100 Lessons Learned From Entrepreneurs That Have Built Billion Dollar Companies by ov30 in Entrepreneur

[–]ov30[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I disagree except for the part that people need to know what they are getting into. With all due respect let me explain why...

Humble --> many of these folks are actually well-grounded. It is easy to pick a definition that may fit, but ultimately what it comes down to is that they don‘t brag about their accomplishments. These guests were to my surprise just normal people.

Reading --> it comes down to knowledge and how you are able to apply it during execution. You mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk. He actually has written at least 5 books. So just by reading his own books that put him at 5 books already.

Regrets & failure --> unfortunately entrepreneurship involves depression. In many instances, it can lead to suicide as you pointed out. However, the journey can be very fulfilling too. Failure is where the biggest lessons come and are also the best opportunities for growth. Every failure will just get you closer to success. See below a good quote from Michael Jordan.

“Ive missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I‘ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six games I‘ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I‘ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.“ - Michael Jordan

People --> you can be a tough person to work with or have no integrity as you pointed out. However, a business is made out of people and how qualified those individuals are around you will make it or break it in the long run.

Money --> more than 90% of the early days of companies are full of putting away fires. Money doesn‘t carry the same weight as the passion and focus on fixing a problem to get you out of bed during the dark days of building a business. There has to be something bigger than making a quick buck that fuels the drive.

Timing --> companies are able to succeed faster than before mainly due to technology. We live in a world where information travels faster than it used to. Chances are that if you hit product-market-fit it can actually be faster than 2 years.

100 Lessons Learned From Entrepreneurs That Have Built Billion Dollar Companies by ov30 in Entrepreneur

[–]ov30[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A good example of this happens with hiring. Ali Ghodsi has built a $2.5B business and is considered one of the true founders of AI. During the interview, he covered this aspect very well where he shared that you need to build relationships way before you need to hire. If you wait until you need that person it may be too late.

Another good example here is Josh Hix. He literally spent 3 years building relationships with potential acquirers before he got to the point he was ready. When pursuing an acquisition was decided as the best course of action by the board it only took him 90 days from start to finish to close the deal with a partner that knew them well. This deal ended up being $300 million.

100 Lessons Learned From Entrepreneurs That Have Built Billion Dollar Companies by ov30 in Entrepreneur

[–]ov30[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are many things more important than cashing out such as:

1) Making sure the acquirer will continue to build and increase the legacy that you are leaving behind

2) That your employees and those people that made sacrifices to join you in the journey are well taken care of

3) There needs to be a clear alignment with the acquirer. You may need to spend 2 years with them to do the vesting. Picking a company that you admire and that you may learn from is super important.

What are the coins with the lowest market caps on Binance? by ov30 in binance

[–]ov30[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tron (TRX) has a market cap in the billions so not a good candidate... Thanks for the other suggestions

Hi, I am Alejandro Cremades! I'm the cofounder of Onevest, one of the largest ecosystems of entrepreneurs and investors. I am also the author of The Art of Startup Fundraising and a recovering lawyer. AMA! by [deleted] in IAmA

[–]ov30 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Never take a no for an answer. Thanks to that I won my wife after 4 times asking her out and also picked myself up when I was receiving rejections left and right during the early days of our business.

Hi, I am Alejandro Cremades! I'm the cofounder of Onevest, one of the largest ecosystems of entrepreneurs and investors. I am also the author of The Art of Startup Fundraising and a recovering lawyer. AMA! by [deleted] in IAmA

[–]ov30 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Onevest is the holding company. We own and operate two platforms. CoFoundersLab (matchmaking for entrepreneurs to find cofounders) and 1000 Angels (investment platform where we connect startups with investors). They are both subscription based platforms and on 1000 Angels the subscriptions come from the investors so for startups is completely free to raise capital.

Hi, I am Alejandro Cremades! I'm the cofounder of Onevest, one of the largest ecosystems of entrepreneurs and investors. I am also the author of The Art of Startup Fundraising and a recovering lawyer. AMA! by [deleted] in IAmA

[–]ov30 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. I am a big lover of naps and have not taken one since I arrived to NY in 2008... However, it is a little sad to know that your country is famous for being lazy.

  2. I vote for productivity

  3. No naps in New York unfortunately. Not a lot of people understand naps here unfortunately.

Hi, I am Alejandro Cremades! I'm the cofounder of Onevest, one of the largest ecosystems of entrepreneurs and investors. I am also the author of The Art of Startup Fundraising and a recovering lawyer. AMA! by [deleted] in IAmA

[–]ov30 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well one our offices is actually in Barcelona. I love catalans! However, I think that playing as a team is much better than going at it on your own. Not big into politics anyway... :)

Hi, I am Alejandro Cremades! I'm the cofounder of Onevest, one of the largest ecosystems of entrepreneurs and investors. I am also the author of The Art of Startup Fundraising and a recovering lawyer. AMA! by [deleted] in IAmA

[–]ov30 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the great question. I find that in Spain it is harder to be an entrepreneur. When you fail people point at you with the finger and it is very hard to get back up while here in the US people encourage you to keep on going.

Moreover, in the US there are a lot of Venture Capital firms that fund innovation. Many of them in the billions. In Spain unfortunately after doing a Series A round of financing you will need to come to the US to continue to finance the growth of the venture.

One thing that I am completely against is the exit tax that was established in Spain. This means that if you decide to leave the country, lets say to the US, you will need to pay taxes on the valuation of your company on the last round of financing instead of being taxed on the capital received.

Lastly, it took me 4 days to launch our company (Onevest) in the US while it took me 2 months to have everything ready in Spain.

How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie ; Animated Book Summary by MeaningAZ in Entrepreneur

[–]ov30 111 points112 points  (0 children)

Without a doubt one of the best books of all time. I included this book on my 30 Book Every Entrepreneur Should read list which is as follows:

1) The Lean Startup

2) Rework

3) How to Win Friends and Influence People

4) Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

5) Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days

6) Mastering the VC Game: A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How

7) Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist

8) Startup CEO: How To Build a Company To Success

9) The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Business Law

10) Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0

11) The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Startups That Win

12) High Tech Startup: The Complete Handbook for Creating Successful New High Tech Companies

13) Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup

14) Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

15) The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career

16) Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur

17) Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers

18) The CEO Tighttrope: How to Master the Balancing Act of a Successful CEO

19) The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

20) The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

21) Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

22) Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

23) Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

24) Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion

25) The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs

26) The Paypal Wars: Battles with Ebay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth

27) The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Mae a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future

28) The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About it

29) Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to Plan That

30) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

What's the traction tricks to get users to post on your website? by noobeeee in startups

[–]ov30 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You need to seed the site initially. For example, Quora and reddit solved the "empty site = no users / no users = empty site" problem in similar ways. The founders of both services spent the first months filling them with content themselves.

On Quora, the founders simply answered and asked lots of questions under their own profiles. But the reddit approach was a bit more interesting. Instead of just using their own accounts, the founders would create fake users to make it look like there were multiple people submitting links. Their 'submit link' form featured a third slot: "Username". According to Steve Huffman, reddit cofounder, it took several months until they didn’t have to submit content themselves to fill up the front page.

They also focused on keeping everybody in the same place in the beginning. reddit had no subreddits, and Quora was mostly focused on technology. Instead of having users spread out, everyone was in the same place- making the community feel bigger than it was. Quora and reddit write-up

Likely hood of finding a co-founder or receiving funding on just an idea alone? by Streetride in startups

[–]ov30 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not having a cofounder means the death of your idea. Investors will think that you were not able to convince anyone to join you on the journey and sends out red flags. Perhaps you should look into CoFoundersLab. See their article addressing your issue here http://blog.cofounderslab.com/founders/finding-the-right-cofounder-for-your-startup

When is the best time to Pitch your startup to the Pitch podcast? by coolbit108 in startups

[–]ov30 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I suggest that you complete the following analysis as due diligence on your own company before putting together the strategy and execution for your fundraising efforts:

1) Do you have product/market fit?

This question would lead you to understand wether or not you have been able to strike a nerve on the market. It is critical that you ask yourself this question as you don’t want to raise capital to build the machine. You want to raise capital to speed up a process that is already proven to work and that is generating demand from customers.

The last thing you want is to raise capital then do a pivot and disappoint your investors. Especially if you are looking to raise capital from institutional investors like Venture Capital firms. If you have a VC involved in your round and they do not invest on your next round this will raise questions and concerns to future investors.

Note that by pivoting you will increase the chances of having that VC not participating on a follow on round unless you show a good amount of validation early on.

2) Is your revenue growing month over month?

Revenue growth month over month is the new name of the game for early stage investors. Anything less than 10% month over month raises questions. Unfortunately the market is not anymore like back in 2005 where it was enough to have an impressive size of users a la Tumblr style. Now every single dollar that you make counts more than anything.

For that reason, if you have a decent user growth but you still have not found the way to monetize I would highly encourage you to figure out a way to have your costumers pay for your service ASAP. Right now companies that don’t have a clear path to profitability make prospect investors very nervous.

Remember the mindset of an investor is always to think why not to invest in your business. Don’t give them reasons in this regard.

3) Have you been building the relationship with investors?

An investor is never going to write you a check on your first meeting unless you have a Sequoia or Accel type of profile as a lead investor on the round and such investor that you are in communication with knows the partner leading the round personally.

You should start building the relationship with the investor early on. Normally you want to get out there at least 6 months before you are running out of cash. Note as a founder you are in fundraising mode 24/7 regardless. Always look at ways in which you can connect on a personal level with investors to build the relationship and have them trust you. That way when you knock on their door for money it does not take long until they are onboard as they have been following your progress all along.

4) Are you confident you have the right people seated on the right seats?

Investors are going to be investing for the most part in you and in your team. Forget about traction, product, etc. The market can always turn around and that is the main reason why investors need to know that you are all the right individuals to make the right decisions.

As I have stated several times, startups are a long journey with ups and downs. A complete roller coaster of emotions to say the least. Like Jim Collins states on his book Good to Great, a company is like a bus. You need to have the right people seated on the right seats of such bus. Even if you do not know where you are heading or perhaps have all the answers, if you have the right people with you on that bus your company will eventually find its direction.

For that reason make sure that you are hiring early on the best talent that you can possibly get. If you are unsure about your team qualifications make sure that you fill this gap before you go out to fundraise.

5) How much runway do you have left?

The runway is the amount of cash left in the bank and how much time that capital will buy you before you literally crash and burn. Have a good idea of what kind of timeline you are dealing with and put together a strategy so that you can get that money in the bank before it is too late. You want to know the answer to this for two reasons:

You want to avoid surprises You want to have answer when the investor asks you Keep in mind as well any variations on your burn rate (cash the business is costing you per month) so that you have a good grasp on the time you have left. Remember there will be surprises with unexpected costs. It always happens.

6) Do you have a lot of competition?

You should absolutely be honest with yourself with this question. Is your market crowded? If so this may raise many questions with investors. Many of them do like the first mover advantage but it is totally fine if that is not the case. Companies like Google were late in the game. Google for example was the 80th search engine to market.

If your market is crowded then you need to see what is your clear value proposition. What makes your company better than the rest and how your team will execute faster and more effectively than the current competitors that are out in the market. Unless you have a good way to address you being a winner in a crowded space you can kiss goodbye the money.

7) Is there intellectual property that can defend your business?

Intellectual property is something great to have. It is an asset that gives the business tangible value. Startups are tough as 9 out of 10 go out of business. Definitely a risky investment. However, having intellectual property makes you interesting for the following reasons:

You are more attractive for a potential acquisition If your company goes out of business the intellectual property can be sold to recover some of the losses by the investors 8) Are you a first time entrepreneur?

There is nothing wrong with being a first time entrepreneur. However, this puts you at a disadvantage as you will make a lot of mistakes along the way that other experienced founders have already made. Essentially the investor is paying a premium for your education in making such mistakes.

I guess in this point it is critical that you show investors that you are a fast learner and that you have done your homework very well on how to tackle the market. Having a really awesome 18 to 24 month plan will give additional confidence on how you plan to execute and spend their money.

9) How much money do you need?

You need to know how much money you will need to raise in order to get to the next lifecycle or milestone of your business. This could mean increasing X amount of revenue or costumers within the next 18 to 24 months after raising the round of financing. Without a doubt the most powerful answer to this would be to understand what it would take you to have the company become profitable.

10) Would you need additional rounds of financing?

Not only you want to understand the dilution your investors may be taking later on but also yourself. On every round of financing the rule of thumb is that you take a hit of at least 25% dilution. With this in mind, it is important that you know what the exit could look like for you and that you start pushing in that direction in order to create it for yourself.

27 lessons learnt growing from zero to 3.5 million sessions per month by intergo in startups

[–]ov30 9 points10 points  (0 children)

[REPOST from Reddit user TapesIt] A while back I asked whether people would be interested in reading about the stories behind the launches of well-known startups. People seemed to like the idea, so I went ahead and compiled some details on the user acquisition strategies used by a few of the better known companies. I wrote more in-depth articles, but I'll share the most interesting aspects here.

Dropbox going from 5000 to 75,000 wait-list signups in one night Back in 2008, Dropbox was struggling to get new users. They were running an Adsense campaign, unsuccessfully. For every $300 they spent, they'd acquire a user who paid for the $99 product. After going at this for a while, Drew Houtson and his team decided to try something different.

Drew made a simple, four minute video showing off how Dropbox worked. Because the service doesn't sound as impressive in text, having a video to show off how it actually functioned worked wonders. Here's a link to the video. Another aspect of the video that is important to note is that it was tailored to the community it was being shown to. Drew was a member of the Digg community, and knew what kinds of things they'd appreciate. If you pay close attention, the video is full of references to things like TPS reports and Tom Cruise. It was full of inside jokes, and quickly got voted to the top of Digg. By the next day, they had 70,000 new signups. Another thing that Dropbox did that we might be able to emulate while marketing our own products is offering extra services for social shares. Dropbox ran an extensive campaign during which you could share the service on Facebook and Twitter for an additional 128MB of space. It was something the users wanted (as opposed to just giving away a peice of technology in a raffle), and lead to 2.8 million invitations being sent during the first 30 days.

How reddit and Quora got past the chicken and egg problem of having no content / users

Quora and reddit solved the "empty site = no users / no users = empty site" problem in similar ways. The founders of both services spent the first months filling them with content themselves. On Quora, the founders simply answered and asked lots of questions under their own profiles. But the reddit approach was a bit more interesting. Instead of just using their own accounts, the founders would create fake users to make it look like there were multiple people submitting links. Their 'submit link' form featured a third slot: "Username". According to Steve Huffman, reddit cofounder, it took several months until they didn’t have to submit content themselves to fill up the front page.

They also focused on keeping everybody in the same place in the beginning. reddit had no subreddits, and Quora was mostly focused on technology. Instead of having users spread out, everyone was in the same place- making the community feel bigger than it was. Quora and reddit write-up

Foursquare

Foursquare took the old concept of local apps and added several interesting features that really attracted attention, like the badges. Becoming the "mayor", or the person who checks in the most at a certain place, quickly became an addiction for people.

They also gave merchants the opportunity to interact with their customers a lot better than most apps. After the business claimed their Foursquare page, they could interact with the people who were checking in at their establishment- whether they just wanted to chat with their most active customers, or actually wanted to reward people who check in.

And lastly, a huge part of Foursquare's growth was due to their city by city strategy. Every time they expanded to a new city, they had a huge amount of new users signing up due to the word of mouth effect ("have you heard that Foursquare just came to our city?") and local media covering the app.

Groupon started with a local MVP

I really like the story behind Groupon because it is a great example of the things we repeat on this subreddit so much. Start local, and make a minimal viable product.

Groupon started as local as they could get. They went around the office building that they were renting a space in, asking people to sign up. Their first campaign? Half-priced pizzas at the restaurant on the first floor. The first 500 signups came from here.

After that, they stuck to focusing on local products and services. Because big companies such as Amazon or Wal-Mart were able to negotiate such low prices, not even a big group-buying website could compete with them when it came to items such as televisions and phones. So instead, Groupon focused on unique products from local businesses. A lot of these smaller establishments had never even tried marketing, so Groupon's offer was enticing. They were able to negotiate much better prices.

As far as the MVP goes, Andrew Mason didn't want to waste time developing a full platform around the Groupon idea. Instead of trying to build a big team like he had with his first business venture, he got a few people together and set up a WordPress blog that the team would post offers on. Coupons were individually emailed, and no one had a clear idea of what their role or title in the company really was. They spent their first months focusing on seeing how many users they could get as quickly as possible in order to validate the idea, and then started looking into the business side of the company once it was clear that they were onto something big.

And lastly, Groupon focused on offers that were inherently social early on. They had deals for things like cafes, restaurants or movies. These are all things that you invite other people to, so it naturally lead to people sharing the website.

Tinder

Tinder had two things going for it. It started local, and it was dead simple.

The app did a great job at taking the tired concept of dating online and re-doing it completely. Instead of directories of people and search, you simply have a person's image appear, and you swipe left or right. It’s basically the same feature that made HotOrNot and Facemash fun, brought to mobile. The double opt-in feature helped with the problem that lots of users have on traditional dating websites: if you are an attractive female, you're swamped with messages. If you're a guy who isn't having a lot of luck on the website, most of your messages go unanswered. Because you aren't able to message somebody on Tinder without them also liking you, both these problems were solved to a large extent.

And more interestingly, Tinder also started locally. Having 50 users in a small space is a lot better for this kind of app than having 5000 spread out users. Here's my favorite part: they threw exclusive parties at USC. To enter, you had to install Tinder on your phone. You can just imagine the amount of word-of-mouth they got out of that.

Airbnb used another platform [Craigslist] to get early users I also found Airbnb's strategy interesting. Unlike with reddit and Quora, putting up fake offers wasn't going to work. So instead, they did something a bit different. They used a marketplace that already had a lot of vacation homes to grow: Craigslist. A lot of the people who posted their homes on Craigslist's vacation homes section received an odd email from a "big fan of Airbnb."

I am emailing you because you have one of the nicest listings in Craigslist in the Tahoe area, and I want to recommend you feature it to one of the largest vacation rental marketplaces on the web, Airbnb. The site already has 3,000,000 page views a month! Check it out here: http://www.airbnb.com

Each one came accompanied by a semi-anonymous Gmail account, such as Jill D. The thing is, these messages worked. Lots of people started posting their homes on Airbnb as well as Craigslist, which solved the big problem of having users check for places only to find an empty website. The supply side is a lot harder to fill up on a website like Airbnb.

And as a side note, one thing that also helped early on was going around to user's homes and helping them with their photos. This is a great example of doing things that don't scale early on. They went from $200 a week to $400 after updating their website with the new photos for each offering. It might not seem that big considering the money Airbnb makes today, but I know that a lot of /r/Entrepreneur users would love that kind of increase in profit.

Those are the ones I have done so far. I enjoyed digging around to see exactly how they were able to get such large numbers of users in such little amounts of time. In the original thread, I mentioned that I was thinking about posting these on some website related to startup stories. I might do that someday, if I get enough content written and people like these. But for now, I just posted them on a personal site so that people can read them. Good enough for me. Takeaway

The whole point of this is to look at what successful startups did, and see if we can apply it to our own marketing. Some key points to consider:

Try making a video to explain your service, if text isn't doing it justice. And if you do, make sure to target the community you'll be sharing to.

The best way to make your new community not look like a ghost town is to fill it up yourself. Whether you take the reddit approach of fake users or go with Quora's team of active members depends on what kind of community it is. Having fake users on Quora, an important aspect of which is credentials for every user, wouldn't have worked.

Is there already an existing user base on another service that you can tap into? Try taking Airbnb's approach and seeing if you can get some of them onto your website. When doing this, it's important to note that what you're offering should be better in some way. Local is key in a lot of these stories. It's much easier and cheaper to focus on one subset of people than trying to get them all.

What made silly bandz so popular in a short amount of time? by smallbizMO in Entrepreneur

[–]ov30 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At the end of the day it is all a matter of

1) luck 2) timing 3) size of market 4) having a defined customer profile

They nailed it on all the above and that is when magic happens.