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The management team - while building the business

by Fred Wilson, January 16, 2012 | Comments

Founders should think of the business as yet another product they are building

This is the third and final post on the subject of the management team. The final phase of company development I am going to cover is "building the business." Building the business largely means building the management team. They are one and the same. Many founders are naturally talented at building product and building the user base. But building the ...

Some thoughts on the IPO market for Web companies

by Fred Wilson, December 23, 2011 | Comments

	Public market values may be lower than late-stage private valuations (Fred Wilson is a VC at Union Square Ventures, based in NY. This article explains his bullish views on the latest batch of Web IPOs, arguing that in aggregate they have a revenue multiple under 6.6x.) We have an IPO market for Web companies again. I don't have all the names in front of me, but this year has brought ...
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How much to burn while building a product

by Fred Wilson, December 20, 2011 | Comments

Foursquare spent nine months without any pay, but a reasonable burn is about $50k a month

(Fred Wilson is a VC at Union Square Ventures. This piece is about burn rates for start-ups and why $50,000 a month is probably a reasonable starting point, unless founders are willing to put their own sweat equity in without paying themselves, which happens a lot.) In last week's MBA Mondays, I wrote about burn rates at three stages of a ...

Cheap will be smart; Expensive will be dumb

by Fred Wilson, December 5, 2011 | Comments

This is how I am viewing the market opportunity these days

Fred Wilson is a VC from Union Square Ventures, in NY. I wrote about this a while back but I've been refining and sharpening my thinking on the question of which devices will be smart and which devices will be dumb. It's an important question because it gets to what platforms developers should build on. I believe that cheap devices will ...

JFK to SFO, and back

by Fred Wilson, December 4, 2011 | Comments

Major players like Facebook, eBay, Zynga, Twitter all have engineering teams in NYC

I (Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures in NYC). I've been doing that route for 25 years. And never have I felt that these two cites/regions have been more connected at the hip than I do right now. This past week brought the news thatFacebook plans to open an engineering office in NYC. Serkan Piantino, the Facebook ...

Business arcanery: Going concern

by Fred Wilson, November 14, 2011 | Comments

The purpose of this new monthly series is to decode business code words

(Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, in NY) We got so many ideas for this Business Arcanery series on MBA Mondays that I'm not going to do it as a series. I am going to do one of these every month. There is enough business arcanery out there that I could do a years worth of weekly posts without running ...

Revenue-based financing

by Fred Wilson, October 17, 2011 | Comments

	This structure may align your incentives with angel investors Fred Wilson is a VC at Union Square Ventures, based in NYC. Back when we were doing our MBA Monday series on Financing Options For Startups, I got an email from my friend Andy Sack. Andy was one of the first entrepreneurs we funded by in the mid 90s with our Flatiron Fund. He's done something like a half dozen startups since ...
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Is there a cash crunch? What we're seeing

by Fred Wilson, October 13, 2011 | Comments

	VCs are having a tough time raising money; Angels may be topping out Fred Wilson is a partner at Union Square Ventures in Manhattan. The Wall Street Journal has a story out today that says "Web Startups Hit Cash Crunch." There has been a fair bit of reaction in the tech blogs and I thought I'd toss into the discussion some things we are seeing: 1) There are so many startups out there ...
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Liquidation analysis (Continued)

by Fred Wilson, October 10, 2011 | Comments

'Things like participating preferred shares and dividents and multiples make this even worse'

Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist with NY-based Union Square Ventures. This is a continuation of his article "Liquidation analysis." Last week I pointed out that when your company is sold at price points around or below prices where you have financed your company then your proceeds in a sale transaction will not equal your fully diluted ownership percentage times ...

Whither Netflix?

by Fred Wilson, September 19, 2011 | Comments

	Shares give back half their gains, after catapulting six-fold in 18 months (Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures in NY) When you see a stock chart like this you have to wonder, what the hell is going on? Netflix has been one of the hottest stocks out there, rising from $50/share in Feb 2010 to $300/share in July of 2011. That's six times your money in 18 months. ...
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Lean

by Fred Wilson, September 19, 2011 | Comments

Lean is a state of mind that a founder and his/her team needs to have across all aspects of business

(Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist with Union Square Ventures in NY) I've been reading Eric's book which I am very much enjoying. And on wednesday night I spoke to the NYC Lean Startup Meetup with the help of Giff who interviewed me. Eric and his fellow lean advocate Steve Blank have both written at length about the methodologies associated ...

Financing options: Convertible debt

by Fred Wilson, July 11, 2011 | Comments

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As the current financing gold rush fizzles, the use of convertible debt will wane

MBA Mondays are back after a one week hiatus. Today we are going to talk about convertible debt. Convertible debt can also be called convertible loans or convertible notes. For the purposes of this post, these three terms will be interchangeable. Convertible debt is when a company borrows money from an investor or a group of investors and the intention ...

Why I'm rooting for Google+

by Fred Wilson, July 4, 2011 | Comments

I don't think competitors kill companies and services. I think the vast majority of "deaths" are sel

The day Google+ launched, I sent a friend at Google who was involved in building the service an email requesting an invite. I got the invite late that day and started playing with the service. Here's my profile. I'm not sure if this page is public or you need a Google+ login to see it. At some point Google will ...

How much money to raise

by Fred Wilson, July 4, 2011 | Comments

First, try to keep dilution below 20%; Second, raise 12 to 18 months cash each time...

I spent some time yesterday talking to an entrepreneur about this topic and I thought I'd share what I told him with everyone. When your company is growing really fast, doubling employees year over year, adding users and customers at a very rapid rate, you don't want to raise too much money. If you raise three or four years of ...

Financing options: Vendor financing

by Fred Wilson, June 27, 2011 | Comments

Equipment financing or development for equity are two reasonably common examples

Last week's financing options post was about getting your customers to finance your business. This week's post is about getting your suppliers to finance your business. Truth be told, this is not very common in the startups I work with. The more capital intensive your startup is, the more you can and should think about this approach. Two reasonably common ...

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Fred Wilson
Managing partner
Union Square Ventures (Owner)

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