Tag: startup

On ownership in #startups and why #VC funds have ownership targets

From my backlog of reading comes this article from Rob Go’s blog, http://bit.ly/LYsbdK describing in very simple terms why it is that you hear a VC make the stipulation of a minimum ownership when they invest in a company.

As with other things related to VC funding, the more I learn about it, the more I’m convinced that it is a wonderfully simple subject at the very core. However, the terminology and legality surrounding various aspects of VC funding have taken pedestrian mathematics involving no more than addition, subtraction, multiplication and division into an esoteric subject and a minefield for entrepreneurs.

A great read for any entrepreneur!

Learning from Joost

A lot of interesting articles have emerged in the wake of the recent happenings at Joost.

One post that caught my attention and deserves reading, and re-reading, and then reading one more time just to be sure is Ed Sim’s post, where he writes

raising too much money can be a curse and not a blessing

A lot to learn from in all of these articles.

What’s next in tech? Boston, June 25th 2009

Recap of “What’s next in Tech”, Boston, June 25th 2009

What’s next in tech: Exploring the Growth Opportunities of 2009 and Beyond, June 25th 2009.

Scott Kirsner moderated two panels during the event; the first with three Veture Capitalists and the second with five entrepreneurs.

The first panel consisted of:

– Michael Greeley, General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners

– Bijan Sabet, General Partner, Spark Capital

– Neil Sequiera, Managing Director, General Catalyst Partners

The second panel consisted of:

– Mike Dornbrook, COO, Harmonix Music Systems (makers of “Rock Band”)

– Helen Greiner, co-founder of iRobot Corp. and founder of The Droid Works

– Brian Halligan, social media expert and CEO of HubSpot

– Tim Healy, CEO of EnerNOC

– Ellen Rubin, Founder & VP/Product of CloudSwitch

Those who asked questions got a copy of Dan Bricklin’s book, Bricklin on Technology. There was also a DVD of some other book (I don’t know what it was) that was being given away.

Show of hands at the beginning was that 100% of the people were optimistic about the recovery and the future. Nice discussion though after leaving the session, I don’t get the feeling that anyone addressed the question “What’s next in tech” head on. Most of the conversation was about what has happened in tech and a lot of discussion about Twitter and Facebook. There were a lot of questions to the panel from the audience about what their companies were doing to help young entrepreneurs.And for an audience that was supposed to contain people interested in “what’s next”, no one wanted the DVD of the book, everyone wanted the paper copies. Hmm …

There has been a lot of interesting discussion about the topic and the event. One that caught my eye was Larry Cheng’s blog.

How many outstanding Shares in a start-up

Finding the number of outstanding shares in a start-up.

This question has come up quite often, most recently when I was having lunch with some co-workers last week.

While evaluating an offer at a start-up have you wondered whether your 10,000 shares was a significant chunk of money or a drop in the ocean?

Have you ever wondered how many shares are outstanding in a start-up you heard about?

This is a non-issue for a public company, the number of outstanding shares is a matter of public record. But not all start-up’s want to share this information with you.

I can’t say this for every state in the union but in MA, you can get a pretty good idea by looking at the Annual Report that every organization is required to file. It won’t be current information, the best you can do is get the most recent annual information and that means you can’t know anything about a very new company, but it is information that I would have liked to have had on some occasions in the past.

The link to search the Corporate Database is http://corp.sec.state.ma.us/corp/corpsearch/corpsearchinput.asp

Enter the name of the company and scroll to the bottom where you see a box that allows you to choose “Annual Reports”. Click that and you can read a recent Annual Report which will have the information you need.

If you find that this doesn’t work or is incomplete, please post your comments here. I’m sure others will appreciate the information.

And if you have information about other states, that is most welcome.

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