Nextdoor is backed by some of the largest and hottest VCs in Silicon Valley, including Benchmark and Greylock, which share LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Uber as recent hits among them. Nextdoor is growing steadily and has raised some $200 million in capital. Nothing about this company isn’t a Silicon Valley and startup success story.
And yet, amid the current climate, Nextdoor is an outlier in almost every other way. It has grown slowly, not just relying on building local city-by-city network effects like an Uber or Postmates, but building neighborhood-by-neighborhood network effects.
It’s essentially vying to be another great social network, while Twitter and Pinterest struggle to grow, LinkedIn has already sold, and even Faceb...
The financials slide in our pitch deck takes our own financial projections and consolidates them into our most key metrics that potential investors care about.
Most pitch deck financial projections wind up being incredibly hard for potential investors to understand, so we're going to provide you with a killer financial projections slide template that's easy to use and will impress investors.
We always build our financial projections slides in our pitch deck backward from what questions investors have.
That way, the financials slide is only covering exactly what a potential investor wants to see — and no more!
Our "pro formas" are really just a ...
In today's fast-paced world of startups, securing adequate funding is crucial to success. Entrepreneurs must navigate a myriad of funding stages, each presenting its own set of challenges and opportunities. With this comprehensive guide to different stages of funding for startups, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the startup funding stage and landscape, enabling you to make informed decisions and ultimately fuel your venture's growth.
Understanding startup funding stages is essential for successful resource acquisition.
Pre-seed, seed, series A to C financing and an IPO are common investment options available to startups.
Preparation including a business plan and pitch presentation as well as due diligence research are key el...
Millennials enter the workforce with limitless dreams but limited options for high-paying jobs. Their median household income is about 20 percent less than Baby Boomers earned at a similar stage in their lives, and many Millennials wrestle with staggering student loan debt and skyrocketing healthcare costs.
As dispiriting as this situation might sound, Millennials can kick open the doors of professional opportunity thanks to fast-moving technology advancements that have created countless side hustles. About one-third of workers have a side hustle, according to a CareerBuilder survey of 3,200 private sector workers. Millennials are particularly active in the growing trend, with 44 percent of 25- to 34-year olds and 39 percent of 18- to 24-ye...
Looking for the next billion dollar idea? Good luck. Many unicorns pivot away from their initial idea and novice entrepreneurs often fail to understand this and instead attempt invent the next “you name it” idea from the get-go.
Experienced entrepreneurs know the better way. All they need to do is to look inside their inner self and talk to other people to learn what remains broken in the world around. Then — fix that, in the best possible way.
Well, so easy to read, but the devil is in the details. That’s why I’d like to share the set of techniques how to come up with better ideas for a startup.
Great ideas are born when you feel a particular need on your own. However, you may not notice those signals in the daily rou...
Founders don't get lucky — that's how lottery winners make their money.
From the outside, though, it often looks the same. People read about a company going public or hear about some Founder they know getting their startup acquired and think "Wow, what good luck they've had!"
They view our windfall as some stroke of luck, and as importantly they view our proceeds as something that should be doled out to everyone. In the worst case, they may even try to make us feel guilty about such great fortune — if we haven't already done that to ourselves.
In order for a Founder to exit they couldn't rely on luck. Luck is what happens when we're at the blackjack table and you get dealt an ace and a king. Luck is w...
When it comes to building a website for your business, it's important to choose the right type of website that will meet your needs and goals. There are several different types of websites to choose from, each with its own set of features and benefits. And choosing which website is best might be a litter overwhelming.
Some websites are more useful than others, depending on your business's industry. Some are easier to maintain while others are just plain confusing. That's where we come in. We've put together a quick guide that will help you figure out what type of website is best for your business.
Read on for tips on choosing the perfect website for your business model with insight from our community members to help you along the way.
Earlier this week we had one of our partners publicly share some news that we’re equally excited about: We’ve raised a round of venture financing that includes Slack and their investment vehicle, The Slack Fund.
And as they so thoughtfully put it, it’s a “two way street” as they are betting on us and we are definitely betting on them. You can read their full announcement here as well as a companion Forbes piece sharing the news as well.
Although this is exciting news all the way around we have been somewhat coy about going public with any venture financing news. Part of this has to do with the fact that many people wrongly believe that raising a round of venture is, in an of itself, a “big deal” — it’s just not true.
Or rather, people mist...
So you’ve made the leap into the unknown and committed to finally starting your own business. Now what? The to-do list you have created looks huge and overwhelming, where do you start?
Business to-do lists will vary hugely from business to business, but there are a few questions you can ask yourself to decide which are the tasks you should be working on:
1. What will have the largest impact on my business?
Are there any tasks that have a leverage or scaling effect i.e. a little effort (or even a lot of effort) creates a much greater return on the time invested? For example; you may need to update your financial ledger with invoices paid and also come up with a new referral scheme, do the one first that has the biggest multiplier effect (...
Continuing in Phase Three of a four-part Funding Series:
Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise
Phase Two - Investor Selection
Phase Three - The Pitch
Part 1 - Anatomy of a Pitch
Part 2 - Market Size
Part 3 - Revenue Model
Part 4 - Operating Model ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)
Part 5 - Customer Definition
Part 6 - Customer Acquisition
Part 7 - Funding
Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets
Part 9 - Traction
Phase Four - Investor Outreach
Let’s dive in!
If the Revenue Model is all about the clever ways you’re going to make money, the Operating Model is all about the clever ways you’re going to manage costs and efficiencies to earn it.
Often the Operating Model gets the least amount of love. That’s because ...