A thriving startup community provides a boost to the greater community in lots of ways. It encourages innovation and investment, attracts creative, entrepreneurial people, and generates a certain energy– making the entire city a more desirable place to live. Additionally, when local startups are acquired by big companies, and those companies hire more people in the …
As an investor, I’m often asked what sort of burn rate is appropriate for a growing company. This question seems to come up right after a Series A raise when the startup feels flush with cash, has some level of product/market fit, and is wondering how much and how fast to try to grow. For …
What is the right startup success metric? I was recently asked why we celebrate fundraising amounts as opposed to other meaningful metrics, such as revenue, recurring customers or staff size. To be perfectly honest, it’s a struggle to find intermediate metrics for startup success. In our industry, funding is used often as a measure of …
When you’re first starting a company, you’re right there in the thick of it, all the time. During that heavy lifting phase, you naturally have to throw yourself into getting your startup off the ground and figuring things out. But it can’t go on like that forever. Obviously your own personal health would take a …
Time and time again I’ve seen how important quality relationships are to a startup’s success. I really appreciated the focus on authentic connections in Jordan Fliegel’s book Coaching Up! Jordan is an alumnus of Techstars, and his company, CoachUp, is a service that connects athletes with private coaches. He started CoachUp because of his life-changing experience with a private coach, and his desire …
I recently spent a week in Australia. One of the things I often say when I travel to speak to startup communities around the world is: “We can’t hear you!” My point is that I want them to be loud and proud about what’s going on there. Often I hear them lamenting about not enough …