Q: My client is looking for a 5 million dollar investment from a VC firm. What can he do to protect himself if he is worried that the VCs will acquire the rights to his product and then try to fire him and keep those rights? Does this happen often? In addition, he anticipates that […]
Q: I am wondering why is it that the vast majority of all VC partners either come from Harvard or Stanford? A: (Jason) I’ll tell you as a University of Michigan guy, it certainly seems like a lot of VCs have pedigrees from Harvard or Stanford, but plenty of folks have degrees from other places […]
Today’s great VC post comes from our partner Seth Levine– “Sales is a Science, not an Art.” I agree with Seth’s take on sales. The most successful sales organizations are metric driven folks who really have control over all the “levers” that can be pushed and pulled to affect change. Given the distributed nature of the sales workforce, […]
Q: Convertible notes are popular instruments for angel investors when a future VC round might occur. But, if it takes longer to get to the venture round than you thought (doesn’t it always?) what happens when the note comes due? Can one investor call the note and put you out of business? A: (Jason). Yes, technically […]
Today’s great post(s) are from Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet regarding the usage of non-compete clauses for employees of venture-backed startups. Specifically Bijan argues that non-competes should be eliminated and Fred argues that they should not, if properly paid for. It’s an interesting debate, but one that I side with Fred on. Having spent the past 10 […]
One of the issues that we debate internally is regarding the value of patents. We’ve written a lot about the subject over the years and those of you who are regular readers know that Brad hates all software patents, and I’m fairly close to that line as well. Last night, our friend Rob Shurtleff sent […]
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