Venture Hacks on Twitter

Sur le même thème que "Venture Hacks on Twitter"

Ask Venture Hacks

We get lots of email from people asking for advice. We’re going to start answering the most interesting questions here, so everyone can participate in the discussion. Got a question? Send it to ask@venturehacks.com. We read every question. Names will be changed to protect the innocent. In the meantime, catch up on past editions of Ask Venture Hacks, where we tackled VCs vs. angels, build vs. sell, doom, the world’s biggest fund-raising mistake, and the wonderful world of supra pro rata rights. [lien] [EN]

The top 3 hacks of the year

Happy New Year and here’s to an effective 2008. Here are the three most effective hacks of 2007. We maintain a Cheat Sheet of all the hacks, but try to apply these three if you don’t have time to apply them all. Create a market for your shares You need strong alternatives to hack a term sheet. Create alternatives with focus: pitch and negotiate with all your prospective investors at once. Focus compounds scarcity and social proof, which closes deals. Focus also yields a quick yes or no from investors—either way, you will soon get back to building your business. Related: You can’t clear the market in series. Create a board that reflects the ownership of the company Create a board of directors that reflects the ownership of the company and don’t let your investors control the board through an independent board seat. [lien] [EN]

Should I shop around?

“We took the approach of wanting to get to know the different partners and the different possibilities and to see where there was the best fit. Partnerships take a lot of work—you want to go out on a few dates before you get married. Yes, we dated a few people but didn’t get married… and so there were a few unhappy girlfriends out there. The choice wasn’t an economic choice, it was a customer choice.” — Steve Jobs Summary: A deal is only as good as its best alternative. Keep improving your alternatives until you have a signed term sheet. And keep developing your current offers or they will die. Finally, don’t say “shopping around”, it puts investors off their stroke. A reader asks: “I have spoken to only one person regarding an investment, and they immediately said they would back my company. [lien] [EN]

How much diligence should we do before signing a term sheet?

“Once the term sheet is signed, the power shifts away from the startup to the purchaser. The typical term sheet will give the purchaser the discretion to step away from the deal if due diligence is unsatisfactory, or if the necessary internal approvals are not obtained.” — Suzanne Dingwall Williams, on M&A “… there is a wide range of behavior among VCs—the group that doesn’t put a term sheet down until they are committed are at one end of the spectrum; the group that puts down a term sheet to try to lock up a deal while they think about whether or not they want to do it is at the other.” — Brad Feld Summary: Complete business diligence and prepare for legal diligence before you sign a term sheet. Signing a term sheet early is a recipe for a hostage negotiation. A reader asks. [lien] [EN]

Grockit’s founder on raising money

Brian Norgard (Newroo founder and Venture Hacks investor) recently interviewed my brother, Farbood Nivi, about his experience raising money for Grockit from Benchmark et al: Brian: Tell me about the funding process. Farbood: I think raising money is great fun. The bottom line is that the money has to be spent. VCs are not in the business of holding their Limited Partner’s investment in a 5% security. They have to spend the money on startups. So, either your startup gets the money or someone else’s startup gets the money. No VC has a perfect track record, nor do they pretend to. So, (1) either your idea or business sucks and the VCs knows it (despite their imperfect record, they are not bad at telling) or (2) you suck at explaining it. There is literally more money to invest than the world’s VCs know what to do with. [lien] [EN]

What should I send investors? Part 1: The Elevator Pitch.

“Summarize the company’s business on the back of a business card.” — Sequoia Capital Summary: An introduction captures an investor’s attention, but a great elevator pitch gets a meeting. The major components of the pitch are traction, product, and team. If you’re building an interesting company, people will offer to introduce you to investors—it makes them looks good. In Hollywood, content is king; in Silicon Valley, dealflow is king. So, what should you send investors? Send an elevator pitch and a deck. We’ll cover the elevator pitch in this article. Get a first meeting with an elevator pitch. A great elevator pitch is more important than your deck and less important than the “introducer”. If you don’t have an introduction, the elevator pitch is critical to a cold call. [lien] [EN]

It will be harder to raise Venture Debt for a while.

Many startups use venture debt to extend their runway beyond the capital that they raised from venture capital investments directly into the company. David Hornik wrote a good overview of venture debt a few years ago, all of which is still relevant today. Some things have changed since then however. The WSJ reports today on how tightening credit markets are hitting venture debt firms Providers of loans to start-up and other venture-backed companies are feeling the pinch of the credit problems plaguing Wall Street. venturewireThe latest is publicly traded venture debt provider Hercules Technology Growth Capital, which on Monday said it secured a $50 million line of credit from Wells Fargo–much smaller than the $250 million in available credit it secured from Citigroup and Deutsche Bank last year. [lien] [EN]

If you don’t “get” Facebook and Twitter, read this NY Times article

The NY Times is often considered the US newspaper of record, and it lives up to its reputation with an excellent article in today’s Sunday NY Times Magazine about the ambient awareness enabled by Facebook status updates, Twitter and other microblogging tools. Even readers familiar with both popular microblogging tools and their history should read this article. High points: Microblogging enables ambient awareness of your broad friendship group: In essence, Facebook users didn't think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why? Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is. [lien] [EN]

What impact will the credit crunch have on venture financing for startups?

An entrepreneur asked me recently if I was concerned about the impact the credit crunch will have on venture financing for startups. I responded: For high quality companies, the short answer is no. The more nuanced answer is that (i) The credit crunch will impact venture debt (already has) so people can’t count on that to extend their runway, so should raise a bit more than they would have done (ii) If the economy indeed slips into recession (as a second order effect of the credit crunch), then this will impact sales growth for many startups, whether selling to enterprises or consumers. This will also impact timelines to profitability, and hence amount raised. It will also likely cause some angels and some venture firms (especially corporate venture firms and firms with a shorter time horizon) to become less active investors. [lien] [EN]

Does Twitter’s 140 character limit improve writing or reading?

Does Twitter’s 0 character limit improve writing or reading? July - Posted by jeremyliew in UI, twitter. Fred Wilson recently posted about the importance of SMS as a mobile interface, saying that in the debate between web apps and mobile apps on phones, you should not ignore the least common denominator, SMS. I believe that Twitter’s native implementation of sms is an important part of its success. The 0 character limit was driven by the 0 character limit of sms and the initial design of the service put sms compatibility up there near or at the top of the system requirements. Other competitive services, including Facebook, are just not as natively available via sms the way Twitter is. In general, I agree. However, he also notes that: Of course most people access Twitter and Facebook and other web services via mobile web interfaces and apps. [lien] [EN]

Are there more Facebook status updates or Twitter tweets?

Are there more Facebook status updates or Twitter tweets? September - Posted by jeremyliew in facebook, twitter. Facebook says that more than 0m people update their status at least once per day. So there are at least 0m status updates a day, and likely some multiple of that – perhaps in the order of 0m status updates. Tweespeed suggests that there are around 1m tweets per hour on average over the last week, so that is around 4m tweets per day. This is roughly in line with the 0 tweets per second that twitpocalypse is estimating in their countdown, which comes out to about 8m tweets per day. But note that these rates are accelerating fast. Facebook still leads by 3x. But there is a difference in the velocity of posting (tweeting or updating status) between the two user bases. [lien] [EN]

Example : Twitter Hack

We recently heard a story about Twitter - it has beeen hacked. We want to know more about it. Naturally, we go to Google and search for “twitter hack”. As usual, we read the first page. We find some good information explaining what happened. We open- http/www.techcrunch.com/twitter-gets-hacked-badly/ - http/lalawag.com/timeline-le-twitter-hack/ - http/www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/hacker_i_broke_into_twitter.html - http/www.nytimes.com/technology/internet6twitter.html - http/www.techcrunch.com/in-our-inbox-hundreds-of-confidential-twitter-documents/ - http/www.techcrunch.com/twitters-ev-confirms-hacker-targeted-personal-accounts-attack-was-highly-distressing/ - http/www.korben.info/hack-de-twitter-la-suite.html - http/www. [lien] [EN]

Twitter users unwittingly sending direct messages [Hacks]

It seems someone has found another security hole in Twitter, as at least two acquaintances are complaining of direct messages being sent from their accounts but not by them. The messages trigger an SMS message and an email notification, but are not logged in either the sender or recipient's direct message archive on Twitter.com. I'm guessing someone's done a simply query-string hack of the form handler, or possibly using SMS to route around Twitter's authentication schemes. Either way, seems like every day is becoming Twitter as someone else day. [lien] [EN]

Twitter seeks $60 million valuation first, business model later [Venture Capital]

Twitter, a communications tool for marketers, self-promoters and journalists, is trying to raise a third round of venture capital Silicon Alley Insider reports cofounders Evan Williams and Biz Stone are looking for $15 million, valuing the company at $60 million. Current investors include Union Square Ventures and Charles River Ventures. SAI guesses Stone and Williams have pitched Spark Capital, too. Twitter raised $5 million for a $20 million valuation last summer. The company still hasn't found a business model, mostly because users, by and large, view Twitter messages on cell phones or third-party desktop applications, not the Twitter.com website. We find this endless groping embarrassing. Twitter limits messages to 140 characters. Why not shorten it to 120 and slap "Sponsored by Coke" to the end of each message? That seems easier. [lien] [EN]