Category Archives: Venture Capital

Startup anti-pattern: elephant hunting

As part of the continued series on startup anti-patterns, we look at elephant hunting: chasing big customers/deals. Continue reading

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More startup anti-patterns

It’s been a decade since I first assembled the list of startup anti-patterns, the repeatable ways startups waste time and money. The project has always been near and dear to my heart, as I often find myself directing entrepreneurs to … Continue reading

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Unicorn pressures and startup failures

The startup anti-patterns section of my blog summarizes the repeatable ways startups waste time & money and, often, fail. Learning from startup failure is valuable because there are many more examples of failures that successes. (Anti-)Patterns become more noticeable and … Continue reading

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Angel investing strategies

My friend Jerry Neumann wrote a great post on angel investing strategies, dissecting truth and myth about different betting strategies and sharing his own approach. The question of luck came up and a commenter linked to my work on data-driven patterns of successful … Continue reading

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Raising money for revolutionary startup ideas

Between the work we do at Swoop and some big idea startups I’m advising, revolutionary innovation has been top of mind for me recently. That is why the following statement Richard Feynman makes in a lecture about the difficulty of … Continue reading

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The Zen of fundraising

When investing in companies through FastIgnite, I usually sell my super-secret value-add as opposed to just cash. See, cash is not that hard to get if you know how to ask for it and there aren’t any obvious reasons for … Continue reading

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Repurchase agreements: what you should know before you sign

This is the second guest post from Dave Broadwin, head of the Emerging Enterpise Center at Foley Hoag LLP, in the area of founding agreements. Part one is on vesting and the other related posts are on improving the performance … Continue reading

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Founder Agreements – Vesting, Vesting and more Vesting

Following my posts on improving the performance of founding teams, founder agreements and strategies for dealing with poorly performing co-founders, I continue to receive many emails at FastIgnite from entrepreneurs having difficulties with managing and formalizing the relationships with their … Continue reading

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Startup Founder Agreements

I have been thinking a lot recently about how to apply agile development principles to investing and key aspects of startup development such as team building. That’s also the thread connecting my two recent posts on VentureHacks. Both stem from … Continue reading

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The best vesting schedule

There is no such thing as the best or optimal vesting schedule in a startup. That doesn’t mean current vesting schedules are really good but it does mean that many of the so-called best alternatives are not much better. No … Continue reading

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