Today’s guest post comes from Ted Rosen, a partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild. How to write an effective company “teaser” is one of the most common topics I’m asked about by entrepreneurs and I think Ted has some excellent thoughts on how to prepare a company summary that hits the right points but isn’t so long that you’ll lose your reader’s attention (or make them abandon the summary before reading the important parts). Ted really nails it in the piece below. I’d especially call out “jargon free” and “keeping it simple” – the inverse of which are probably the two most common traits of poorly formed executive summaries. As always, I welcome comments, ideas, suggestions, etc. You can…
Posts By / seth levine
There Is No VC Seed Investing Signaling Problem
My partner Brad recently wrote a great post entitled “Addressing the VC Seed Investor Signaling Problem“. This, along with several larger funds reaching out to me to ask for advice about starting their own seed investing programs got me thinking about the hype surrounding the VC Seed Investor Signaling Problem. My conclustion: THERE IS NO VC SEED INVESTING SIGNALING PROBLEM As Mark Suster points out in two fantastic posts on the subject (here and here) signals abound in the investment world. And frankly, as signals go, this isn’t a particularly major one. I’m serious. There are a million reasons that an investor group may or may not be able to continue to support an investment, some of which relate to…
My AdExchanger Interview
AdExchanger just posed an interview that I did with them that touched on some of our ad-tech investments as well as our overall investment philosophy. I’ve cross posted an unedited version of that interview below. 1. Why get into the venture capital side of the business? Do you ever get the entrepreneurial "itch"? I first got into venture capital about 10 years ago and I love my job. I was running a few business units for a small public company and while I enjoyed the operational side of my job, I was also responsible for M&A and partnerships and had a particular affinity for the transactional side of my job. While I consistently have the entrepreneurial itch, I actually think…
My Big Mac
So after much teasing by friends and in a vain attempt to solidify my geek creds, I finally took the plunge and ordered a MacBook Pro. I’m dumping my Microsoft infrastructure and am going to switch over cold turkey once I get the thing set up. I’m anticipating a difficult few weeks transitioning. And here’s where I need your help. For readers that have made the switch, what advice do you have to make it go smoothly? For all Mac users, what programs, add-ons, short-cuts, Mac resources (particularly a directory of short-cut codes) do I need? Also, very specifically, I’m looking for something that will let me sync a network share locally so that all files are available off-line. This…
TechStars Loves NY!
This morning we announced that TechStars is opening it’s 4th (and final) program in New York. As readers of this blog know, I’m a huge fan and supporter of TechStars (and, along with my Foundry partners, an individual investor each of the TechStars programs in Boulder, Boston, Seattle and now New York City). For those unfamiliar with the program, TechStars is a mentor driven accelerator for start-ups. Founded in Boulder and now running programs in Boston and Seattle, New York will be the final US city to which we take the program (we feel the model of having non-overlapping terms is the best way to maximize the success of each city program). Working with TechStars companies for me has been…
StockTwits Ticker Link and Private Company Symbols
StockTwits announced two great new features in the last week that are worth checking out. The first is a partnership with SecondMarket to expand the StockTwits platform to include private company streams. So just as you’d tag a post with $AAPL you can now tag private companies (think $ZYNGA,$4SQ, etc). Just as it is for public equitites, tagging your posts (tweets, blogs, etc.) with private company symbols is a much more efficient way to identify the company you’re talking about and become a part of the broader conversation about a company. StockTwits has put together an impressive database of private company symbols and is adding to this list daily. The second feature was launched with less fanfare – a WordPress…
Has convertible debt won? And if it has, is that a good thing?
Paul Graham, founder of Y-Combinator, sent out a tweet on Friday saying: “Convertible notes have won. Every investment so far in this YC batch (and there have been a lot) has been done on a convertible note.” It’s an interesting data point on Y-Combinator companies, but is this truly a macro trend? Have convertible notes really won? And if so is that good for start-ups? Good for investors? I think the answer to these questions are that 1) it’s not at all clear that this trend is as definitive as Graham suggests; 2) it’s a mixed bag for entrepreneurs (more positive in the short run, potentially negative in the long term); and 3) it’s clearly not a positive trend for…
Say it ain’t so Paul
As if the world didn’t already have enough patent trolls, Paul Allen has sullied his name and jumped into the fray suing Google, Facebook, Apple and a bunch of other high profile companies alleging infringement of a number of patents held by his company, Interval Research Corp (now defunct). It’s a travesty that Allen has stooped to this level. Patent trolls are in my view the lowest of the low. And while our current – completely messed up – patent system erroneously rewards this behavior, most trolling takes place by firms and individuals you and I have never heard of (and frankly don’t want to know). Why Allen – worth an estimated $14Bn – feels the need to stoop to…
The Freemium Myth – more data
My last post with some thoughts on product pricing has received a ton of traffic, comments and email. Clearly this topic is one that a lot of entrepreneurs care about (and struggle with). A few people pointed me to a great post by Ruben Gamez of Bidsketch on the Software by Rob blog that talks about freemium plans and why, in Ruben’s view, they aren’t always drive the results companies are looking for. It maps well to my thinking (I directly called the freemium model into question in my pricing post). There’s some great data in the post – definitely read the full thing. Here’s a few that caught my eye: Bidsketch started out with a freemium model. Ruben carefully…
Pricing models, the freemium myth and why you may not be charging enough for your product
I’ve been pulled into a number of product and pricing meetings recently (for reasons unknown I’ve become the Foundry pricing and productization guy). I thought it would be helpful to put some of my thoughts into a blog post and hopefully spur some conversation in the comments and over email. With any broad topic, there are always exceptions to the general rules. There are also few absolutes and much of this advice varies depending on your specific product and market. And keep in mind here that I’m dealing generally with web services of some kind in the advice below (not consumer apps and not enterprise software). With those caveats, here are some ideas on pricing models: – Beware of too…