Overnight success and quick wins. Sprints and hacks. Shortcuts, YOLO. We’re getting used to value hastiness as our ideal. We give things a try; then time runs out, nothing has worked and we ‘need’ to move on.
Well, here it goes: High expectations cannot be met fast. Even when they do, they leave you with a bitter feeling the day after — were they remarkable indeed? It is time to take a step back and reconsider.
A deck of slides and a spreadsheet are usually sufficient to raise a seed round. The deck has received a lot of attention; there is a great variety of quality resources out there on how to go after it. Here, I’ll focus on the spreadsheet, which has mostly gone unnoticed. This is an attempt to provide a rough guide on how to structure it.
The public discourse in startup land has recently focused on the value add an investor can bring to the table. Value add indeed does make a difference; at the same time though, we tend to neglect the original value an early stage investor contributes to a company. This post is an attempt to bring the discussion back to the basics.
A startup’s most precious asset is its founders. And everyone’s most precious asset is our time. Thus, a startup’s most precious asset is its founders time.
As simple as this may sound, its implications are not always straightforward. What’s more, founders time provide a clear framework that can serve you well in most of your decisions. Let me provide some examples.
