When I first got a job in venture as a Managing Director at Techstars, I loved meeting founding teams with two equal cofounders – one technical and one business-focused. It seemed obvious back then that a successful team needs to know how to build and how to sell and that this kind of composition of […]
Founders Guide to the Secondary Stock Sale
Secondary stock sales have become an increasingly popular mechanism for rewarding the founders who achieved significant growth in their business but what are they? Here’s what you need to know.
8 Myths of Pre-Seed Venture Investing
Alex Iskold shares some insights he has picked up over the last seven years writing checks at Techstars NYC and 2048 focusing on how fund economics for pre-seed investing differs from other stages of venture investing.
A Fair Pricing Model for Pre-Seed Rounds
The idea is essentially to raise the capital in tranches using multiple valuation caps, to minimize founder dilution, and to reward the earliest investors who aren’t just willing to commit but are willing to wire the capital too.
Opportunities in 2020 and beyond: APIs, Genomics, Communities, Video and good old SaaS
2048 Ventures Managing Partner Alex Iskold shares some insights into what he is looking at from an investment standpoint in 2020 and beyond.
6 Scenarios For Raising Capital Amidst the Growing Uncertainty
History tends to repeat itself. We have good times and not so good times. The market is cyclical. With the election turmoil ahead we were already poised for uncertainty. Coronavirus pored a lot of gasoline on this fire. Yesterday Sequoia Capital called Coronavirus the Black Swan of 2020. This is a dramatic description, but an […]
How to Run a Series A Fundraising Process
We take a look at how to run a tight Series A process to help you get multiple competing term sheets, while not taking a lot of time.
Why Customer Network is the Next Big Thing That Every Startup Needs to Master
2019 was the year when VCs and startup founders soured on paid acquisition. Contrary to what most thought a few years back, CAC (cost of acquiring a customer) didn’t go down as many D2C startups scaled. The costs instead went up. The explosion of D2C brands and mega-rounds of funding led to massive amounts of […]
5 Building Blocks for Your Customer Acquisition Machine
The one article you need to read to learn everything you need to know about reducing your customer acquisition costs.
10 Things You Can Do to Prepare for Potential Slowdown in 2019
The public markets are continuing to go down, and the whispers of an upcoming recession are on Twitter, on Bloomberg, and in the private conversations. The experts are predicting the recession sometime between now, and the end of 2020. While I am no expert on Macroeconomics, I do know that it is prudent to plan […]