Funding

Sweat Your Fundamentals

Something weird is happening in startup land as of late. For some reason, I see more and more pitch decks asking for money, whilst completely ignoring any and every explanation of how the startup expects to make money. No explanation of the revenue model. No financial modeling. No…

How You Finance Your Growth Determines Your Future

In today’s world, where it seemingly has become cool to finance your startup through Venture Capital, and many entrepreneurs do not even seem to consider alternative funding sources or merely different ways of building a company, it feels…

The Equity Paradox (Keep It and Give It Away)

I recently read this:

Startup founders generally have only ideas, charisma, and equity to work with. Ideas and charisma are cheap, but equity is expensive. To make a startup work, the founder has to divvy out parts of the…

The Sequencing of Funding

Having had this conversation a couple of times during the last few weeks, I think it might be worth elaborating here: When companies raise money, they have to think not only about how much they want to raise at which valuation but also the sequencing of their funding rounds.

Know What It Takes

Exponentials are truly everywhere. Not just in technology (hello Moore’s Law) but in pretty much every revenue projection in the business plans for tech startups these days.

Now there is nothing wrong with predicting that your revenue will roughly double each year —…

Never Build A Company For The Exit

I am constantly surprised by how many entrepreneurs believe that it’s a good idea to build a company with the sole goal of an exit.

First of all — the odds that your company survives the first few years of its existence are already darn slim…

Why You Should Not Raise VC

Here is the problem with venture capital: A lot of startups think they should be VC funded, but are fundamentally not set up for it.

When you raise venture capital, the simple and common assumption is that your company needs to grow 10x in its valuation…