Venture Hacks

Thanks to Atlas Venture for supporting Venture Hacks this month. This post is by Fred Destin, one of Atlas’ general partners. If you like it, check out Fred’s blog and tweets @fdestin. And if you want an intro to Atlas, send me an email. I’ll put you in touch if there’s a fit. Thanks. [...]

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How common is accelerated vesting on change in control (AVCoC)? Noam Wasserman from HBS has the answer in Unlocking Your Golden Handcuffs:
“I recently got an email from a serial entrepreneur who has been brought on as the head of finance and operations in a mobile-services start-up. One of his questions was: How often [...]

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Don Valentine from Sequoia Capital and Cisco’s founders, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, discuss Len and Sandy’s termination in this rare video: (Update: Google took the video down. Thank you universe. There are still some choice quotes below. If anyone has a copy of the video online or a transcript, please email us at nandn@venturehacks.com.)

We [...]

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As usual, there were many mind-expanding comments this week—here are some of the very best.
The very lucky winner of this week’s mug for great contributions in the field of venture hacking is indicated with a subtle ball of fire.
Vesting
“Anonymous” discusses his experience with getting vested for time served and how his investors “poked out” two [...]

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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 love the quality of the comments on Venture Hacks. You’re missing out if you’re not reading them.
A lot of the comments contain great anecdotes from founders. Others contain good questions which we make sure to answer.
Here’s a few recent ones that are especially good. You can also subscribe to our comments RSS [...]

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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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“By the time we did the financing we had been working on [the company for] 2 years, but they only vested us a year. So, they got a year of free vesting from us.”
– Joe Kraus, Founders at Work
Summary: Don’t agree to vest all of your shares just because it is supposedly “standard”. Get [...]

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