Expert Advice
During a Sunday afternoon last year, I came across an article about how to quickly and cheaply launch a business. I had been wanting to start a side project to get more familiar with...
Without dating myself or even just admitting I like classic rock and folk music, one of the best stories told through a song is “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin. For those of you...
This is the second post in a series on “raising VC money.” For the list of topics we are covering, click here. This post will cover “how to get the VC meeting.” So, after doing...
You’re an early stage entrepreneur building a Web-based subscription business. You have your board meeting coming up soon, or you’re sitting down with your close...
The idea is working… you have great investors, you have hired exceptional people, your core product is built, your customers are happy and they want to know what is coming...
In this post, we’ll focus on the first topic: which VCs to target? I think it’s a critical step in the fundraising process. You have a new business idea, you’ve spent a ton of time on...
Teachers and students have a mutual goal: to learn. The best teachers constantly adapt their plans - sometimes at a moment's notice - to ensure that they meet the needs...
What can we learn about innovation and growth from the most successful growth companies? Global competition and a weak economy have made growth more challenging...
One of many famous credos of the late, great Coach John Wooden. Everybody talks about moving at web speed. As it applies to making decisions about All Things People...
I was doing some data mining in our database of New England venture transactions (see Foley Hoag Venture Perspectives) for reasons completely unrelated to the topic I am about...
One area of fundraising that is not that straightforward is how to put together a syndicate of investors for your seed round. Although there have been an increase in the number...
I have been involved in many environments in which mentoring is a core part of the value proposition. Seedcamp or TechStars succeed almost exclusively on the quality of their...
A couple of months ago Mark Stephens wrote a guest post on OnStartups about the benefits of gaining experience at a large company. Having worked at a large company, and having...
Every entrepreneur has heard of the importance of his/her "elevator pitch"... the succinct description of your business you're supposed to have at the ready when a VC says "so, what's your...
A few months back I had dinner with a group of product managers returning from Scrum training. The team had been struggling to find the right process for their organization, and hoped...
There’s something magical happening in Boston right now, and it’s going to make history. Like many Startup scenes, Boston’s is truly exploding, vibrant with...
An entrepreneur I really admire asked me for advice on how to handle associate cold calls from VC firms. I thought the best way to answer that question is to share what happens...
Note: This is intended be a light-hearted piece that hits just close enough on some counts to (hopefully) be funny. Please don't take it too seriously. (Oh, and for the record, I've actually...
I’ve noticed a growing amount of advice for business entrepreneurs on how to find a technical co-founder. The advice seems to be “don’t delay if you can’t find one; learn to code.” It’s really...
I’ve been getting this question often: “What positions do you fill first when building early stage marketing teams?” Well. Here’s the deal. I’ve been fortunate enough to work at several...
"There are moments in a company's life where you have to jump..." - Mike Baker. Towards the end of last year, Silicon Valley Bank...
How do you grow a software business? What does growth look like? This is what growth looks like. It starts slow, almost linear, from zero, and then (we hope) accelerates. The horizontal...
Welcome to the latest installment of Octane! Today, we are featuring the CEO & Co-Founder of CampusLIVE in Boston... Boris Revsin!!! CampusLIVE is a high growth startup...
You see the future... you have the technology... however, the market and mass consumer...
Need capital to start or build your business? Ever try to figure out who the best fit VC is for you? In my view, the absolute best way for you to get the capital to build your business...
Most product demos are disastrous. I’ve gone through more trainwrecks than I would care to have, and thought I’d share some of my scars and random learnings on the topic...
As many fellow non-technical folks know, it’s not easy selling an engineer on building a product that’s not their own. To remedy this situation, many people (including myself) have...
I recently had coffee with a friend and former colleague whom I met working at Google. We’ll call him Jake. Jake now works in education, at a premier music and arts school outside...
We’ve been developing Smarterer for the better part of a year now, quietly building a platform that uses crowd-sourced questions to validate peoples’ social and professional skills. Like many...
At NextView Ventures, we have a number of companies in our portfolio which are “marketplace” businesses, where buyers and sellers meet to exchange a good...