I had a bizarre request earlier this week to send in original signatures to some board documents that I had signed (a lender to the company in question wanted them). I regularly send around scanned documents – for everything ranging from board resolutions to investment documents (and shred the originals). I can’t think of the…
An entrepreneur started a meeting with me a few days ago by asking me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I politely declined and thought I’d back that up with a post on the subject (I recall reading a few other VC blogger’s views on NDAs in past years – there’s certainly no lack of thought…
Finding information out about your competitors is something that all companies do on a regular basis. Trolling web sites, reading blogs, setting up news alerts for articles, talking to customers and prospects, trolling trade show booths and listening in on webinars are all pretty common occurrences in the business of knowing what you don’t know…
TechStars applications for this summer are officially open and I’d encourage any budding entrepreneur with a half-baked (or quarter baked – or fully baked) idea they are passionate about to apply. For those of you who are not familiar with TechStars, it’s a program started by successful Boulder entrepreneur David Cohen that brings about a…
From my partner, Chris Wand, describing a program one of his companies put in place over the holiday to encourage employees to clear a bunch of outstanding bugs in their backlog: Anyone that wanted to fix a bug during their holiday break could earn $50/$75/$100 (depending on the severity of the bug) for each known…
With thanks to Ross for actually pulling everything together, I’m launching a new look and a new site today. Seth Levine’s VC Adventure is now hosted on my own domain – www.sethlevine.com – and is sporting an updated look. My old TypePad site is still active (although I’m no longer posting there) and in theory…
A few years ago, my partner Brad Feld suggested that entrepreneurs “take a giant step back” and look for a non-technology based analog for describing their business/idea (the “analog analog“). Today at a board meeting we spent some time working out our analog as a way of describing our young company. It occurred to us…
Probably the most consistently overlooked “best practice” in venture backed companies is the CEO review. In my experience most companies provide little, if any, structured feedback at the CEO level. Perhaps the board or the members of the compensation committee might provide the CEO with limited (and mostly ad hoc) feedback at the beginning of…
From CES. The bit with Bono is particularly amusing! Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr5w3X4R8b4