What do startup founders pay themselves?
To find out what could be the “standard” compensation for founders, Seedcamp, the European seed-stage VC, collected data of the salaries of 185 founders from pre-seed to Series A companies. The respondents interviewed are based in the UK, Europe and North America.
How to Tell A Startup Story
A good story of how your startup helps customers is fundamental to your success. The customers, employees, and investors you need to survive (let alone win) are busy, distracted human beings just like you; caught up in their responsibilities, ailments, grievances, wants, desires, obligations, and imagined victory narratives. To cut through all that you need a well honed machete, and the edge of that machete is a quick story that moves people from where they are to where you need them to be.
We Need A Standard Unit Of Measure For Risk
So to understand the total risk that you face in a given situation, you have to understand the base rate of danger that you’re confronting, and then the relative impact of the interventions you’re considering, whether it’s wearing a seat belt or putting on a mask.
New York’s First Tech Billionaire Told Me the Most Important Part of His Job
For busy entrepreneurs, dealing with customer service complaints is one of the least enjoyable parts about building a company. Not only is the work tedious, but it also involves talking with people specifically interested in complaining, and that’s rarely the recipe for an enjoyable experience. Because of this, the first chance entrepreneurs get, they delegate customer service to someone else. But, in Jon’s opinion, this is the worst thing a founder can do…
What is a “Moat” and why does it matter?
The only companies that survive and thrive over the long term (think, 10+ year time horizon) are those that earn returns in excess of their peers as a result of their moat. These returns have a tendency to compound over time, making these companies grow even stronger than their peers.
Introducing the Portland Inno Madness bracket
Inno Madness is our friendly, bracket-style challenge where readers vote to advance companies based on one question: Who would you invest in? Whether you believe in one mission or product slightly over the other or would prefer to back a more established company versus an early-stage startup, how you answer that question is entirely up to you. The bracket is designed to shine a spotlight on 32 innovative local businesses.
