Fireside with a VC

Episode #87 Discussion with Catalina Daniels and James Sherman, authors of Smart Startups: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know-Advice from 18 Harvard Business School Founders published today by Harper Business. This book has 18 interviews with a compelling list of founders that all raised VC funding and managed to get to an exit via M&A or IPO. The authors and interviewees can be forgiven for all having gone to Harvard, but they do share their learnings from their experiences founding, raising, building and exiting. We discuss these learnings with the two entrepreneurs and angel authors in this episode of Fireside with a VC.

The discussion covers ideation and coming up with the killer idea, team building comparing solo founders to balanced teams, raising angel and VC funding, execution, pitfalls across the board including the risk of raising too much VC funding, complexities of M&A exits and how to position for success and guard against land mines.

Find this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/l8ZeL7CnUvk.

Find this and all episodes for Fireside with a VC here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/FiresideVC

Smart Startups: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know-Advice

Find the book here on Amazon out today: https://a.co/d/dFDHCp0.

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Episode #86 Flint Capital investing in Israeli startups

Fireside with a VC speaking with Andrew Gershfeld at Flint Capital based in Boston and Tel Aviv talking about funding and supporting Israeli startups and helping them grow into large US companies.

Find this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3sEIYeIri_E.

Find this and all episodes for Fireside with a VC here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/FiresideVC

Andrew Gershfeld: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewger/

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/

Episode #85 Building startups on SalesForce – Place RevOps automation and connectivity

Fireside with a VC talking to Brandon Metcal, CEO of Place, about

Talking about lessons learned from both Place and his previous business where Brandon raised $28m in funding and sold the business making a profit for investors, founders and employees.

We also take a deep dive on how to partner with SalesForce and lessons learned from over 20 years of working within the SalesForce ecosystem.

Place has also carved out a slice from their last funding round for investors on WeFunder to increase the network of support for the company.

Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/placetechnology/ 

SalesForce AppExchange: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=5e950d92-8476-4461-af88-eea66e55485c (new

RevOps: https://www.placetechnology.com/solutions/revenue-operations (offering)

Place Cash and Burn Podcast,

https://www.linkedin.com/in/metcalf/

Find this

Find this

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/

Fireside with a VC discussing flipping your business into a US Delaware C corporation from outside of the US. Many startups and teams are born in Europe, South East Asia, Middle East, Africa, LatAm, Canada and everywhere and need to consider if they should flip to the US and if yes, technically how to do it. Considerations on attracting new investors from the US vs the country in which the business was created as well as tax considerations of flipping early or flipping later. Discussing specific tactics to minimize the tax burden and consequences for existing and new investors as well as founders and early employees.

Roger Royse is a Corporate and Tax Partner at Haynes and Boone, LLP and has decades of experience doing countless flips and venture financings in Silicon Valley. Roger is also the author of best seller 10,000 Startups: Legal Strategies For Startup Success (https://a.co/d/0H0IZ1p) and the host of a podcast of the same name.

Podcast: 10,000 Startups: Legal Strategies For Startup Success:

Apple

Spotify

Amazon

BuzzSprout

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerroyse/

Find this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VO0y1lK75ag.

[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/

Join the conversation and tell us your view of flipping or not flipping to the US and the best or worst ways to do it.

Fireside with a VC discussing how technology has evolved from mainframe-dumb terminal architecture to client-server architecture and making sure that all the right software is on each endpoint, making sure each endpoint is configured correctly, quickly, and efficiently, making sure cybersecurity attacks do not happen, and if they do rapidly rebuild from ransomware for new clients, eliminate vulnerabilities, reduce risk, automate application packaging, deployment, and reduce IT headaches. The economics of modern smart IT and keeping all software up to date. Reducing months to weeks for new customers that have been hacked.

The types of vulnerabilities are changing. How Aiden is staying ahead of the puck on what IT thresholds are changing to and how to program alerts and keep organizations in their own redefined compliance thresholds and providing that information to client organizations. Providing visibility of IT business intelligence to the CEO and C-suite.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/C4mcAz7zbHM

Find this episode on all podcast platforms:

https://www.meetaiden.com/

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuaeaaron/

[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/

Join the conversation and tell us your view of the future of automation, cyber, smart IT networks, or any of the topics discussed in this episode.

#82, Understanding pre & post SAFEs, convertible notes

Fireside with a VC is hosting a series of discussions on specific legal topics with the best lawyers from Silicon Valley and around the world. This episode is designed to help founders, VCs, advisors and supporters of startups understand everything they need to know and all the moving parts in convertible notes, pre-money and post-money SAFEs compared to priced equity financings. We start out explaining the key parts everyone needs to understand and then quickly get into an in-depth detailed conversation about how important these legal matters are and how it can be the difference between making a great return or not from an investor's perspective and steering clear of icebergs that can sink your startup or have you end up owning much less of your startup on the day of exit.

Daniel Zimmermann is a legendary corporate securities lawyer in Silicon Valley, a Partner at law firm WilmerHale and an absolute experienced expert on this topic.

Legals is something every founder, angel and VC should be an expert on and we are amazed on a daily basis how many investors and founders fail to understand the basics and moving parts, which ones to push for when negotiating and the finer subtleties that normally only come from decades of experience.

Find this episode on all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/pI6J1Q6W6dU

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-zimmermann-lawyer/

[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/

Join the conversation and tell us your view of the pros and cons of using SAFEs vs convertible notes vs priced rounds or any of the topics discussed in this episode.

Fireside with a VC hosting Brian Nugent, Founding General Partner

· Brian’s path to VC from Cisco to startups to venture

· Career advice for junior and senior folks to

· ESG, women and minorities in venture.

· How venture capital works.

· Each stage of funding from friends and family,

· Pros and cons of investing at seed vs growth rounds, ownership targets / expectations for dilution, returns, timing and risk / reward profiles.

· How Sway Ventures adds value.

· Tactics for proprietary deal flow, avoiding bidding wars with other VCs, and delivering value to portfolio companies.

· Primary sources of deal flow.

· Common threads of most successful Sway portfolio companies. What are the characteristics of winning companies?

Find this episode on all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/t17ruj6yFK0

https://www.swayvc.com/

[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/

Join the conversation and tell us your view of any of the topics discussed in this episode.

Fireside

Check

Check

Find this episode on all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb

YouTube: https://youtu.be/ID2vQD9Z3sM

[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/

Join the conversation and tell us your view of the current market

Fireside with a VC diving into a round table discussion with The Band of Angels, one of the oldest and most active angel groups in Silicon Valley covering the current seed and early stage investing and fundraising market environment and conditions. How are valuations and terms changing, the importance of QSBS tax and when to use priced rounds, convertible notes and the dangers of SAFE notes.

Disclaimer: many of these angel groups are LP investors in our VC funds and active members of our network sourcing deal flow, conducting due diligence, taking board seats, actively adding value to our portfolio companies, impacting our exits and helping us raise more LP capital for our VC funds. Many of the members of The Band are highly successful senior executives from large tech titans as well as successful entrepreneurs that have founded startups, raised angel and VC funding and experienced the spectrum of positive and negative outcomes making them more valuable than many VCs to have in your corner in good and bad times along the startup journey.

On all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb

YouTube: https://youtu.be/D_3mqnLF-7w

[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/

Join the conversation and tell us your view of current market

#78, Jack Guedj, Band of Angels, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest

Fireside with a VC diving into current seed and early stage

Next episode #79 includes the roundtable discussion with the

On all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb

YouTube: https://youtu.be/yfcoZgSLZew

[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/romans/