Venture Hacks

Go read Mike Speiser’s new blog: Laserlike. Its theme is, “Free ideas. Just add execution.”
Mike recently joined Sutter Hill Ventures as a Managing Director. Before that, he founded Epinions with fellow Venture Hacker Naval Ravikant and founded Bix (acquired by Yahoo).
Ideas
In his second post, Mike writes,
“The theme of Laserlike is that ideas are overvalued. [...]

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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 [...]

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“Nearly 100% of the investors interviewed believe that they add value to their portfolio companies. Unfortunately… only 45% of the entrepreneurs interviewed indicated that they believe that was the case.”
— Matthew Louie and Cali Tran,
Harvard M.B.A. Students

Every investor claims to add value. But how much value do they really add? In particular, how well do [...]

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Our previous vesting hacks have discussed getting vested for time served, acceleration upon termination, and acceleration upon a sale. This article is a collection of four vesting microhacks you can use to supersize your vesting.
1. Reclaim a terminated co-founder’s unvested shares.
A terminated co-founder’s unvested shares are typically cancelled. The resulting reverse dilution benefits the founders, [...]

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“We talked to a lot of different angel investors and venture capitalists, but no one really ‘got’ what we were doing — that is until we met Google.”
– Dennis Crowley, Founder of Dodgeball, May 2005
“It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us [...]

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“During the whole funding process they said, ‘We’re interested in you guys because of your management team; we think you’re fantastic…’ Two weeks later they pull me into the office – before even the first board meeting – and say, ‘We want to replace you as CEO.’”
– Mark Fletcher, Founders at Work
Summary: You made a [...]

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“Because we weren’t having success finding a CEO, [our investors] insisted that we hire these managers [a temporary CEO and CFO]. That didn’t go great.”
– Tim Brady, 1st employee at Yahoo, Founders at Work
Summary: Create a new board seat for a new CEO. Don’t give him one of the common seats.
Whether you negotiate a [...]

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