I’m finishing up the paperwork on the first round of funding for my little startup.
In the spirit of Walking the Talk and Eating Your Own Dog Food, I’m going to try and document this adventure to the maximum extent possible.
- Title: Founder. I’ve been harping on this since VC day one. Don’t take the CEO title, they fire CEOs. Instead, you are the founder and you do whatever it takes in whatever job that maximizes your talents for the greater good of the company. I’m the founder of this adventure and when this puppy takes off, I’m chasing talent smarter then me to get this one over the finish line.
- Slides: Ten. The business is captured in ten slides with 6 of them being use cases. If I get heads moving in a vertical up and down direction on at least 4 of the 6 use cases, we can move into the appendix of additional slides, models, life, etc. If not, we talk about the Blue Jays (Toronto), the Sox (Boston), or State Government IOUs (The Valley) but we do not “continue the dialog.”
- Financing: It’s about ownership. I have a fairly simple spreadsheet which has an assumed amount of capital I should need to raise over time and the percentage of the company I will own at the finish line along with what I think a sales price will be. I’m not so much focused on pre-money, post money rather how much, on a fully diluted basis, of the company will I own when they pass out the checks. Yes, there are pesky details in this thinking, I’m just giving the main point; focus on your piece of the end prize and is that piece worth the trip. You can read a timely post from Jess Bussgang on this very topic. Oracle of the Obvious, heh, nice one Jeff.
More coming.
Rick, if you could post your ownership spreadsheet, with numbers removed/changed/obfuscated, I'd appreciate it very much. I've tended to think along the same lines but never modeled it, interested to see how you approached it.
Posted by: Parand Tony Darugar | July 26, 2009 at 20:48
It's a good idea. I will make a clean/generic one people can use.
Posted by: Rick Segal | July 26, 2009 at 20:54
I was just going to suggest it would be great if you could publish all the docs when you are past certain sensitive periods. Kinda like open source your start-up :)
Posted by: Chris S | July 27, 2009 at 00:32
Yes, great idea Rick. I would apprecaite a copy as well ;)
Posted by: Peyman | July 27, 2009 at 02:14
Not focussed on the post money value? :)
Posted by: Stewart | July 27, 2009 at 12:58
Stewart... Heh.. I think what I have in the bank at the end of the adventure kinda qualifies!
Posted by: Rick Segal | July 27, 2009 at 17:30