Why you shouldn’t keep your startup idea secret

2009-08-22

A frequent question entrepreneurs have when they are just starting their company is:  how secretive should I be about my idea?  My answer…

Machine learning is really good at partially solving just about any problem

2009-08-20

There’s a saying in artificial intelligence circles that techniques like machine learning (and NLP) can very quickly get you, say, 80% of…

Options on early stage companies

2009-08-17

I believe that what I’m about to say is accepted by venture capitalists as fact, even trivially obvious fact, yet very few entrepreneurs I…

Ideal first round funding terms

2009-08-16

My last 2 posts were about things to avoid, so I thought it might be helpful to follow up with something more positive.  Having been part of…

The problem with tranched VC investments

2009-08-15

In venture capital, tranching refers to investments where portions of the money are released over time when certain pre-negotiated…

Why seed investors don’t like convertible notes

2009-08-12

A popular option in seed round financing is a convertible note instead of setting a valuation in an equity financing.  A convertible note is…