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Two scholars measure the economic impact of VC-funded companies. Over the past 30 years, venture capital has become a dominant force in the financing of innovative American companies. From Google to Intel to FedEx, companies supported by venture capital have profoundly changed the U.S. economy. Despite the young age of the venture capital industry, a fifth of current public U.S. companies received venture capital financing. Venture capital (VC) is a high-touch form of financing that is used primarily by young, innovative, and highly risky companies. Venture capitalists provide not only financing but also mentorship, strategic guidance, network access, and other support. These investments are highly speculative — most of the companies that receive VC funding will fail, even as some become runaway successes. Three out of the five largest companies in the world received most of their early external financing from VC.
Via Marc Kneepkens
Explained in plain English There’s a sucker born every day — or so they say. But the way startup fever has been spreading across the land, it almost feels more like there’s a Zuckerberg being born every day. And that feeling is real. According to data from the Kauffman Foundation, 2015 has marked the first year startup activity has been on the rise since the Great Recession. In fact, it’s soaring — the numbers show we’re living through the biggest upswing in new companies, products, business deals, and jobs in the past twenty years.
Via Marc Kneepkens
The Seven Startup Metrics You Must Track Forbes Not spending enough time gauging your business’s progress can be just as harmful as wasting your time with needless emails or Excel sheets. You may be so focused on getting your business to the next level, chasing funding and finding the right talent, that you are ignoring developing metrics to monitor your success. But without strategic planning, you’re lost. And you can’t plan if you have no frame of reference for where you are. I’ve found that these seven metrics (which roll up into three top-level categories: sales metrics, customer metrics, and finance metrics) are good starting points. To read the full article, click on the title or image.
Get your Free Business Plan Template here: http://bit.ly/1aKy7km
Via Kristine Santos, Martin (Marty) Smith, malek, Marc Kneepkens
Equity crowdfunding investors are not like other crowdfunding contributors. They are not looking to support a particular item or to get a physical trinket for their support. Investors who you want to attract via equity crowdfunding are interested in long-term rewards, innovation, and growth. Attracting these investors should not mirror the other types of crowdfunding available. The goal is to attract serious investors in a non-traditional, high risk form of investment, also known as your start-up. Of course, the greater the risk, the greater the reward. In order to attract these investors, the issuer must let potential investors see the clarity and strength of the investment and future enterprise.
Via Marc Kneepkens
Buffet's Startup Tips Are so important I created a @HaikuDeck for his tips and for implied startup tips such as:
* Multiple Money - don't depend on one income source. * Spending - buying things you don't need means selling stuff you do...eventually. * Savings - Save then spend not the other way around. * Investment - Never put all eggs in one basket no matter how beautiful the egg. * Honesty - Honesty and character and lack of it are expensive and amplifed by money so don't expect from "cheap people".
http://www.haikudeck.com/p/94SRtkQRzX/warren-buffet-startup-tips
Via Martin (Marty) Smith
Getting your tech startup covered in press isn't easy. Nonetheless, it's one of the most valuable activities which provides your endeavor with links and
Via Martin (Marty) Smith
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One of the most frequent questions I get as a VC is how to become a VC. Newly minted MBAs and startup veterans alike want to get into the investing game in increasingly large numbers. Unfortunately, there are so few VC jobs available in any given year it makes the prospect unlikely for most. If you want to be a VC, my advice is to just get started; you can do the job of a VC without a dollar to your name. Seriously, you don’t need a specific degree, a list of specific credentials on your CV, or scads of family money to do the job of a venture capitalist. I’d wager that almost anyone reading this post has the raw cognitive capabilities to do the work. Read more: click image or title.
Create your own capital raising instruments for your own VC fund, with Financial Architect® More here: http://www.business-funding-insider.com/RaisingCapital.html
Via Marc Kneepkens
By Farhad Manjoo.
Fledgling companies are increasingly delaying initial public offerings of stock, which can keep the risks — and rewards — limited to venture capitalists and hedge funds. Not long ago, if you were a young, brash technologist with a world-conquering start-up idea, there was a good chance you spent much of your waking life working toward a single business milestone: taking your company public.Though luminaries of the tech industry have always expressed skepticism and even hostility toward the finance industry, tech’s dirty secret was that it looked to Wall Street and the ritual of a public offering for affirmation — not to mention wealth.But something strange has happened in the last couple of years: The initial public offering of stock has become déclassé. For start-up entrepreneurs and their employees across Silicon Valley, an initial public offering is no longer a main goal. Instead, many founders talk about going public as a necessary evil to be postponed as long as possible because it comes with more problems than benefits. Read more, click image or title.
Via Marc Kneepkens
Crowdfunding platforms are changing the way we finance projects and services, but the laws surrounding them are still ambiguous. Here are 10 facts to get you up to speed. Crowdfunding is a tool that allows anyone -- be it startup founders, musicians, artists, students, children, or even someone in a developing country who lacks basic electricity -- to attract a pool of people via the internet to invest in their business idea. A funding target is established, and rewards to backers are offered.This new type of startup business model has the opportunity to disrupt industries and change the way we determine success and let the best ideas flourish, rather than the best access to capital. It's exciting, because the venture capital model that powers Silicon Valley and the global startup scene is inherently biased based on geography and connections. According to the Small Business Administration, about 600,000 new businesses are started in the US every year. The number of startups funded by VCs? 300. That means 99.95% of entrepreneurs won't get funded.To affect real change, we have to understand the basics: what defines crowdfunding, how it works best, and how the current laws shape what's possible. We also need to look at the ways the law is changing and what it means for the future of crowdfunding.Here is a list of the 10 most important things to know about this important new buzzword. To read the full article, click on the title or image.
Get your Free Business Plan Template here: http://bit.ly/1aKy7km
Via Marc Kneepkens
In order to increase your odds for receiving funding, here are some criteria considered by venture capitalists. It's easy to dislike angel and venture capitalist investors. For entrepreneurs looking to raise capital for their start-up businesses, these early-stage investors can be awfully hard to find, and when you do find them, it's even tougher to get investment dollars out of them.
But, think again: angels and venture capitalists (VCs) are taking on serious risk. New ventures frequently have little or no sales; the founders may have only the faintest real-life management experience, and the business plan may be based on nothing more than a concept or a simple prototype. There are good reasons why VCs are tight with their investment dollars. To read the full article, click on the title.
Get your Free Business Plan Template here: http://bit.ly/1aKy7km
Via Marc Kneepkens
Startup & Life Tips From Warren Buffet
There are reasons other than sheer brillance Warren Buffet has way more money than most. He lives by a strict code and these tips share some of that code. Great #startup and life tips.
My favorites are learning to spend only AFTER saving (hard lesson that one) and the tip about honesty being expensive so don't expect it from "cheap people". I suspect Warren means "cheap" in much more than the monetary sense.
Via Martin (Marty) Smith
Intel Capital has announced investments in 16 companies, totaling $65 million. The investments spanned cloud services, datacenter technologies, mobile and.. Intel Capital has announced investments in 16 companies, totaling $65 million. The investments spanned cloud services, data-center technologies, mobile and consumer-related services. The investments are as follows: CloudFX of Singapore is a cloud strategy consulting company that helps companies re-architect IT infrastructures, operations and helps institute DevOps style practices.Cloudian of Japan and the United States, is an object storage platform that is compatible with Amazon Web Services, Citrix Cloud Platform, Apache CloudStack, OpenStack and other cloud services.CSDN is a Chinese company that provides a community website and services platform for IT professionals in China. According to Intel Capital, it has 27 million registered users and 500,000 enterprise partner members. The company owns several Chinese IT communities such as CMDN, a mobile developer community and IT recruiting website Pongo.DotProduct provides software for real-time capturing and processing of 3-D data on Android tablets. Use cases include documenting crime scenes to imaging movies sets for gaming and entertainment applications.Wayz Japan is a service to store, manage, access, share and organize files anywhere on any device.Interlude is an Israeli platform provider to create interactive videos that allows viewers to determine what happens next in the viewing experience. Its authoring platform.-Treehouse, allows video creators to map, build and publish Interlude videos on Web, mobile and social platforms. Pretty cool.Lintes Technologies, is a Taiwan-based company that makes the Thunderbolt peripherals that provide high-speed data transfer. According to the company website, Thunderbolt was developed by Intel, and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple.Perpetuuiti TechnoSoft Services of Singapore and India, offers advanced data recovery technologies that help businesses in complex IT environments, orchestrated across virtual and physical computing resources in different data centers.Prism Skylabs, which today received $15 million in funding, helps companies use footage from existing security cameras to provide retailers and other businesses with “web-style analytics.”Reduxio Systems, of Israel, boasts it offers infinite data recoverability through real-time primary storage deduplication and protection technologies.Rocketick, also of Israel provides software simulation acceleration for chip verification, helping reduce time-to-market of new designs.Savaari Car Rentals is an online car rental company that offers car rentals across 60 cities in India to both retail and corporate customers.SBA Materials develops “nano-porous dielectrics” that for example, can help improve the performance of advanced chips used in mobile devices while reducing their power consumption.SkySQL, of Finland, announced it has raised $20 million to deepen its support for MariaDB, the fast growing open-source relational database and the emerging database of choice for Wikipedia.WiTricity specializes in wireless electricity. The company was founded in 2007 with clients in consumer electronics, automotive, medical devices and defense. Intel Capital is an active venture group. According to CB Insights, it is the third most active investor in security technology companies. The analyst group reports that it has recorded the highest number of security exits among investors since the start of 2012. Among Intel Capital’s recent security exits include FireEye and Palo Alto Networks. For links to each of those companies, click on the title to see the original article on TechCrunch.
Via Marc Kneepkens
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Interesting statistics! Definitely part of the overall mystic and fabric of Silicon Valley and high tech in general. Very creative and exciting soup of entrepreneurship, investment and high risk/rewards.
VC investment employ 38% of working force