t like being around them a whole lot.”
6. Something’ changed here. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get your message out there.
7. The real issue with VC is not the cost of capital (which is high), but how hard it is to actually raise it.
8. You have to go through the 12 flaming hoops of venture capital.
9. All the time you should’ve been spending solving your customer’s problem, you use to start to solve the VC’s problem.
10. Write a blog, not a business plan.

Enjoy the great presentation.
Regards

Wall Street thunder - what will happen to Startups?

Financial market thunder in the U.S. last week without any doubts will affect on the strategy of investors, whether Angels or VC’s. So, what awaits Startups in near future? The same scenario like in far year 2001...? Deep roll-back of investments from High-Tech field for 2-3 years..? Or experience of past crises will give different result - a balanced approach in making decision, to continue invest in technology companies or not.

Being entrepreneur myself, just in beginning of my way (pre-seed stage) I have to admit that current situation is very worries me too. But much more, I am not envy to Startups that are at more advanced stages, - it is not a secret how “fragile” world and the life-time of young companies. How many non-sounds “aborts” will happen in coming near months? Names of what companies we will read in a long list of obituary, untimely gone and unfairly excluded?

The economy of U.S. is terminally sick while past 10 years. But all what is made so far, is squeezing one burst bladder by blowing a new one, building financial pyramid of speculative securities and obligations on the ruins and corpses of previous. All of us, worldwide, will pay high price of those “genius invents” of Wall Street’s financial gurus. But it is absolutely different theme, which have to be disclosed in kind of separate essay...

Hope, I am clear, sorry for my English …
I will be very thankful to anybody who may share thoughts about near future of investments in Startups, - light predictions are more than welcome.

Following the visit of Jeff Pulver to Israel

One more Israeli startup - SemantiNet announced that it has secured $3.4 million in first round funding. Founded in 2006, SemantiNet plans to launch its first product later this month, which it says will

"combine leading-edge semantic web technology with crowd-sourcing, state-of-the-art cross-platform multimedia and integrated browser functionality."

Investors are: Giza Venture Capital and Angels - Sir Ronald Cohen, Dr. Joseph Vardi and Jeff Pulver.

Read full story here