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By VStart, on July 22nd, 2010
We always advise serious entrepreneurs, especially those with big ideas, to make sure an attorney is part of their team from the very start. Not only can they set the company up correctly, they can put standard agreements in place (e.g., stock option, non-disclosure, founder buy-sell, independent contractor, and more). Having such documents can help prevent a multitude of legal issues as the business grows.
Read this article at BusinessWeek to see potential problems for Facebook when a probably “bad” agreement comes back to haunt them when they are really worth something.
Saving money as a startup is usually ingrained in entrepreneurs and spending money on Read More »»
By Laura Good, on July 20th, 2010
Last week, VentureStart graduate Chrometa, a software company based in Sacramento that’s solving the age-old time keeping dilemma for professionals who bill for time and expertise, shared a blog post on lessons learned from their initial product launch and subsequent marketing efforts. Read More »»
By VStart, on July 16th, 2010
SacMix joined our VentureStart program a while ago and are making rapid progress in becoming a known brand in the Sacramento market — if you are hungry for breakfast, brunch, lunch, happy hour, dinner or late night eats, you can always find a great deal at a restaurant close to you at www.sacmix.com.
All startups need to communicate their progress with potential customers, investors, supporters, etc. on a regular basis to keep mind share and accelerate interest. We got such a note from Tim White at SacMix today, and you can read it on Facebook. It is a good example all startups should follow.
By VStart, on March 3rd, 2010
Gold Standard Diagnostics, Inc. of Davis has just raised a Series A round from private investors. The company started in 2007 and bootstrapped its way by generating revenue from the very beginning. The capital infusion will be used for a major product launch this spring. Investors included Roger Salquist and other angels.
Gold Standard will be participating in the SARTA’s Med Tech Showcase on March 30th at CSUS and has been able to raise its local profile with the assistance of SARTA’s MedStart, a sister program to our VentureStart.
By VStart, on February 9th, 2010
Brett Owens of Chrometa was one of the first entrepreneurs mentored by VentureStart. We recommended “go get customers” rather than trying to raise money from organized investors. He did that and has been growing ever since with an ever-increasing customer base.
Chrometa maintains an excellent blog and today we saw an interesting post on customer support for software companies and its challenges. Take a look and I think you’ll find that Chrometa have met the challenge well with some good thinking. The very fact their blog talks about this is also great marketing. Go Chrometa!
By VStart, on January 30th, 2010
VentureStart gets many Sacramento region web startups applying for our mentoring. Very often we see great ideas and the need to raise money to hire people to code the idea/application. We normally encourage these startups to get a co-founder, or someone who will work for stock, on the team, and then get some traction before even considering raising money from Angel groups or VCs.
Adam Kalsey, the founder of SacStarts and a VentureStart mentor, recently gave advice on this to one VentureStart entrepreneur and then published it on his blog. We quote it here since it is so relevant to web startups.
Read More »»
By VStart, on January 7th, 2010
Robb Moore, CEO of ioSafe in Auburn, always does something sensational at CES in Las Vegas. This year, as he did last year, he subjected one of the company’s hard drives to fire, and water submersion, but this time he further ran over it with the tracks on a 20 ton backhoe. Take a look at the video to see if the drive survived. By the way. Robb has bootstrapped ioSafe from day one. Seems this video goes a long way to say a lot a pitch or executive summary would never reveal! Robb is a VentureStart adviser.
By VStart, on November 4th, 2009
How can attending a high end workshop on a staid subject like Corporate Governance lead to an exciting web startup in Sacramento?
Ask Jim Schraith, a noted local angel investor and venture partner with DFJ Frontier! Jim was attending such a workshop last year and thought there had to be a better way of doing board self evaluations. So he founded and bootstrapped BoardEvals.com together with Layton Wedgeworth and Bob Bennett, in the summer of 2008. The product launched earlier this year and they are now seeing an accelerated pace of client sign ups in the corporate and non-profit world.
What do they Read More »»
By VStart, on November 2nd, 2009
Many startups with high growth ambitions immediately think of raising money from angels or VCs. This can be challenging for first time entrepreneurs, and if family and friends money is not an alternative, then the choices left are often credit cards or bootstrapping. Here is a post on the top 10 lessons in bootstrapping from VentureBeat.
There are two ways to build a business: Raise a bunch of money or bootstrap. When I was in business school, there wasn’t much attention given to the bootstrapping notion. The “MBA way” of growing a business is to write a business plan, raise money and then execute the business plan. But I think that’s almost always the wrong approach.
We bootstrapped Infusionsoft for several years before ever raising capital. The lessons we learned were, and continue to be, invaluable. Here are the top ten lessons we learned from this method – and why I continue to evangelize bootstrapping to entrepreneurs: … Read More » »
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