The old marketing maxim — that bad experiences get shared with many people but good experiences only with a select few — is turned on its head with startups.  The success stories are spread widely, generate considerable media, and have a halo effect: almost everyone “knows someone” …

One of the great entrepreneurial success stories that is rarely given its due is ESPN.  Explaining to today’s college students that the world once existed without 24-hour sports television is akin to the evolutionary disbelief in the fossilized existence of a tethered telephone…

One of the axioms of raising capital is simple: all money is green, so what is the value an entrepreneur should expect from an investor? For many early-stage companies that are growing quickly, with money safely in the bank, the primary need is talent.  And one of the resources…

The roughly $2 billion deal between Facebook and Goldman Sachs is so chock-rich of material it will surely spawn a series of longer pieces once it has settled into historical view.  To begin,..

Funding options and pathways for early-stage companies are changing – more rapidly now than at any time in the past quarter century.  We’ve detailed many of the changes individually…

For the vast majority of its history (as captured in this 2007 article), music service Pandora was on the brink of shutting its doors.  Sheer perseverance, a tapdance in business models, the easing of regulatory and litigation risk…

The political commentator and writer David Books gives out annual Sidney Awards to the best magazine essays. All are wonderful, but three bear particularly interest for entrepreneurs and others with an interest in the capital markets…

Research from the Kaufman Foundation looks for the areas of innovation across the US while publishing abroad New Economy Index. From the 2010 edition come a number of detailed statistics…

It’s a little early for April Fools, and perhaps it is just my long exposure to entrepreneurs, but there is actually an argument circulating which labels entrepreneurs as tax cheats.  This is because entrepreneurs…

As the incubator model spreads and both virtual and real communities of start-ups proliferate, entrepreneurs learning from entrepreneurs is becoming more of an every-day event. Several groups are institutionalizing these lessons…

I’ve always been a keen believer that the lessons of failure are often more instructive than those of success.  One tends to take personal credit for good outcomes regardless of their origin, and assign bad outcomes to some outside event…

One of the most fascinating and dynamic sectors is pure information. Technological advances now enable immense databases, which in turn provide new insights on both simple and complex correlations, and the ability to spot (or debunk) trends…

The phenomenon of the iPhone can’t be disputed, with about 9 million sold and growing, with a reach and influence that has made Apple the most valuable technology company in the world.  The primary driver is the “i” not…

After venture-backed IPOs went MIA in 2009, VentureBeat notes the oddly imprecise appearance of 15-17 IPOs in Q2 alone, close to 2007 levels.  But even VentureBeat sounds a cautious note, since post-IPO performance has been poor,…

t has long been a repeated truism that one can’t raise venture capital over the summer.  Last year a VC actually looked at the data and finds both that an equal proportion of deals close in the summer months, and that his own firm’s busiest closing month…

Given the limited access to equity capital — and lower valuations if you can find investors — a variety of other possibilities are emerging as options for smaller and early-stage companies.  Among these are mezzanine loans, royalty financing, and…

A fundamental change for many early-stage companies is their increased capital efficiency: it simply takes less money (and time) to bring a product to market, and even to start to achieve scale.  An article in the New York Times highlights this trend…

Venture professionals have no life? Well, witness the always engaging Jeff Bussgang admit that he is just now starting to watch the television drama Mad Men, which is entering its fourth season.  However, Jeff uses the occasion to reflect…