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It’s helpful when pitching venture capital firms to understand the mechanics of how the venture fund itself works. This will often give you an inside glimpse as to the motivations of the partners as well as how to understand the goals of venture capital firms overall.

Investors want to find the right fit. They want the right location, market size and traction, among other things.

How a Venture Capital Firm is Created

A group of smart people get together and decide that they would like to raise a venture fund to make investments in promising companies. In order to attract investment capital, they reach out to and pitch limited partners (LPs) who commit large sums of capital to the fund. They believe that the newly minted venture capita...

I was fortunate enough to travel to San Francisco for a week in early May and on one of my evenings I attended a pitch night which was moderated and judged by 500 Startups. These tips don’t just apply in the startup-world, but also apply for any type of persuasive presentation environment. Here’s what I learned:

1. Tell a story

I’m sure you’ve heard this a thousand times. However, what does that mean? For starters, when you’re explaining your product, don’t be so transactional — e.g. try not to explain your pitch as follows “if you struggle to track your logistics when you go for traveling, use our app.” It won’t help you to connect with your audience, it won’t help your audience remember your solution, and your audience won’t be able to r...

Need some PR for your project? When you’re launching a new business or product, or simply need a bit of a boost, PR can be helpful. Assuming you’ve done the due diligence (read the publication first, make sure you’re a good fit, look up the editor etc etc), actually writing the pitch is the hardest part.

Here’s a template style list of questions to answer (actually write these down!)

1. What do I want?

I want to increase sales.

2. What do I want from the publication?

I want one online article, one Instagram shout out, published in print.

3. What does the publication want?

Stories of business owners, content to fill pages.

4. What can I give the publication?

A giveaway, thought leadership, something else.

5. What is the value of my offering...

What do you do if you have a great idea for a tech startup, but no technical knowledge about how to build it? Well, there are usually three options: find a technical Co-Founder you can work with, outsource to an expensive dev shop in the States or in Europe, or outsource to a cheaper (but often lower quality) dev shop overseas.

Hicham Amine and his company Hidden Founders are out to add a fourth — and better — option to that paradigm.

The Hidden Founder Difference

Hicham describes Hidden Founders as “halfway between an incubator and a dev shop.” Dev shops, for example, traditionally complete the technical specifications of a project — and then leave. They have no investment in the company and, usually, are more like hired hands than ...

“…especially in the early days of your startup when you are less likely to reject work, when it’s done and dusted, and you assess your invested hours, more often or not you will find you have been underpaid. It is always hard to walk away from a job, but sometimes it is the necessary thing to do to maintain your a) business and b) soul.”

– Stephen Moore, Startup Pricing: It’s Not Always Right

Charging more can earn you less, underpricing can leave your company undervalued… The laws of nature seem to go haywire when we talk about pricing.

An exploration of why we tend to underprice by Stephen Moore, Co-Founder of Roots Furniture, triggered a discussion on how to best approach startup pricing. Did the Startups Live com...

Sweat equity is created when you or others contribute work to a business in the hopes that it will pay off in terms of an interest in the company as opposed to hourly or salaried wages.

You may hear a web designer saying that they took a 2% interest in a company that they paid for in sweat equity. They traded the value of their time for a stake in the company.

Trading time for equity is a time-honored tradition among startup companies and is used very aggressively. While at first it may seem like you’ve printed a whole bunch of Monopoly money that you can start using to pay people with, you’ll soon find out that there is a real cost to offering up stock early on.

Valuing Input

With sweat equity, it is critical that you translate effort into...

Working as a leader for a start-up is not for the weak. It requires a “rare unicorn” type of leader to see it through to stable profitability. The success of a business is how many unicorns you have on your team and how well they sparkle. What traits do I look for when seeking out the most sparkly unicorns of them all?

Trait #1: They’re a Hustler

Hustling unicorns run long and fast, they work with a sense of urgency, and they do it with a smile. They have an extra comb in their pocket and come prepared with water and snacks for the ride. Unicorns are prepared, work hard and look GOOD doing it. 🙂 There is no complaining of long weeks or long hours….in fact, they enjoy the hustle.

Sparkle Indicator: Horses act “put out” by a workload. Unicor...

Question

Is it OK to define high-level startup roles and responsibilities of Co-Founders at an early stage of a tech startup to avoid conflicts?

We are a team of 4 Founders and friends: two business people and two techies. I need help to clearly define the role of my other business co-Founder. I came up with the idea and convinced him to join me. Has anyone launched a startup with a similar kind of team? Your experience will be helpful.

ANSWER

Answer by Jason Lengstorf

“I think it would be vital to the company’s survival that startup roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. If there’s grey area, I’ve found that work tends to gravitate toward the more motivated party, and the social/power structure gets weird.

I star...

Building a vibrant workplace requires a foundation of trust, respect, and honest communication. It also requires employee appreciation.

Over 200,000 global employees were studied by the Boston Consulting Group, and the top reason they reported enjoying their work was, “feeling appreciated”. Number 2 was having a good relationship with their supervisor, and number 4 was that they had a good relationship with their colleagues. Financial compensation didn’t appear until number 8!

Four out of five employees (81%) say they are motivated to work harder when their boss shows appreciation for their work. Unfortunately, many managers don’t respond to this need and those who do, choose employee recognition programs.

Traditional recognition programs...

One of the most common recruiting tactics over the past few years has been to entice young, hungry talent by highlighting some unique company perks like nap rooms, unlimited paid time off, and ping-pong tables. While those benefits will certainly turn some heads, are they really the heads you want working for you?

The point of any recruitment effort is to find talented, qualified individuals to help your company grow and move forward. Talking about ping-pong tables won’t help you find them — unless, of course, you manufacture or sell ping-pong balls, paddles, or tables.

Instead, you should be thinking about your core values, your company’s mission, and the aspects of it that you and your current team are passionate about. Shifti...