Entrepreneur

The stark difference between US and Israeli VCs

We see it over and over again: Israeli entrepreneurs coming back from a fundraising roadshow in the Valley excited and hopeful. They met some of the top investors in the world during their visit and generally heard positive feedback. For the most…

The startup’s version of “Beat and Raise”

One of the best ways for a public company to increase its share price is by beating quarterly earnings estimates and raising full year guidance. This is what is routinely referred to as the “beat and raise.” In simple English, beat-and-raise means that the…

Can revenue reduce your startup’s value?

Deciding when to raise money and how much to raise are among the most crucial decisions a startup CEO makes.

The “textbook answer” for the questions above is to raise enough capital for the company to achieve an accretive milestone…

What makes (Israeli) startups succeed?

It has been a good year so far for our Israeli-based portfolio companies with four exits totaling more than $1.2 Billion. Early this year, Altair was acquired by Sony Semiconductor for $212M, which was the first acquisition ever for the Japanese company in…

Managing your startup option pool

One of the things you need to do as a CEO of a startup is manage the Employee Stock Option Pool (ESOP). This is the pool of options you use to attract and retain talent.

The fallacy of Participating Preferred

Once in a while I see a startup that gave its Series A investors participating preferred shares. Not unexpectedly, this is more common with startups that raised money from Israeli VCs.

Winning the away game

It is a well-known fact that sports teams benefit from a home court advantage. In fact, NBA teams consistently win about 60 percent of games that are played in their home arenas. The same phenomena is true for international startups which need to compete in the US, outside their comfort…

How to improve your investment pitch

There are many blog posts out there about how to build your VC pitch deck, what to include and not include in it etc. But much more important than what you say is how you say it. At the end of the day, the one thing that investors care about most is YOU. When we…