You’re in a long line at the post office. Only one counter is open and an old lady and the post office worker are in a conversation that might well take the rest of the day. Are you staying quietly in the line or are you walking to the front to shake things up? FCUK, it’s hella uncomfortable either way.
Read MoreIf you’re a technology inventor, you know the struggling stage. To innovate is to be a misfit, a non-conformist and a seeker of the new. Until you’ve broken through, you are on your own, with too few resources, and surrounded by a world that doesn’t want you. Drive, determination and belief in oneself are required of every artist.
Read MoreIn my previous blog post – which I gave a clever title and then promptly ran out of cleverness for titles – I wrote about several ways that a startup, with a promising technology and a great relationship with an established strategic partner, can fail to have a successful commercial outcome. Here’s a summary:
Read MoreWe’re lucky to have Will Thorndike as an LP and advisor. Alongside founding and running Housatonic Partners he wrote an influential book that Warren Buffet put on top of his recommendations a few years ago. “The Outsiders” analyzes the highest performing CEOs and identifies that extraordinary outcomes stem from superior capital allocation. We transposed the framework onto the hard science startups we invest in. What came out is a powerful summary of insights.
Read MoreYou’re a founder of a startup developing what you’re certain is going to be an impactful new technology. Off to a great start.
Read MoreWorking closely with early-stage “hard-tech” startups, I routinely hear a myth: that being successful in sales is some kind of black magic best left to back-slapping, charismatic schmoozers that “know how to close”.
Read MoreIf you have a new invention, it’s really fun to calculate your TAM, your Total Addressable Market. It shows the commercial opportunity and impact your invention might have. And it’s the outlook with which you excite investors, new hires and your mom. Founders can be forgiven for getting carried away. A good many pitches we see have HUUUUGE TAMS, with BIGGLY opportunities. It’s all fun and games until it leads you to a misguided strategy and you are killing your exit options. Let’s dive in and see where ambition meets fantasy and how an inflated plan can kill you.
Read MoreHard tech innovation is famously slow to get to market. A 2004 MIT study found that the average time from lab to product is 15 years for a material science innovation. For founders and investors that’s a daunting if not impossible timeline. Why is it so long and how can you speed things up (dramatically)?
Read MoreVenture returns come from a concentrated portfolio of companies where you, the investor, can actively add value.
Read MoreSimple microeconomics explains why investors should avoid events like this. There might be excellent companies presenting, but there are very unlikely to be excellent investments on offer. There are simply too many investors chasing too few companies. Excess demand + limited supply = high prices; i.e. lots of early stage companies raising too much money at unreasonably high valuations. Investors – especially funds with a duty to provide adequate returns to LPs – will not find attractive opportunities in such an environment.
Read MoreWhile recently helping a startup secure development funding from a large company, I started reflecting on why the two have so much difficulty working together. Large companies complain that startups are hard to work with, have unrealistic expectations, are too ambitious and are frustratingly impatient. Conversely, startups lament that big companies are slow, uninspired and don’t value the breakthrough potential of their technologies. This leads to conflict.
Read MoreA few years ago, a headline caught me by surprise: Amyris, a Bay Area startup that used bioengineered “magic yeast” to turn sugar into diesel fuel, had just raised $133M in a Series D financing. At first my head rang with the sounds of imaginary corks popping in San Francisco – a successful startup was raking in the cash!
Read MoreIt’s common for early stage entrepreneurs to obsess about their valuation. Valuation times your stake equals your wealth – why wouldn’t you obsess about that? It is also the one number that colleagues, peers and even your grandmother can use to judge how successful you are.
Read MoreThe Lean Startup methodology postulates: Build the minimal viable product (the MVP) necessary to collect critical data to confirm your market hypothesis. It pushes teams to avoid falling in love with an extensive feature set and instead to build the simplest version of the product that can establish if the market needs it at all
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