Most startups find their first lawyers via their personal network.
“I know a guy who knows a guy.” — Saul Goodman
That’s how I started, too.
My co-founder and I got an intro to Orrick who temporarily delayed our first $10,000 of legal fees until we raised a seed round.
The first $10,000 included our company’s legal structure, incorporation, cap table, and our first convertible notes.
It was definitely more expensive than it had to be.
From there, my co-founder and I personally handled a lot of the duplicate work for our seed round raise, as well as drafted our own legal documents with help from free legal document templates online.
That saved us around $40,000 if we were going by Orrick’s rates ($200-$800/hour).
The other $60,000 was saved...
Creating an effective pitch deck is one of the most important tools for getting a new venture off the ground. It can feel like an impossible task — especially if you lack design skills or are low on funds.
However, this guide demonstrates a detailed and reliable process to create a successful pitch deck without having to outsource the work. Remain in control of your project and influence investors to get on-board. Let’s get started!
Take this scenario as an example, my friend Luke and I have been bootstrapping a brand new project called Kangarooo. It’s a mobile interface with travel guides as well as the ability to search local activities and even book them right on the app, created specifically for travelers in ...
Today I’m ridiculously excited to tell you about a product I’ve been personally waiting on for a very, very long time – Startups Live!
Startups Live is a moderated, members-only Slack community where we’re pulling together the smartest Founders (and their teams) into a single discussion for one hour every day.
None of us have time for another forum or Slack community of random chatter. We’re not interested in sifting through trolls or hoping someone comes up with a topic that might be interesting in a chat room somewhere.
That’s why we’re keeping it short – 1 hour, every day – at 11a EST / 8a PST.
Each day we’ll be moderating the discussion to keep it fresh with new topics and adding in special guests and exp...
When I was in high school, there was a saying that "No one ever asks the pretty girl to Prom," which implied that everyone assumes they aren't good enough to make the ask, so no one asks.
Now, no one asked me to Prom in High School, so I've clearly assumed it's because I was so damn pretty, but that's another topic for another day. What I have learned when it comes to recruiting rockstar Advisors is that most people never get their top draft picks because they simply never ask.
Here's a fun fact — most of the Advisors you have in mind unless they are Elon Musk or Sarah Blakely, are probably going to say "yes." Seriously. It's way easier to get Advisors on our Boards, and as Founders, we're typically the only ones stopping ourselves!
What if all the sacrifice we're making for this startup isn't worth it?
There's a bit of a compact we make with ourselves that it's OK to sacrifice our time, money, and life experiences for a big payoff later. The most important part of that assumption is that we're absolutely certain that the things we'll get with that payoff are worth the sacrifice.
But how do we know for sure? What if we go through all of this sacrifice, get everything we ever thought we wanted, and wind up no more satisfied than we are today? What if our dreams are an illusion?
The cost of us being wrong is significant because, as Founders, we sacrifice a lot for our goals. By comparison, if we work a regular day job, we get paid for our time. We...
Most Founders are driven by pure fear — greed is something we can only "hope" to achieve.
Our pop culture loves to opine on the greedy nature of famous Founders, from Elon Musk to Cornelius Vanderbilt. It's easy to say, "Oh that Founder was only driven by greed — look at all they have that they don't need!"
But that often overlooks where it all started, where most of us are. It's kind of hard to be labeled a "greedy Founder" when you're living in your parents' basement applying for 24.99% interest rate credit cards just so you can keep the business alive!
The general population fails to realize that greed is a luxury we can only hope to achieve.
The reason being "greedy" is a luxury for most Foun...
What if we defined success by what we DON'T have to do anymore?
What if we didn't have to work with people we don't like? What if we never had to miss dinner with our kids? What if we never had to think twice about taking a vacation?
Does this sound like startup Shangri-la? I thought so, too, until 8 years ago. I decided to build Startups.com based on everything I never wanted to do again.
It fundamentally changed my life.
It turns out that making a list of things we don't want to ever do is actually much easier than a list of things we are trying to accomplish.
That's because saying "no" is more immediate. We can say, "I'll take more vacations when I'm really rich" (the "someday" paradox), or we can say,...
Before GirlBoss was a book or a Netflix show or a hashtag, Sophia Amoruso was running NastyGal and reticent to even sit on stage and be interviewed. She finally relented, and this was one of the first she’d ever done.
This interview was situated almost exactly between a five-year, almost effortless success story of growth, and a five-year slog that ultimately ended in bankruptcy.
But while NastyGal ultimately didn’t work, Amoruso continues to find ways to productize her unique attitude, style and eye. In addition to executive producing the Netflix show based on her life, she’s recently launched a media company for women called GirlBoss Media.
I have mixed feelings on the show and the direction of her media company, as a woman who doesn’t pa...
Startups are an excellent way to make money — for everyone else.
We all love hearing the story about that super-successful Founder who made a billion dollars growing their startup. Those legends fuel the myth that we "rank and file" Founders must also be swimming in our Scrooge McDuck vaults of cash.
Yet, I speak to thousands of Founders and if there's one common thread when it comes to money — it's that most of them are beyond broke!
So how is it that we can spend so much time building a wealth engine that doesn't actually provide any wealth for us? Where is all that money going anyway?
The problem starts with us. When we launch our startup, we're wildly resource-constrained, so we start off by sacrificing our own ...
Is it better to risk it all for a big outcome or count on a steady paycheck to create wealth?
Having watched tens of thousands of Founders live through the answer to this question, I can tell you it comes down to 3 related factors — our age, our earning potential, and our exit options.
When we answer this question, we often subconsciously fill in some of those values in our minds. So perhaps we say, "The paycheck is better!" because we're thinking about a 45-year-old professional making $300,000 per year.
But when we say, "The big outcome is what matters!" we might be only considering that risk for a 28-year-old without a mortgage or kids. Either way, the conditions drive the argument, so let's talk about those.
Risk i...