Creating a perfect seed round with Leads, Follows and Random investors

For a startup, raising a seed round is a daunting endeavor.  Techstars Seattle Demo Day is looming and I recently finished mentoring the teams at the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator so advice on fundraising is top of mind. I’ve written about fundraising before here and here, but I recently saw

Telling your startup story with .xls vs. ppt

Troy Henikoff is the managing director of TechStars Chicago.  I recently saw him do a great talk outlining the tools and strategies around building your financial models.  Lucky for you, the Techstars team in NYC, where Troy spoke, videotaped the whole thing, but I thought I would pull out a

Changing context creates new learning

Last week, I participated in The Meeting in Aspen, CO.  I was invited by my good friend Christopher Jerard who is former editor of Freeskier Magazine, Rival IQ customer and all-around good dude working with some amazing clients in action sports.  The event, held annually for the last 10 years,

Your best team is a blend of fit, skills and domain expertise (in that order)

Building your startup team is the most important thing you’ll do in the life of your company.  The team includes the people who work on it every day as well as your advisors, investors and in certain cases, partners.  At Rival IQ, we are hiring for a marketing leader

Quotes to inspire

"Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity." -John F. Kennedy

The startup fundraising cookbook (8 steps to raising a solid round)

I do a significant amount of startup mentoring and I’m often asked about fundraising. Like many things, I’ve tried to develop a process and decision-making criteria. There will always be exceptions to every rule and the odd startup that can raise a round without much preparation, but the

How winning the America’s Cup is like building a successful startup

Today Oracle Team USA won the 34th Americas Cup, staging one of the biggest comebacks in sailing, and maybe sporting history, fighting their way back from an 8-1 deficit to win 9-8 in the best of 17.   It was an amazing success and show of skill, engineering excellence and perseverance,

The Startup Calendar – my best way to plan for success

In a startup, you are always racing against a clock. Most of the time this is “when are we going to need to raise more money” but can also be working toward key milestones or trying to outpace key competitors, which is often when you need to raise money. And,

2 years goes by fast when you’re building stuff

First, happy valentines day to everyone and their partner, and a special one to my love, Teresa. It was 2 years ago to the day that we closed the deal and sold Gist to Blackberry (Research in Motion at the time).  As an entrepreneur and a team, we had set

It’s good to say “thank you”…

I just finished reading Brad Feld’s latest book, Startup Communities. While I encourage every entrepreneur to read it, it is even more important for anyone who wants to make their city better, more fun and creative by driving a culture of entrepreneurship and startups. There are lots of great