the drawingboard [dot] me

Raising money for your startup is never fun. It takes time, distracts you from developing your product, is fraught with emotional ups & downs, and doesn’t have a guaranteed outcome. Frankly, many founders would rather go jump into an icy lake than take another fund raising meeting where they aren’t sure what they should say [...]

How does an investor evaluate your financial plan?

In my recent post on how an early-stage investor values a startup, I talk about how market comparables were the closest guide to how early-stage investors value a startup vs. any other methodology. However, I feel like I left one question unaddressed. Namely, why are there valuation discrepancies for comparable companies across the world (more [...]

One of the most frequently asked questions at any startup event or investor panel, is “how do investors value a startup?”. The unfortunate answer to the question is: it depends. Startup valuation, as frustrating as this may be for anyone looking for a definitive answer, is, in fact, a relative science, and not an exact [...]

A startup’s management team is its lifeblood… no amount of awesome ideas will ever overcome a fundamentally flawed management team. In the early stages of any startup, it is all about the people. But what makes up a good team? How do you know if you have a good team, if you are a good [...]