Two More Hacks
The option pool shuffle: beat the game and raise your valuation:
Summary: Don’t let your investors determine the size of the option pool for you. Use a hiring plan to justify a small option pool, increase your share price, and increase your effective valuation.
Focus on your share price, not your valuation
Summary: Focus on your share price and the number of shares you own — metrics like valuation and percent ownership can fool you.
Hope you guys are finding these useful. Nivi is also talking and posting about them, usually faster than me…
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I’ve been avidly reading the Venture Hacks blog and am really glad it exists – I have a friend going straight into his VC round of financing from business plan and it looks more and more like the bad idea I always knew it was. Here’s a question for you sir: are there any "hacks" for a startup (like mine) that goes a much slower route to VC. We’ve completed friends and family, we’re going into Angel Network now, bringing up the share price each round, etc. We’ve allocated enough shares (we think) to do all this right…but…hacks would be appreciated! I dunno. Also, if you can recommend any NYC based Angel Networks of the reputable sort, I would greatly appreciate that info. We’ve got a killer business plan, an alpha prototype and two excellent developers toiling away at it all.Keep up the good work and thanks for the hacks thus far!
Raskin
May 10, 2007 at 3:11 pm