Nivi › Comments

"Awesome. If I had to stuff my response in a tweet, I would say, "As much as possible while keeping your dilution under 20%, preferably under 15%, and, even better, under 10%." I think this advice makes even more sense for founders who aren't experienced "developing and executing operating plans." What do you think?" - Nivi

"Awesome. If I had to stuff my response in a tweet, I would say, "As much as possible while keeping your dilution under 20%, preferably under 15%, and, even better, under 10%." I think this advice makes even more sense for founders who aren't experienced "developing and executing operating plans." What do you think?" - Nivi

The URL does not link properly? - Space Cowboy

Here you go: http://bit.ly/4HtkRp - Nivi

"I tell entrepreneurs who want intros to VCs to do the same thing. Pick up the phone and call the guy who you want to make an intro. And try to do him a favor first. Leave some awesome comments on his blog. Retweet him. Show him something awesome." - Nivi

"Hi James, Do any examples or counter-examples come to mind?" - Nivi

"Re "Get Your House in Order", how often do you seem angels (or their lawyers) dig into company's docs?" - Nivi

"I'm curious about the backgrounds of the "experienced VC’s in the room"? Were they former founders, management consultants, professional managers, professional VCs…? Had any of them founded and grown a sustainable business?" - Nivi

"“Ning… for education.” That’s a great pitch." - Nivi

"“Ning… for education.” That’s a great pitch." - Nivi

"Read Hidden Value and The Human Equation: http://venturehacks.com/article... http://venturehacks.com/article... Just do it." - Nivi

"All exponential curves look "flat" for a while if you zoom out enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki..." - Nivi

"Great post. I would counsel founders to focus on maximizing the value of their ownership instead of maximizing their % ownership. Owning 90% is one way to potentially maximize the value of your ownership. So is owning 50%. I wonder what would happen if we asked founders who have had good exits whether their co-founders were an irreplaceable component of their success." - Nivi

"This book on body language is excellent: http://www.amazon.com/gp...... I read it cover-to-cover — that's rare. If you're specfically interested in confident body language read these: http://roissy.wordpress.com/2007...... http://roissy.wordpress.com/2008...... http://roissy.wordpress.com/2009...... http://roissy.wordpress.com/2008...... If you're a woman, I'm not sure how you should apply these suggestions, unless you want to act "manly"." - Nivi

"I wonder if there really is a significant tension between getting it done and getting it right. In order to get it done right you have to get it done wrong. You put something out there, you get feedback and you iterate. That's what happened with Recruiting Animal and The Peter Principle foreward. You progressively disclose revisions to larger and more critical audiences. You might start with a tweet, turn it into a blog post, then a talk, then a book. If you don't have significant distribution to start with, your audience will naturally expand as the quality of the revisions expand. If you *do* have signficant distribution to start with, then you create different groups of people and gradually disclose to each group as the quality of the revisions increases. In either case, I think reducing cycle time is a good heuristic for increasing the rate of improvement of revisions. Look at the not-so-great-stuff that Google releases all the time despite their giant distribution (Google Base,..." - Nivi

"Thanks again Steve. You say, "Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit." Based on your discussion in the comments, I think we should add "Market Type also affects your positioning before you reach product/market fit."" - Nivi

"Thanks kindly for your reply.1. "While one could argue that biotech startups also face market risk, their first decade is dominated by whether the science will work." Great quote. Customer development is about squeezing out risks in the right order. This overlay adds another upfront risk (technical risk) that needs to be squeezed out first, if necessary.2. I totally grok what you're saying. But I haven't seen startups do anything useful with the theory of market type in the discovery and validation stages, except in re-positioning the product to try to get better product/market fit in discovery. Thinking about market type seems to bog startups down and they don't get anywhere with it (most startups don't get one-on-one time with Steve Blank). That's based on my own personal experience and I would love to experience counter-examples. So my solution has been to punt on the topic and say what I wrote above.3. Isn't the point of the third question that the definition of validation should..." - Nivi

"Great stuff. I would love to get your feedback on these thoughts:1. “Does your startup have market risk or is it dominated by technical risk?” Let's not let startups use this as an escape hatch to avoid customer development. Almost all Web startups are dominated by market risk. Even startups that are dominated by technical risk have the customer validation risk of finding positive ROI distribution in a large market.2. "“What’s the “Market Type” of your startup?" I love the theory of market type but I think it is an advanced topic. For startups in customer discovery and validation, I would boil it down to: "1. Don't launch. Don't spend time and money on getting the word out about your product beyond what you need to do discovery and validation. 2. Your best bet is probably taking an existing market and serving a portion of it better than the competition, through lower cost or a different set of features. End of theory."3. "What is the “Business Model” of your startup?" I've never..." - Nivi

"Both pics are Gates and Allen." - Nivi

"Both pics are Gates and Allen." - Nivi

"We weren't clear about the definition of a "seller" in the Venture Hacks post. I'll revise to say something like, "The seller doesn't have to be a "salesman" or "business guy". He can be technical, but he must be able to wield the tools of influence. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs aren't salesmen, but they are sellers."" - Nivi

"In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely discusses experiments that back you up. If you tell people about your cons after they already like you, they don't care about your cons as much. Check out the beer/vinegar experiment in the book." - Nivi

"Hey babycakes, consider adding "via @venturehacks" when you post our tweets. I'm assuming you got it from us. Because we linked to it. And no one else on the web links to things." - Nivi

"We need to revise Andreessen’s “The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.” It should be “The FIRST thing that matters…”" - Nivi

Fellow Venture Hacks author is blogging again. - Nivi

"For Steve Jobs "mistakes" see the early history of Pixar, NextStep, Apple TV, the Apple cube… Who said Chrome was going to crush Firefox? And Chrome market share is actually quite significant given the state of its development and age." - Nivi

""There is more to life than increasing its speed." – Gandhi" - Nivi

"In Sean’s world, you wouldn’t spend much time on landing and signup pages until you had the P/M fit problem solved." - Nivi

Fake Steve: "If we could we would even keep products secret after we started selling them, because as everyone knows the less you say about your product the more people want it, and when they don't know anything about the product they are free to project all their wildest hopes and dreams onto that product, and if you don't believe me just ask my good friend Barack Obama because this is exactly the strategy he used when he was running for president and guess what, it totally works. We call this "tabula rasa marketing," and we were thinking about doing a book about it but guess what, we're better off having no book and no information about how it works because then it stays all mysterious people can project whatever they want onto it -- okay. Sorry." - Nivi

Fake Steve: "Anyway, I'm on record opposing this refund to idiots who bought Baby Einstein and now are claiming that they thought plopping their kids in front of videos would make them smart. Frankly, if you're stupid enough to believe that, then you've already done your kids irreparable harm by passing your DNA on to them. Whatever harm that video might do is nothing compared to the harm of inheriting your hillbilly genes, trust me. And anyway, what's next? Are these idiots going to sue Einstein's Bagels cause all they do is make you fat, not smart?" - Nivi

"This is awesome. If you haven’t read Sean Ellis’ startup pyramid, you should: http://startup-marketing.com/the-sta..." - Nivi

"We usually tell very early stage companies with no product, traction, or track record to look for: 1. Family and Relationship Investors: People who already know you and are willing to bet on you, based on your history together. 2. Idea Investors: People who believe there’s a big opportunity to serve the customer because they understand the customer as well as you do. 3. Once Removed Investors: These investors trust or regularly co-invest with the investors above. Once you get some traction, start talking to dedicated seed stage funds, multi-stage investors who do a lot of seed stage investments, angels, angel groups, etc. You can also jump straight to this set of investors if you have a significant track record or a mind-blowing product (you probably don't). More details here: http://venturehacks.com/article..." - Nivi

"We usually tell very early stage companies with no product, traction, or track record to look for: 1. Family and Relationship Investors: People who already know you and are willing to bet on you, based on your history together. 2. Idea Investors: People who believe there’s a big opportunity to serve the customer because they understand the customer as well as you do. 3. Once Removed Investors: These investors trust or regularly co-invest with the investors above. Once you get some traction, start talking to dedicated seed stage funds, multi-stage investors who do a lot of seed stage investments, angels, angel groups, etc. You can also jump straight to this set of investors if you have a significant track record or a mind-blowing product (you probably don't). More details here: http://venturehacks.com/article..." - Nivi