Tag: Founders

Everything Wrong With Venture Capital

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Medium Premium Preview

This series concludes with a hard look at why we need new sources of capital for founders


The final story in our premium Medium series from author (and software company founder) Luke Kanies explores the need for alternatives to our current system of venture capital. In Kanies’ words, our system looks stable, but most companies follow the same playbook: They try to get their investments to the magic number of $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), raise an A round of funding, and keep on the funding train until you go public or go bust. This system forces founders to contort their companies to fit the funding schedule rather than discovering their own destinies. Kaines believes that instead of continuing to fund disruptors, VC will itself be disrupted with a better alternative.

Discover more here:

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What Uber Founders Didn’t Know in 2009

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Photo by Gustavo Belemmi on Unsplash

As Uber appoints its new CEO, Expedia’s Dara Khosrowshahi, it’s the right time to reminisce about the early days of the company, as a mental exercise for imagining where it could go next.

What don’t you know when you found a start-up? A lot. When people look at leviathans like Google, Facebook or Uber today, they often see the negative impact of their dominant market positions. They forget that these firms started small, and, in Uber’s case, with bad PowerPoint. Garrett Camp, the other founder of Uber, released the firm’s seed round pitch deck from 2009.

It’s a must read if you care about startups.

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Founders: How to Stop a Huge Time Waster Before It Starts

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Get Shift Done: Management


Soon someone close to you will propose the ultimate time waster. They will tell you it’s essential you implement it in your company. They will say you can’t scale your company without it. Their intentions will come with the most genuine and positive intent. For them, their recommendation is a no-brainer.

They will tell you that you need a performance management process. As a founder, you despise the term and what it stands for. YOU NEED TO ADDRESS IT HEAD ON or it will surface again and again.

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