The Startup Table (Get Your Folks Together Often)
As we wind down the year and people go their separate ways to celebrate the holidays, ask yourself this: does your entire team meet often to discuss mission, vision and goals? If not, this should be a New Year’s resolution high on the list.
You Began Building Your Startup Years Ago (You Just Didn’t Know It)
We spend a lot of time at Promus Ventures getting to know the founders and their background. We talk a lot about Founder-Market fit, the how and why of each person working at a startup.
Release the Robots!
We’re finally seeing real teams build real robotic products that are solving massive pain points in numerous different industries. Robotic startup funding (ex-Drones) increased from $273M in 2014 to $587M in 2015, with $1.4B in cumulative funding since 2011 (CB Insights, 3/23/16). We’ve watched many robotic
Raise One Round Ahead
It is rare to see founding teams, even the good ones, continually scheduling meetings with potential future investors when the team isn’t currently raising a round. It is counterintuitive and frankly hard to do.
Convertible Note Pricing Could Get Uglier
With the recent volatility in the market, we expect the conversion of convertible notes in a tighter Series A market environment to get a little more interesting. Not that the conversion road hasn’t been littered with lurid tales already…
Ramifications of Tech Downturn for VC/Startups (Excerpts from Our Latest LP Letter)
As we write this, the Nasdaq is off 14.5% YTD, with the S&P down 9.3% YTD. And it’s just the beginning of February. Only the ostriches with their heads in the sand fail to recognize that the investing winds have indeed shifted.
Build To Never Be Acquired (Don’t Listen to the VCs)
Somewhere in VC Investor Due Diligence 101, an investor is supposed to ask startup founders who would be good acquirers of their business if everything goes well. You see, most VCs invest their limited partners’ capital out of a pooled fund, and these limited partners expect said VCs to return their capital t
Bad News is Good News (Building Great Founder/Investor Relationships)
We recently received an update report from a startup team in the Promus Ventures community. The deck was full of bad news: delays for certain product components were increasing, more bugs and unstable builds than usual, longer than anticipated QA testing, certain new hires were not working out, and a list of a
Make Them Earn It
Top founders know a secret when it comes to hiring and fundraising: give prospective employees and investors homework and make them earn it.
Life is a constant A/B test
Every startup is a unique microcosm. Investors who think they can pattern match every new portfolio company are mistaken. Founders who believe they can insert an old formula that worked in a previously successful company they ran or were involved with may run into trouble.