the drawingboard [dot] me
Carlos Eduardo
In Which Country Should I Incorporate My Company?
An important decision that companies often ask when starting a company outside of the USA is ‘where should I incorporate?’. The reason why this question comes up is often because there are a series of benefits pulling founders in different directions and many times founders can receive conflicted advice from well-intending advisors. Some of the [...]
The Product / Market Fit Cycle
Product / Market fit can be loosely defined as the point in time when your product has evolved to the point that a market segment finds it attractive so that you can grow your product / company scalably. In many ways, finding Product Market fit quickly allows you to focus on company growth rather than [...]
On Growth, Virality Loops, and Customer Acquisition
Everyone loves a personality test. Whether for fun, or to better asses our skills as part of choosing a career, we all love hearing about how others perceive us, how we function, and how we are likely to react in situations. We are all naturally narcissistic (up to a point) and it is at this [...]
7 reasons for entrepreneurs to avoid tranched investments
Originally published on Venturebeat on April 3, 2013 3:44 PM Investments, like the ocean, can come in waves, but that doesn’t mean they should. A “tranched investment” is an investment that is split into one or more parts. In order for the company to receive the latter parts of a tranched investment, it usually has to [...]
What the VCIC can teach us about Finding Good Investors.
Finding an investor for your startup is hard, and as I partly covered in my last post: What Tier is your Investor (or what to look for in an investor)? It involves taking a lot of meetings and dealing with a lot of rejections while at the same time ascertaining how much value-add the investor you are [...]
What Tier is your Investor (or what to look for in an investor)?
One question that I often get from founders is what ‘tier’ a prospective investor is. As in, what differentiates their prospective investor over another as ‘better’ or ‘worse’, relatively speaking, and on what basis. Just to clarify, although there is no formal ‘ranking system’ for the tiers of investors, generally speaking, every investor sort of [...]
The Importance of Good Mentors
The importance of having great mentors in your career or company cannot be emphasized enough. Mentors can generally provide you with a structure and feedback that school or books alone cannot provide. If you don’t have access to great mentors where you work, look for them in structured mentoring programs such as Seedcamp’s if you [...]
How do you issue the right number of shares/options to an employee or an advisor?
Most founders have desire to share their equity with people that helped them along the way, both as a thank you, but also as a motivation tool. However, how to share is always a big question mark for every Founder. The two most frequently asked question is, “How much equity should I assign an advisor?”, [...]
New Books to my ‘Recommended’ list.
I haven’t had as much time to read as I would have liked this year, but three books stood out so I’ve added them to my bookroll: Positioning: The Battle for your Mind – Al Ries and Jack Trout Drive – Daniel H Pink The Art of Pricing – Rafi Mohammed I can wholeheartedly recommend [...]
First Tuesday: Talk on Investment Trends in 2012-2013
A video shot at a recent First Tuesday event focusing on trends.
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