Did the allure of launching a startup make its way to your 2012 “this year I am going to finally do it” plan? Have you been putting together your business plan and feel the pulse of your entrepreneurial spirit quicken as you get closer to Day One of launching? Unfortunately along with the excitement of…
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A new year is like a fresh, clean slate. As you reflect back on the year behind you, do you find yourself thinking about new challenges or a change of scenery? While our economy is still struggling in many ways, there are jobs out there. In fact, in our sector, there are many great paying…
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Tech Cocktail is happy to share three keys to building a great financial model by guest author Taylor Davidson, creator of Excel template financial models for startups. Financial models are always wrong, but it’s important to create one anyway. Creating a financial model forces you to outline very specifically how your business “works”: how a company creates…
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Participating Preferred Stock…it’s not an evil thing. It is a real and significant thing that affects valuation and the quality of an exit. Therefore it is prudent that entrepreneurs seeking funding should understand its implications. Preferred stock is a cross between a debt/loan and a equity/stock instrument. In venture financing the preferred shares have the…
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Investors seek familiar investments that are analogous to companies that they admire. They would like to believe that you can be successful because you are like another company that has been successful. Therefore, when you create your business plan, base it on a successful, public company that is similar to yours. (Public is preferable, because…
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According to the latest PWC MoneyTree Survey, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) traded places with Kleiner Perkins for the number 1 spot in total deals closed by venture capital firms in Q3. NEA finished with 27 deals to Kleiner’s 23, which exceeds the 21 deals closed in Q2 by Kleiner. As usual, Silicon Valley firms dominated…
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Smarter money is available for less innovative companies Although game-changing innovation is expensive, laborious, time intensive and unplumbed, companies relying on existing technology find the market place (especially the ITC market) to be crowded, competitive, and cheap. Because starting a company is so much less expensive in 2011, many tech startups can succeed without taking…
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There will come a time when you need to know the REAL value of your company. Not the balance sheet value, but the bona fide, intrinsic, captures-everything-possibly-monetizable value. For some entrepreneurs, this need arises when the time and the money are ripe for an exit. For others, the need will come sooner, like when you’re raising…
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HelloWallet, the Washington, DC-based financial guidance startup, which we covered previously, announced today they have sold over 200,000 memberships to leading employers since launching their full application in May. HelloWallet will help hundreds of thousands of employees manage their financial life by providing personalized financial guidance that saves them money and helps them pay down…
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Startups are becoming trendy in the United States – so trendy that a controversial piece in the Washington Post chided entrepreneurs for their Hollywood mentality. But in the financial center of Hong Kong, startup founder is not a job title to brag about. “Hong Kong is still very very conservative and very, very risk averse,”…
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Can saving money be just as enjoyable as spending it? ImpulseSave is trying to prove that it can – especially for the 53% of Americans who fear they won’t have enough money for retirement. “We’re attempting to redefine the meaning of saving from something that’s painful to something that’s actually fun – and tempting, even,”…
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Raising money will rarely proceed on schedule. It is like building or remodeling a house or developing a new version of software. Complex stuff just doesn’t go as planned and is rarely completed on time or on budget. So when you finally get that fish hooked, and you land a term sheet, it may feel…
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I have the good fortune of listening to a couple of hundred investment pitches a year. I get to witness a number of awkward and sometimes comical situations (albeit more comical to the audience than the presenter). The interesting thing is that these faux pas are constantly repeated, and with just a little preparation, they…
Read More I have the good fortune of listening to a couple of hundred investment pitches a year. I get to witness a number of awkward and sometimes comical situations (albeit more comical to the audience than the presenter). The interesting thing is that these faux pas are constantly repeated, and with just a little preparation, they…
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I am not a math person. In fact, I avoid anything math-related, and this includes anything finance-related. Yes, I like to know what is going on in the economy, but start talking about stocks, bonds, and investing at a granular level, and my eyes glaze over. YCharts was basically made for people like me, as…
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Two of the biggest challenges facing small businesses are cash flow visibility and access to financing. Bilbus is a company using technology to solve these problems by bringing businesses and lenders together online. Using Bilbus, small business owners can track and view the status of their invoices as well as plan and forecast their collections and…
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There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More