Perfecting Your Pitch Deck? 10 Practices For Entrepreneurs
Pitch decks are a topic of permanent debate, no matter how much has been written about them. As such, this article will focus on 10 guidelines we advocate for entrepreneurs. Hopefully they can be...
Convertible vs SAFE — 5 Practical Principles For Startups
Raising a round and considering whether to do convertible or SAFE? Remember that convertible is debt that turns into equity based on certain parameters and SAFE is a specific type of convertible. This is...
Your Startup Is A Taking Off? 5 Ways To Incentivize New Employees
You have built the boat (or the rocket, or the plane, pick your favorite vehicle) and now it’s time to grow. How do you bring abroad new sailors to set course amidst uncharted waters?...
No place at the table without this one table
An introduction to cap tables “Our potential investors asked as to present the cap table. What is he/she looking for?” I’ve been asked this question occasionally in sessions with startups looking for funding. A cap table...
Brave New Seed? How Fundraising Has Changed For Startups Since COVID
We are coming up to two years since COVID truly hit the US. The first three months after Mar 2020 markets were down, as was startup activity. But after Q2 2020 we have seen...
Is There A Bubble? And 3 Practical Tips For Entrepreneur For 2022
If you are asking the question then you probably already believe in the answer. Pitchbook is a company focused on analysis and research in VC, PE and M&A and per their data till the end...
Common? Preferred? Founder? Making Sense Of Startup Shares
1) Preferred vs Common Historically there have been two types of stock: preferred and common. Preferred is for investors, common for everyone else including founders. When a company has an exit, preferred gets paid...
So Your VC Wants To Invest More? 5 Practical Tips For Entrepreneurs
If your VC wants to invest more in you then you have a good problem in your hands. Here are five practical ways to think about it. 1) Prorata (and Super Prorata) A prorata is the...
Uncapped Note? No Discount? Making Sense For Entrepreneurs
What is the right cap and discount for your convertible? Should you even have them at all? The latter used to be a very rare situation, now it is a commonly asked question. This...
What is Up With These Mega Rounds? Making Sense Of The Startup Market
$530M round: Snyk snags another $530M as valuation rises to $8.5B $400M round: Cityblock Health raises another mega-round of funding, tipping its valuation over $5 billion $130M round: TrueLayer raises mega-round as open banking heats up These...
Signaling Risk? How Early Startups Can Work Best With Big Funds
Signaling risk typically happens when a large fund comes into an early round, creating an expectation in the market that they will lead the next round. For instance, if a $1B firm puts in...
Hardware is Hard — 5 Practical Tips For Startups To Raise Successfully
You had a great idea. You built a great team. You know that hardware is a significant part of the product but also provides defensibility. Then why are you still hearing too many polite...
So My Startup Is Not Growing As Fast — 5 Practical Tips To Still...
Long sales cycle? Marketing got too expensive? Spent too much time fixing the product? There are so many reasons why things can take much longer than planned. In fact, our experience at Tau is that...
Closing Your Startup Round? 5 Practical Guidelines
Previous articles have talked about party rounds and keeping momentum in your fundraising. This one will focus specifically on the close, which ideally is a foregone conclusion but sometimes becomes the period of highest...
Have A Startup Idea? How To Raise A Pre Seed
The term pre seed has really become institutionalized in the last couple years, before that the idea / powerpoint stage wasn’t called by any other specific name. Let’s delve into definitions before 1) Definitions There is...
Your Startup Is Doing Great? 5 Ways To Optimize The Fundraise Further
Examples of previous articles: Raising A Bridge Round -- 3 Core Principles Insider Rounds -- the Good, the Bad and the Ugly How Best to Pitch to a VC The Art And Science of...
Going Crazy Managing A Fundraise? 5 Practical Guidelines For Entrepreneurs
At Tau Ventures we believe the fundraising process is always a bit broken -- it works for some startups some of the time but by and large it’s inefficient. While part of it is...
Fundraising Intermediaries? Why Entrepreneurs Don’t Do It, And Where It Still Makes Sense
When it comes to startup fundraising, using intermediaries is looked disfavorably in many if not most ecosystems. Three key reasons for this trend -- more investors around, technology has made coordination and communication increasingly...
Crowdfunding? 3 Principles For Entrepreneurs
Oculus. Glowforge. Flow. Exploding Kittens. Veronica Mars. Tile. The Coolest Cooler. BauBax. Fidget Cube. What do all of these companies have in common? They are all successful and started with crowdfunding -- the list...
Be a Better Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurs always look for the right recipe to increase the odds of success. Steve Blank was probably one of the “recipe” pioneers as he started the lean startup movement. Before the lean movement, I would...