Download or read book Startup Boards written by Brad Feld and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-12-09 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential guide to understanding the dynamics of a startup's board of directors Let's face it, as founders and entrepreneurs, you have a lot on your plate—getting to your minimum viable product, developing customer interaction, hiring team members, and managing the accounts/books. Sooner or later, you have a board of directors, three to five (or even seven) Type A personalities who seek your attention and at times will tell you what to do. While you might be hesitant to form a board, establishing an objective outside group is essential for startups, especially to keep you on track, call you out when you flail, and in some cases, save you from yourself. In Startup Boards, Brad Feld—a Boulder, Colorado-based entrepreneur turned-venture capitalist—shares his experience in this area by talking about the importance of having the right board members on your team and how to manage them well. Along the way, he shares valuable insights on various aspects of the board, including how they can support you, help you understand your startup's milestones and get to them faster, and hold you accountable. Details the process of choosing board members, including interviewing many people, checking references, and remembering that there should be no fear in rejecting a wrong fit Explores the importance of running great meetings, mixing social time with business time, and much more Recommends being a board member yourself at some other organization so you see the other side of the equation Engaging and informative, Startup Boards is a practical guide to one of the most important pieces of the startup puzzle.

Download or read book Startup CEO written by Matt Blumberg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You’re only a startup CEO once. Do it well with Startup CEO, a "master class in building a business." —Dick Costolo, Former CEO, Twitter Being a startup CEO is a job like no other: it’s difficult, risky, stressful, lonely, and often learned through trial and error. As a startup CEO seeing things for the first time, you’re likely to make mistakes, fail, get things wrong, and feel like you don’t have any control over outcomes. Author Matt Blumberg has been there, and in Startup CEO he shares his experience, mistakes, and lessons learned as he guided Return Path from a handful of employees and no revenues to over $100 million in revenues and 500 employees. Startup CEO is not a memoir of Return Path's 20-year journey but a thoughtful CEO-focused book that provides first-time CEOs with advice, tools, and approaches for the situations that startup CEOs will face. You'll learn: How to tell your story to new hires, investors, and customers for greater alignment How to create a values-based culture for speed and engagement How to create business and personal operating systems so that you can balance your life and grow your company at the same time How to develop, lead, and leverage your board of directors for greater impact How to ensure that your company is bought, not sold, when you exit Startup CEO is the field guide every CEO needs throughout the growth of their company.

Download or read book Startup Boards written by Brad Feld and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive guide on creating, growing, and leveraging a board of directors written for CEOs, board members, and people seeking board roles. The first time many founders see the inside of a board room is when they step in to lead their board. But how do boards work? How should they be structured, managed, and leveraged so that startups can grow, avoid pitfalls, and get the best out of their boards? Authors Brad Feld, Mahendra Ramsinghani, and Matt Blumberg have collectively served on hundreds of startup and scaleup boards over the past 30 years, attended thousands of board meetings, encountered multiple personalities and situations, and seen the good, bad, and ugly of boards. In Startup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors, the authors provide seasoned advice and guidance to CEOs, board members, investors, and anyone aspiring to serve on a board. This comprehensive book covers a wide range of topics with relevant tips, tactics, and best practices, including: Board fundamentals such as the board's purpose, legal characteristics, and roles and functions of board members; Creating a board including size, composition, roles of VCs and independent directors, what to look for in a director, and how to recruit directors; Compensating, onboarding, removing directors, and suggestions on building a diverse board; Preparing for and running board meetings; The board's role in transactions including selling a company, buying a company, going public, and going out of business; Advice for independent and aspiring directors. Startup Boards draws on the authors' experience and includes stories from board members, startup founders, executives, and investors. Any CEO, board member, investor, or executive interested in creating an active, involved, and engaged board should read this book—and keep it handy for reference.

Download or read book Startup Boards written by Brad Feld and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive guide on creating, growing, and leveraging a board of directors written for CEOs, board members, and people seeking board roles. The first time many founders see the inside of a board room is when they step in to lead their board. But how do boards work? How should they be structured, managed, and leveraged so that startups can grow, avoid pitfalls, and get the best out of their boards? Authors Brad Feld, Mahendra Ramsinghani, and Matt Blumberg have collectively served on hundreds of startup and scaleup boards over the past 30 years, attended thousands of board meetings, encountered multiple personalities and situations, and seen the good, bad, and ugly of boards. In Startup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors, the authors provide seasoned advice and guidance to CEOs, board members, investors, and anyone aspiring to serve on a board. This comprehensive book covers a wide range of topics with relevant tips, tactics, and best practices, including: Board fundamentals such as the board's purpose, legal characteristics, and roles and functions of board members; Creating a board including size, composition, roles of VCs and independent directors, what to look for in a director, and how to recruit directors; Compensating, onboarding, removing directors, and suggestions on building a diverse board; Preparing for and running board meetings; The board's role in transactions including selling a company, buying a company, going public, and going out of business; Advice for independent and aspiring directors. Startup Boards draws on the authors' experience and includes stories from board members, startup founders, executives, and investors. Any CEO, board member, investor, or executive interested in creating an active, involved, and engaged board should read this book—and keep it handy for reference.

Download or read book Advisory Boards in Startups written by Eric Weber and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author shows that advisory boards in technology-based startups have seven different roles and functions: control, advice, networking, signalling, capital provision, co-management, coordination. It is shown that venture capital investors try to influence the importance of these roles in favour of control, coordination and co-management. Contrary to this, the satisfaction of founders as well as advisory board members increases with a higher importance of advice, networking and signalling. This analysis provides both qualitative and quantitative empirical data on the usage of those boards in practice.

Download or read book Startup CXO written by Matt Blumberg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-09 with total page 649 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the greatest challenges for startup teams is scaling because usually there's not a blueprint to follow, people are learning their function as they go, and everyone is wearing multiple hats. There can be lots of trial and error, lots of missteps, and lots of valuable time and money squandered as companies scale. Matt Blumberg and his team understand the scaling challenges—they've been there, and it took them nearly 20 years to scale and achieve a successful exit. Along the way they learned what worked and what didn’t work, and they share their lessons learned in Startup CXO. Unlike other business books, Startup CXO is designed to help each functional leader understand how their function scales, what to anticipate as they scale, and what things to avoid. Beyond providing function-specific advice, tools, and tactics, Startup CXO is a resource for each team member to learn about the other functions, understand other functional challenges, and get greater clarity on how to collaborate effectively with the other functional leads. CEOs, Board members, and investors have a book they can consult to pinpoint areas of weakness and learn how to turn those into strengths. Startup CXO has in-depth chapters covering the nine most common functions in startups: finance, people, marketing, sales, customers, business development, product, operations, and privacy. Each functional section has a "CEO to CEO Advice" summary from Blumberg on what great looks like for that CXO, signs your CXO isn't scaling, and how to engage with your CXO. Startup CXO also has a section on the future of executive work, fractional and interim roles. Written by leading practitioners in the newly emergent fractional executive world, each function is covered with useful tips on how to be a successful fractional executive as well as what to look for and how to manage fractional executives. Startup CXO is an amazing resource for CEOs but also for functional leaders and professionals at any stage of their career." —Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner, High Alpha

Download or read book Lead Upwards written by Sarah E. Brown and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Lead Upwards: How Startup Joiners Can Impact New Ventures, Build Amazing Careers, and Inspire Great Teams, startup marketing leader Sarah E. Brown delivers an illuminating and accessible guide to maximizing your impact and delivering results in a startup leadership role. The author draws on over a decade of experience scaling SaaS companies as she explains how to prepare for, earn, and succeed in an executive role at a startup company. The book describes every step on the way to realizing your goals—and the goals of your startup—as you navigate the gap between a management role and the executive team. It covers what to do in your first 90 days, how to build and sustain a healthy team culture, and the art of communicating results to your leadership team and board. You’ll also learn: How to manage the challenges posed by leading a remote, distributed, or hybrid team Management strategies based on inclusive and diverse teambuilding, alignment with business objectives, and inspirational leadership Effective ways to level up your skills and stay current as your company grows A must-read book for current and aspiring executives at startup firms, Lead Upwards will also earn a place on the bookshelves of startup board members, founders, funders, and managers seeking a singularly insightful discussion of business leadership.

Download or read book The Founder s Dilemmas written by Noam Wasserman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Founder's Dilemmas examines how early decisions by entrepreneurs can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, including quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders as well as inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.

Download or read book Straight Talk for Startups written by Randy Komisar and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Straight Talk for Startups memorializes age-old best practices and empowers both experienced and new investment professionals to beat the odds."—David Krane, CEO, Google Ventures "Straight Talk for Startups is filled with real, raw, and fact-based ‘rules of the road’ that you need to know when diving into our ultra-competitive startup world. A must read and a re-read!"—Tony Fadell, Coinventor of the iPod/iPhone & Founder of Nest Labs Veteran venture capitalist Randy Komisar and finance executive Jantoon Reigersman share no-nonsense, counterintuitive guidelines to help anyone build a successful startup. Over the course of their careers, Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman continue to see startups crash and burn because they forget the timeless lessons of entrepreneurship. But, as Komisar and Reigersman show, you can beat the odds if you quickly learn what insiders know about what it takes to build a healthy foundation for a thriving venture. In Straight Talk for Startups they walk budding entrepreneurs through 100 essential rules—from pitching your idea to selecting investors to managing your board to deciding how and when to achieve liquidity. Culled from their own decades of experience, as well as the experiences of their many successful colleagues and friends, the rules are organized under broad topics, from "Mastering the Fundamentals" and "Selecting the Right Investors," to "The Ideal Fundraise," "Building and Managing Effective Boards," and "Achieving Liquidity." Vital rules you’ll find in Straight Talk for Startups include: The best ideas originate from founders who are users Create two business plans: an execution plan and an aspirational plan Net income is an option, but cash flow is a fact Don’t accept money from strangers Personal wealth doesn’t equal good investing Small boards are better than big ones Add independent board members for expertise and objectivity Too many unanimous board decisions are a sign of trouble Choose an acquirer, don’t wait to be chosen Learn the rules by heart so you know when to break them Filled with helpful real-life examples and specific, actionable advice, Straight Talk for Startups is the ideal handbook for anyone running, working for, or thinking about creating a startup, or just curious about what makes high-potential ventures tick.

Download or read book The Startup Way written by Eric Ries and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entrepreneur and bestselling author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses of all kinds, ranging from established companies to early-stage startups, to grow revenues, drive innovation, and transform themselves into truly modern organizations, poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the twenty-first century. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful startups – building a minimal viable product, customer-focused and scientific testing based on a build-measure-learn method of continuous innovation, and deciding whether to persevere or pivot. In The Startup Way, he turns his attention to an entirely new group of organizations: established enterprises like iconic multinationals GE and Toyota, tech titans like Amazon and Facebook, and the next generation of Silicon Valley upstarts like Airbnb and Twilio. Drawing on his experiences over the past five years working with these organizations, as well as nonprofits, NGOs, and governments, Ries lays out a system of entrepreneurial management that leads organizations of all sizes and from every industry to sustainable growth and long-term impact. Filled with in-the-field stories, insights, and tools, The Startup Way is an essential road map for any organization navigating the uncertain waters of the century ahead.

Download or read book Summary of Brad Feld Matt Blumberg Mahendra Ramsinghani s Startup Boards written by Everest Media and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-07-24T22:59:00Z with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The fourth book in the series is Startup Boards. It has been a challenging book to write, as both of us worked hard to cover a lot of territory without putting ourselves to sleep. #2 A boardroom is often used to describe the atmosphere and format of important meetings, but in reality, a startup board is usually a small group of people trying to help build your company. #3 The challenges of raising the first round of capital are well documented. Once this first round of capital is raised, new challenges arise. Investors, driven by the desire for a substantial financial return, seek milestones, demonstrable progress, new rounds of financing at higher prices, or even quick exits. #4 The most common mistake startups make is not having a board at all. Founders who are overconfident or choose to avoid conflict often miss an opportunity to bring in fresh perspective and structure decisions from appropriate individuals.

Download or read book Startup Communities written by Brad Feld and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential guide to building supportive entrepreneurial communities "Startup communities" are popping up everywhere, from cities like Boulder to Boston and even in countries such as Iceland. These types of entrepreneurial ecosystems are driving innovation and small business energy. Startup Communities documents the buzz, strategy, long-term perspective, and dynamics of building communities of entrepreneurs who can feed off of each other's talent, creativity, and support. Based on more than twenty years of Boulder-based entrepreneur turned-venture capitalist Brad Feld's experience in the field?as well as contributions from other innovative startup communities?this reliable resource skillfully explores what it takes to create an entrepreneurial community in any city, at any time. Along the way, it offers valuable insights into increasing the breadth and depth of the entrepreneurial ecosystem by multiplying connections among entrepreneurs and mentors, improving access to entrepreneurial education, and much more. Details the four critical principles needed to form a sustainable startup community Perfect for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists seeking fresh ideas and new opportunities Written by Brad Feld, a thought-leader in this field who has been an early-stage investor and successful entrepreneur for more than twenty years Engaging and informative, this practical guide not only shows you how startup communities work, but it also shows you how to make them work anywhere in the world.

Download or read book Startup Rising written by Christopher M. Schroeder and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Startup Rising presents a surprising look at the surge of entrepreneurship that accompanied the uprisings in the Middle East, and why it's the new best place for Western investment and opportunity. Despite the world's elation at the Arab Spring, shockingly little has changed politically in the Middle East; even frontliners Egypt and Tunisia continue to suffer repression, fixed elections, and bombings, while Syria descends into civil war. But in the midst of it all, a quieter revolution has begun to emerge, one that might ultimately do more to change the face of the region: entrepreneurship. As a seasoned angel investor in emerging markets, Christopher M. Schroeder was curious but skeptical about the future of investing in the Arab world. Travelling to Dubai, Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Istanbul, and even Damascus, he saw thousands of talented, successful, and intrepid entrepreneurs, all willing to face cultural, legal, and societal impediments inherent to their worlds. Equally important, he saw major private equity firms, venture capitalists, and tech companies like Google, Intel, Cisco, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and PayPal making significant bets, despite the uncertainty in the region. With Startup Rising, he marries his own observations with the predictions of these tech giants to offer a surprising and timely look at the second stealth revolution in the Middle East-one that promises to reinvent it as a center of innovation and progress.

Download or read book The Startup Playbook written by Rajat Bhargava and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get the real guidance you need to create and build your first startup company from founders who have been there many times before. The first run printing of The Startup Playbook SOLD OUT! So, we revised, expanded, and improved this second edition, including a new foreword by Brad Feld, author of Venture Deals. We still give our personal, how-to guide for building your startup from the ground up. You'll find a collection of the major lessons and shortcuts we've learned that will shift the odds in your favor. We're sharing our tips, secrets, and advice in a frank, founder-to-founder discussion with you. We make no bones about our bias. We're on your side, the founder's side. While venture capitalists, investors, and accelerators/incubators can add great value in the startup ecosystem, this book isn't about their points of view. We'll tell you where our interests as founders diverge from those on the other side of the table—investors, bankers, advisors, board members, and others—and what to do when that happens. The Startup Playbook is not a recipe, it's not a template, it's not a list of tasks to do. It's our insider's guide to starting a company and running it successfully in those critical early months. Between us, we've started over a dozen high-tech software companies and raised over $500 million in investment capital. We've acquired over thirty-five companies, had three of our startups go public, sold six of them, and we made billions of dollars for shareholders. We've also invested in over eighty startups, advised and mentored over two hundred companies and actively worked with venture capitalists (VCs), incubators, and accelerators to help launch many other new startups. We've had plenty of failures, too. And we've probably learned more from those than from the successes. We share those lessons as well. The Startup Playbook is full of our advice, guidance, do's, and don'ts from our years of experience as founders many times. We want to share our hard-earned knowledge with you to make success easier for you to achieve. "This book is extraordinarily fresh and exciting. In an accessible, straight talk fashion, this book is a manual, and an inspiration. The Startup Playbook is smart and avoids the 'I am so smart' over-writing endemic to the genre. Read this as it is presented. You'll be doing yourself a tremendous favor." —Amazon Reviewer

Download or read book My Start Up Life written by Ben Casnocha and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ben Casnocha discovered he was entrepreneur at age 12 and hasn't slowed down since. In this remarkably instructive book, Ben dissects the entrepreneurship "gene," explaining that everyone has inherited it if they have an idea to make the world a better place. In Casnocha's case, he found a better way for city governments to communicate with constituents on the Web. Six years later, Comcate has dozens of municipal clients, a growing staff, and a record of excellence. This book is the story of his start-up, but also a conversation with his mentors, clients and fellow entrepreneurs about how to make a business idea work?and how to have the time of your life trying. From Pat Lencioni to Marc Benioff of salesforce.com, Ben has won over the best and brightest of the business world?now it's your turn!

Download or read book The Titanic Effect written by Todd Saxton and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I have read dozens of books on starting companies, but this is the first that accurately captures why startups fail and provides a tool for entrepreneurs and investors to measure and manage these sources of failure.” Michael Hatfield, Co-Founder, Cerent, Calix, Cienna, and Carium. What makes a startup successful? This book, from award-winning business school professors and a tech serial entrepreneur, tells what makes startups successful. Instead of telling startups what to do, like most startup books, they share what startups should avoid. Along the way, they share small business startup success stories gleaned from the How Built This Podcast and their firsthand experiences. These stories of startup success are contrasted with stories of startup failure from startup graveyards and most notably, the Titanic. Like many of today’s startups, the Titanic hoped to disrupt the transportation industry of its time. It fell short, to a disastrous outcome, from the same sources that prevent startup success today. Get a startup game plan! This startup book uses the Titanic and a sailing metaphor to provide a startup roadmap template. It shows what makes startups successfully navigate through challenges in startup investing, founding, and hiring with a game plan to get through the Human Ocean. It offers a startup guide to customer success in working through the Marketing Ocean. It even highlights what startups need to invest in to get through the Technical and Strategy Oceans. Its Iceberg Index gives entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses a way to track their progress on the startup roadmap template. It also helps investors assess what startups to invest in. Many entrepreneurs assume that the Titanic was sunk by a single iceberg. The Titanic Effect shows, that like many startups, it’s not a single misstep but a series of mistakes that keep a startup from being successful. This combination of missteps is called the Titanic Effect. Who can benefit from this startup roadmap? Entrepreneurs in the early stages of building a startup. They will learn what makes a startup successful. They will develop a to-do list of decisions to make and actions to take. Small business owners will also identify key next steps to building their startup game plan. Investors can identify what to avoid in startup investments and what startups to invest in. Students will learn how to evaluate the success potential of a startup and will read small business and startup success stories. These three co-authors have witnessed firsthand what leads to startup success. They have made it their mission to help entrepreneurs, startup founders and startup investors succeed. Drs. Todd and M. Kim Saxton bring more than two decades of academic and professional experience in business strategy, entrepreneurship, marketing, and angel investing. Serial tech entrepreneur, Michael Cloran, adds his two decades’ of experiences in launching his own startups as well as building software products for other startups. In addition, the co-authors serve on various boards of entrepreneurial ventures and startup advisory associations. They have shared their expertise from the stage to dozens of audiences, including students, entrepreneurship and professional development associations, academic societies, and global companies like Roche Diagnostics and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

Download or read book Do More Faster written by Brad Feld and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical advice from some of today's top early stage investors and entrepreneurs TechStars is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator with operations in three U.S. cities. Once a year in each city, it funds about ten Internet startups with a small amount of capital and surrounds them with around fifty top Internet entrepreneurs and investors. Historically, about seventy-five percent of the companies that go through TechStars raise a meaningful amount of angel or venture capital. Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup is a collection of advice that comes from individuals who have passed through, or are part of, this proven program. Each vignette is an exploration of information often heard during the TechStars program and provides practical insights into early stage entrepreneurship. Contains seven sections, each focusing on a major theme within the TechStars program, including idea and vision, fundraising, legal and structure, and work/life balance Created by two highly regarded experts in the world of early stage investing Essays in each section come from the experienced author team as well as TechStar mentors, entrepreneurs, and founders of companies While you'll ultimately have to make your own decisions about what's right for your business, Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup can get your entrepreneurial endeavor headed in the right direction.