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In 4 Things to Do After You Get Your First Term Sheet, Bill Burnham, a former partner at Mobius and Softbank Capital, writes,

“I’ve recently been involved in helping a couple companies with their first major round of VC financing. It’s actually been pretty interesting for me because I have historically been on the other side of the table. In addition to generating several stories worthy of “The Funded” and getting a better appreciation of the trials and tribulations that entrepreneurs must go through when trying to raise money, I also gained a better appreciation for just how important it is to properly manage the “end game” of a VC financing.

“What is the “end game”? The End Game generally takes place after you have gotten a term sheet, but before you actually sign it. How well you manage this process can make a big difference in the actual terms and pricing you ultimately get, so it pays to approach this process as thoughtfully and diligently as you do any other part of fundraising.”

“With that in mind I present 4 things that you should definitely do after getting your 1^st term sheet:

“1. Get a second term sheet: It may sound flip, but this is the single most important thing you should do upon getting your 1^st term sheet. Nothing loosens up a VC’s purse strings or makes them more flexible on a particular term than the threat of competition. Without competition (real or perceived) you have very little leverage against a VC. Now getting one term sheet, let alone two, is tough enough, but getting two must be your goal and you must not waiver in pursuit of that goal even you after you get the 1^st one. The biggest problem most entrepreneurs have executing on this strategy is that they have mismanaged the sequencing of their fundraising. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of pursuing an “in order” fundraising process whereby they take one meeting, run that process to its logical conclusion and if that doesn’t work out try to get a meeting with another VC. VC fundraising must be pursued concurrently! You must put as many irons in the fire in as short a time as possible so that all the firms start the process at roughly the same time. As firms progress through the process, you should do your best to try and “herd” them along by trying to slow down the ones pushing ahead and speed up the ones lagging behind. The ultimate goal is to ensure that when you receive your first term sheet you have several other firms that are very close (within a week or so) to potentially issuing their own term sheets. Proper sequencing ensures that you are not forced to take an inferior “bird in hand”.”

Read Bill’s great post for the rest of his suggestions. He agrees with everything we’ve been writing about, so he is obviously quite brilliant.

Summary: Raise as much money as possible. With these caveats: (1) maintain control at any cost, (2) monitor your liquidation preference, and (3) act like you don’t have a lot of money. Also understand that if you do raise a lot of money, you will have to (1) “go big or go home” and (2) make a lot of progress if you ever want to raise money again. Alternatively, if you would rather maintain your exit options, at least raise enough money to run two experiments.

How much money should you raise? As much as possible—with some caveats. But hey! don’t take our word for it.

Two investors’ opinions.

Eugene Kleiner, Founder of Kleiner Perkins:

“When the money is available, take it.”

William Janeway, Managing Director of Warburg Pincus:

“Failure to execute operationally is not the only source of risk; every venture is also subject to volatility in the price and availability of capital due to the volatility of the stock market. After the collapse of the Internet Bubble, many promising companies foundered because their funding dried up.

“By contrast, our biggest successes at Warburg Pincus (VERITAS, BEA) have come from inverting the normal venture funding model, with the visionary investor as company co-founder… And we have supported the multi-year process of building a sustainable business by underwriting all of the capital needed to reach positive cash flow, thereby not only enabling management to focus full-time on the business but also insuring against the risks generated by a volatile stock market…

“In the post-Bubble world, long-term financial commitments are required to fund the ventures that will fulfill the long-term technological vision and implement the long-term commercial promise of the Internet Age.”

Two founders’ opinions.

Mike Ramsay, Founder and CEO of Tivo:

“One of the reasons that TiVO is thriving today is that we were well-capitalized. We were able to power our way through the downturn—that early 2000 period when [our competitor] Replay went away. We were capitalized enough that we knew we could ride through it. While we had to make a few adjustments at the company, there was never a question that we were going to survive. We knew we were going to survive.”

Marc Andreessen, inventor of the bendy-straw:

“So how much money should I raise?

“In general, as much as you can.

“Without giving away control of your company, and without being insane.

“Entrepreneurs who try to play it too aggressive and hold back on raising money when they can because they think they can raise it later occasionally do very well, but are gambling their whole company on that strategy in addition to all the normal startup risks.

“Suppose you raise a lot of money and you do really well. You’ll be really happy and make a lot of money, even if you don’t make quite as much money as if you had rolled the dice and raised less money up front.

“Suppose you don’t raise a lot of money when you can and it backfires. You lose your company, and you’ll be really, really sad.

“Is it really worth that risk?

“…Taking these factors into account, though, in a normal scenario, raising more money rather than less usually makes sense, since you are buying yourself insurance against both internal and external potential bad events — and that is more important than worrying too much about dilution or liquidation preference.”

Make sure you read Marc’s full article for his caveats: How much funding is too little? Too much?

Guidelines to consider no matter how much you raise.

No matter how much money you raise,

1. Maintain control at any cost.
2. Monitor your total liquidation preference and avoid liquidation preferences above 1x non-participating. You will have to sell the company for at least the liquidation preference before the common stockholders see a penny.
3. Raise enough money to run more than one experiment. Some companies need 12 months of runway to do two or more experiments, others might need 24 months. Seed stage companies that can’t raise enough money to run more than one experiment should keep their burn down to extend their runway.
4. Act like you don’t have money.

Guidelines to consider if you do raise a lot of money.

If you do raise a lot money,

1. Understand that your investors will have very high expectations. You have will have to “go big or go home”.
2. You will have to make a lot of progress with this round if the company ever wants to raise money again.

Alternatively, if you would rather keep your liquidation preference low and maintain your exit options, at least raise enough money to run two experiments.

Raise too little money and you may go out of business when you run into trouble. Raise too much money and you may make less (or zero) dough when you exit. Take your pick: disaster vs. dilution.

Image Sources: Marty Katz for The New York Times, SFGate, Wired.

The latest great quotes from the VH Twitter feed: twitter.com/venturehacks (RSS):

Kleiner Perkins

“Entrepreneurs do more than anyone thinks possible, with less than anyone thinks possible.” – John Doerr

“If the reason you’re taking on a mission is for the money you’ll make, I believe you’ll fail.” – John Doerr

“Where most entrepreneurs fail is on the things they don’t know they don’t know.” – Vinod Khosla

“How would you compete against yourself?” – Vinod Khosla (ppt)

“We are in the company building business, not in the ‘deal’ or ‘capital’ business.” – Khosla Ventures

“The great danger of dealing with venture capitalists is the ’slow maybe’.” – John Doerr

“We never ‘vote’ against management teams in our board role, except in making CEO decisions.” – Khosla Ventures

“All start up companies have one thing in common–they all get in trouble. It’s how they and you on the board handle their trouble that separates the winners from the losers.” – Tom Perkins

Peter Drucker

“You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths.” – Peter Drucker

“One does not start with facts. One starts with opinions.” – Peter Drucker

Warren Buffett

“I’ve never gone to bed with an ugly woman, but I’ve sure woke up with a few.” – Warren Buffett, explaining bad investments

“When the phone don’t ring, you’ll know it’s me.” – Warren Buffett, explaining how he might say ‘no’

“If you are a professional and have confidence, then I would advocate lots of concentration.” – Warren Buffett

Sundry

“Succeed and you are a brilliant visionary. Fail and you are a delusional loser.” – Don Dodge

“You don’t need permission to start a company. From investors, co-founders, or anyone else.” – Venture Hacks

Read more quotes in the VH Twitter feed and my personal Twitter feed: twitter.com/nivi (RSS).

Thanks: To James Cham for the Tom Perkins interview.

This is a great slide from John Doerr’s talk at Stanford:

It’s a little hard to read but it’s worth a squint. Or just watch this 4 minute video where he lays it out:

Every article about Recommended described the feature better than our launch post. Here’s a few snippets we particularly liked.

From Mark Hendrickson’s article in TechCrunch:

“Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists can use the sub-site, simply called Recommended, to track who and what others think highly of, and to indicate their own affinities as well.

“It’s structured much like Twitter—users set up profiles and subscribe to each other, then review recommendations made by others and make recommendations of their own.

“The overall idea behind Recommended is to lubricate the process by which members of the startup community network and determine who and what is popular.”

From Eric Eldon’s article in Venture Beat:

“While the service is very much a work in progress, the simplicity of the connections—and the fact that you’re connecting with influential people—makes this a promising service.”

From Carleen Hawn’s article in FoundRead:

“It is really straightforward, simple and stupid. It’s like RSS for deal flow,” Nivi told us this morning… “All startup deal flow is done by email and phone now—a push model. This is like a pull model,” Nivi explained.

“Founders no longer need to spend weeks or days lining up reference calls for potential investors: just hand over the URL of your Venture Hacks profile…”

From Ashkan Karbasfrooshan’s article in HipMojo:

“I asked Nivi about the service and in typical elevator pitch fashion, he replied “it’s match.com for investors and entrepreneurs”.

“While I am not sure if we need one more social network to join or profile to create… the financing matchmaking process remains full of friction and inefficiency…”

Finally, from Bijan Sabet’s (Spark Capital) tumblelog:

“I’m now alive in the world that [Venture Hacks] created. Very cool site.”

Browse Recommended or request an invite while we’re in private beta: Recommended.

In The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment, part 1: Biases 1-6, Marc Andreessen kindly interprets an essay from Charlie Munger’s book, Poor Charlie’s Almanack:

“Mr. Munger’s magnum opus speech, included in the book, is The Psychology of Human Misjudgment — an exposition of 25 key forms of human behavior that lead to misjudgment and error, derived from Mr. Munger’s 60 years of business experience. Think of it as a practitioner’s summary of human psychology and behavioral economics as observed in the real world.

“In this series of blog posts, I will walk through all 25 of the biases Mr. Munger identifies, and then adapt them for the modern entrepreneur. In each case I will start with relevant excerpts of Mr. Munger’s speech, and then after that add my own thoughts.”

I started making a cheat sheet of Marc and Charlie’s key points—I thought I would share it with you. It’s a handy reference once you’ve read the full article.

(For another great article on cognitive bias, see Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks.)

1. Reward and Punishment Super-Response

Once you realize how much incentives influence human behaviour, you need to assume their influence is even bigger than you think. Never think about something else when you should be thinking about incentives.

“If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.”

– Benjamin Franklin

Incentives are so powerful that every incentive should have a counter-incentive to restrict gaming of the first incentive.

2. Liking and Loving

Liking and loving something conditions you to (1) ignore faults of and comply with wishes of the loved, (2) favor people, products, and actions associated with the loved, and (3) distort other facts to facilitate love.

Wanting to be liked by your teammates impedes you from firing people and making unpopular but good decisions.

3. Disliking and Hating

Disliking or hating something conditions you to (1) ignore virtues in the disliked, (2) dislike people, products, and actions associated with the disliked, and (3) distort other facts to facilitate hatred.

Startups should focus on their customers, not their competition—whom they may dislike.

4. Doubt Avoidance

Execution is often better than further contemplation:

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”

— George Patton

Believing that something will happen, and convincing others that it will be so, makes it more likely to happen.

While a hypothesis is still doubted, wise entrepreneurs know whether (1) persistence and iteration will prove the hypothesis, or (2) the hypothesis will not be proven and additional testing is a destructive waste of time—a new hypothesis is required.

Related: Realists vs. Idealists: Thoughts about Creativity and Innovation and Decide To Do Something That Will Probably Fail, Then Convince Yourself And Everyone Else That Success is Certain.

5. Inconsistency Avoidance

Have strong opinions, weakly held. New and correct ideas may not be accepted simply because they are inconsistent with existing ideas.

Your existing ideas may be unknown to you. They may be hidden assumptions. We often make hidden assumptions about unknown unknowns.

If existing customers in the market aren’t ready for a product that is inconsistent with their behaviour, go after customers who aren’t in the market because they can’t afford the existing product or don’t have access to it. See The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution.

6. Curiosity

Insufficient curiousity prevents you from learning. Hire curious people and discover your customer’s true needs—not what you think they need.

There is lots of wisdom in John Doerr’s (Kleiner Perkins) introduction to Inside Intuit (emphasis added):

“Inside Intuit is a tale of missionaries, not mercenaries. It’s about a founding team that prevails through tenacity, frugality, and an obsession with the customer experience…

“Kleiner Perkins first learned about Intuit in 1985… But when it came to large numbers of households using their home computers to manage their checkbooks, we just couldn’t see it…

“Neither [of the founders] had created a new product nor started a company from scratch, let alone single-handedly faced nearly forty competitors. So when Intuit’s flagship product, Quicken, began to take off in the marketplace, my partners and I at Kleiner Perkins… took notice.

“…the “bake-off” [that founder Scott Cook] staged to help him choose from an array of eager potential investors really distinguished him from the crowd. More than a dozen venture capitalists vied to get a piece of Intuit. Cook and his team tested each finalist with a new, pressing, real problem: What should Intuit do if Microsoft entered the personal finance market to compete with Quicken?

“…we soon saw that Intuit differed in more ways than merely its approach to venture fund-raising. At the first Intuit board meeting I attended, I was surprised: more than half the meeting took place at Intuit’s tech support center, listening to tech reps answer customers’ product questions and fix their problems. Cook’s uniquely intense focus on happy customers and firsthand customer feedback impresses me to this day…

“Cook has an unusual ability to ask the right questions (which my partner Vinod Khosla insists is more important than getting the right answers; in business, there are often several right answers).

“In 1993, Cook realized before any of the rest of us that Intuit needed a new CEO to help the company reach the next level. How unusual, I thought at the time, for a company founder to know and admit that he might be holding his company back…

“Great CEOs are great teachers… What is unusual about Intuit is that… three leaders are all still actively engaged in building the company. As CEO, [Steve] Bennett has “the last call,” setting the tempo, directing the team. As chairman of the board, [Bill] Campbell [former CEO] holds sway from an off-campus office, advising the team, turning up on campus, and walking the halls. And Cook, as founder and chairman of the executive committee [and former CEO] provokes and celebrates strategy rethinking, inspires innovations, and continues, as ever, to obsess on the customers. As a leadership trio, they are unique in Silicon Valley.

“Not every businessperson aspires to be an institution-builder. Some simply want the freedom to be their own bosses, to achieve financial independence, to call the shots. Others want to solve problems and push the boundaries with their solutions; they work hard to “change the game” by innovating, rethinking, or breaking the rules. And yet, for all their efforts, business to them will always be just that—a game.

“For still others, however, and they’re a rare breed indeed, business is about striving for something more fundamental: to alter and improve their customers’ lives. These people aim to create companies that will transcend their creators, that will remain strong and productive from generation to generation. They aim to build lasting innovation…

“I’ve always been awed by entrepreneurs, by how little they have to work with when they start and by how much they sometimes accomplish.“

Related: Bill Cambell interviews Danny Shader of Good Technology.

Summary: The most common question we hear from entrepreneurs is, “Can you introduce me to investors?” Yes we can. We’re going to recommend startups on Venture Hacks. Investors are invited to subscribe to our recommendations. And everyone is welcome to recommend startups here. Request an invite if you want to help test the Recommended feature before we open it up—it’s also open for browsing in the meantime.

On April 1st, we started publishing the best damn term sheet hacks we could find. Why? Because a lot of entrepreneurs ask the same question:

“Can you help me understand term sheets?”

We’re trying to make everything we’ve learned—from other entrepreneurs, investors, and lawyers—readily available. We have a lot more work to do, but entrepreneurs seem to like the hacks so far.

Now the most common question we hear from entrepreneurs is,

“Can you introduce me to investors?”

Yes we can.

We like recommending startups to investors. And if you’re reading this, you might too. We want to help more entrepreneurs get introductions—so we’re going to recommend startups on Venture Hacks.

Here’s how the Recommended feature works for entrepreneurs, investors, and middlemen:

• If you’re an entrepreneur, we’ll recommend you to investors. The best way to convince us—or anyone—to make a recommendation is by presenting a good pitch and a good team. For example:

• If you’re an investor, you can subscribe to our recommendations:

• Or subscribe to anyone’s recommendations:

• And if you’re a middleman—like us—who digs introducing entrepreneurs to investors, we can’t wait to see what you recommend:

Microphone check.

We’re building and testing Recommended now. Request an invite if you want to help us test it before we open it up. Or just browse it in the meantime. Here are a few interesting places to get started:

Stay tuned.

There’s more to come. Peace.

Press: TechCrunch explains it all better than we do. So do VentureBeat, John Philip Green, HipMojo, and FoundRead.

[Ed: I enjoyed Tony Wright's contrarian article, Half-Assed Startup, when I first read it on his excellent blog. Tony, a founder of RescueTime (Y Combinator), argues that you can start a company while you're otherwise employed. And he explains how to do it. Tony kindly agreed to re-publish his article on Venture Hacks. Take it away Tony.]

I’ve done two part-time-to-full-time startups. One was acquired by Jobster. The second startup is RescueTime—currently a Y Combinator funded company—cross your fingers.

In the long run, I think Paul Graham has it right in How Not to Die—you can’t half-ass a startup:

“The number one thing not to do is other things. If you find yourself saying a sentence that ends with “but we’re going to keep working on the startup,” you are in big trouble. Bob’s going to grad school, but we’re going to keep working on the startup. We’re moving back to Minnesota, but we’re going to keep working on the startup. We’re taking on some consulting projects, but we’re going to keep working on the startup. You may as well just translate these to “we’re giving up on the startup, but we’re not willing to admit that to ourselves,” because that’s what it means most of the time. A startup is so hard that working on it can’t be preceded by “but.”"

In the beginning, however, it’s not always practical to dive in full-time. And when your idea is off-the-wall and easy to prototype, it’s smart to whip something out just to see if it’s as cool as you think it might be—before you take the full-time plunge.

So if you’re too poor or too unsure to do the right thing for your business and dive in full-time, here are a few things that seemed to work for us when we did it part-time:

1. You need a co-founder and some cheerleaders. If you can’t find two or three friends who are really excited to be beta testers for your product, ponder changing your direction. In a part-time effort, a co-founder is essential to keeping you on-track and working. At some point, you’ll hit a motivation wall… but if you have a partner who is depending on you, you will find a way past that. If you don’t have a partner, you’ll often lose interest and find something else to entertain you.
2. Pick a day or two per week where you always work, ideally in the same room as your co-founders. Always, no exceptions. We worked one weekday evening and one weekend day. That doesn’t mean we weren’t working other days, but keeping a fixed schedule helps you through the phases of the project that might not be so fun.
3. Have a boat-burning target. What will it take for everyone to dive in full-time? 5,000 active users? 10,000 uniques a week? Funding? The target should be a shared understanding. You don’t want one founder who is ready to go full-time while the other has reservations. This is easy to gloss over, but you should really nail it down. I’ve lost two co-founders who weren’t ready to dive in full time when I was. It wasn’t fair to them and it wasn’t fair to me.
4. Pick an idea that is tractable. Every startup is a hypothesis. If your hypothesis is, “we can build a better web-based chat client”, that’s something you could test quickly. If your hypothesis is “we can build a car that runs on lemonade”, that’s just not going to work as a part-time effort. The scarcity of available time should force you to distill the idea to the absolute minimum that is necessary to test the hypothesis. No extraneous features!
5. Understand that your first version is probably going to suck. Read David Rusenko’s article, The importance of launching early and staying alive—David is a founder of Weebly (Y Combinator). It’s a long road. My second startup was a ridiculous fluke—it was acquired after 2 months. 99% of overnight successes were slogging in the muck for 5 years before the night in question. Be prepared for a long journey and be surprised if your startup is an immediate hit. So with your first version, look for the tiny little flicker than you might be onto something. And use it to motivate you to make it better. Every week, make it better than last week and see if that flicker of light can be fanned into a tiny flame.
6. If you’re going to screw off at work (everyone does), spend it getting smarter about the stuff you don’t know. If you’re a coder, read a few design or usability blogs. Read up on what motivates angel investors. Research competitors and write down what they do well. Get brilliant at SEO (it’s not hard). Write a lot more (blogging helps). Think about virality and research the heck out of it. That said, be aware of the fuzzy line between using your cool-down time at work for your startup and stealing time or resources from your employer. If you’re paid to do a job, you need to do it.
7. Be sure you own your startup. I’ve had the fortune of working in companies where there was very clear ownership of “after hours” work. If ownership of your personal intellectual property is not clear, do not rely on the good will of your employer. Greed can do funny things to people, even if they were initially big supporters of your startup. (Thanks to Ivan from TipJoy for this final suggestion.)
   

In short, you want to prove whatever you need to prove as quickly as possible, so you can dive in full-time. Near as I can tell, there are plenty of startups that have started as “hobbies”, but you need to take it out of that phase as soon as you can. There is nothing that drives a team forward like the fear of public failure, debt, and starvation. Leap off the cliff and start building the airplane on the way down—you might be surprised with what you can pull off.

Here are the latest great comments from our readers—please keep ‘em coming!

Rob Lord, founder of Songbird (Sequoia Capital), has some ideas for VC Wear t-shirts:

“Mo’ money, mo’ board seats.
“409a a-okay!
“Some of my best friends are EIRs.
“Venture debt is a non-starter.”

Jonathan Boutelle, founder of SlideShare, suggests using SlideShare to share decks privately:

“One safe way to share a PowerPoint deck with potential investors: upload it to SlideShare as private. Share it only with the investor. After 48 hours (or whenever they’ve had time to check out the presentation) simply remove it from slideshare.

“You could also share via a “secret” URL: but that URL could potentially be forwarded to other parties so it’s not a good way to share files with people you don’t trust (which seems to be the challenge we’re speaking of here). Still, you could take the file down after 48 hours, and this approach wouldn’t require the other party to have a login on slideshare. So it might be the more practical option.”

Nabeel Hyatt, founder of Conduit Labs (Charles River Ventures), says you shouldn’t send your deck to investors:

“Not worth it. Not because your deck has some amazing information, it probably is pretty high level and isn’t as unique as you wish it was, but because it kills the point of the presentation. What if Steve Jobs posted his Keynote presentation the day before Macworld and then gave his presentation the next day — how much harder would it be for him to get any sense of drama, intrigue, and frankly keep people awake?

“You should send them *something* to entice their interest, but whatever it is, expect it to be widely circulated, and think of it as just a teaser to get the meeting. You should be the main event, not your PDF.”

Ted Rheingold, founder of Dogster (Michael Parekh), has some ideas for protecting your deck:

“Don’t forget to convert it to PDF or another read-only format to avoid any funny stuff once it has left your hands.

“And make sure the date is the day or month you sent it, as it then stands as a point-in-time snapshot which is likely out-of-date by the next quarter (in case the slides end up floating around inboxes month later)

“I like the idea of posting the recipients name on each page so it’s clear who leaked it if they do want to pass along.

“I also thinking striping out any slides you think reveal too much is a good compromise. (Ask a trusted person to be the judge of what is too revealing, company founders tend to over value their own IP)”

Yokum Taku, a partner at Wilson Sonsini, disagrees with us on capping legal fees:

“The statement “Most caps include the fees for both sides” is not accurate. Term sheets typically only say that the company will pay reasonable legal fees of investors’ counsel, capped at $X. (I also disagree with $10K - $20K as a reasonable cap to propose with straight face for investor counsel.) Of course, you can try to discuss a fee cap with company counsel, but almost all competent counsel will not agree to a cap. However, most experienced counsel can provide estimates based on actual data from previous similar transactions. Companies often have neglected corporate cleanup that needs to be fixed in connection with a financing (similar to not going to the dentist for years and paying the price later). In addition, there are always things that occur in financings that are difficult to predict (such as arguments among founders). Finally, capping company counsel fees is a disincentive to provide services after the cap is exceeded.”

Farbood Nivi, founder of Grockit (Benchmark Capital), thinks raising a good chunk of money is not a bad thing:

“There is an argument that says too much money can cause one to take the foot off the gas.

“I can’t say it’s a false statement. I can say it doesn’t make sense to me or apply in Grockit’s situation. Raising the Series A we did, as opposed to a few hundred K seed round, has given us an engine with a lot more horsepower. That knowledge, if anything, should keep your foot feeling like lead. That said, keep in mind, a more powerful car requires more adept steering, braking and maintenance.

“Money well spent buys time (far more precious than money), quality (translate: scalability and user satisfaction), people (translate: your company), access, resources. Do you need any of these?

“Money is to a business what oxygen is to a human…

“All founders are desperate. The question is what for.

“I would rather be able to pursue my desperate need to create the ass-kickinest app I can over my desperate need to generate revenue for it.

“Money allows you to reduce revenue based desperation and replace it with product building desperation.”

Like we says, keep the comments coming—we’ll highlight the best ones in the next ‘comment’ post.