Startup Secrets

What’s the most convincing way to measure your market opportunity? Underscore VC partner Richard Dulude shares best practices for how to calculate market size.

Every business has competition—even if it’s not direct. Underscore VC partner Chris Gardner outlines how to talk about your competitive landscape in a Seed funding pitch.

How much money should I raise in a Seed round? Underscore VC operating partner Jimmy Orsillo shares advice to help founders answer this question.

What should founders expect during venture capital due diligence? Underscore VC investor Brian Devaney walks through the process and shares how to best prepare for it.

There’s still plenty of work to do once you get a term sheet. Underscore VC operating partner Jimmy Orsillo shares tips for negotiating term sheets, working with legal counsel, and closing the deal.

When you file your Form D with the SEC, it becomes public record. Get your ducks in a row before you get scooped. Underscore VC marketing director Devin Nash shares how to announce your Seed funding.

In June 2021, Rana el Kaliouby, the former Co-Founder and CEO of Affectiva, the creator of emotion AI, successfully sold her company to Smart Eye, the leading provider of human insight AI.

Despite many external indicators of success, Rana’s experience of going through an exit was deeply complex. In this interview with Underscore VC's Co-Founding Partner Michael Skok, she gives a vulnerable, unfiltered account of what it was like to sell her company.

“Even the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step…” This Lao Tzu quote is easy to relate to but sometimes figuring out that first step is the hardest thing for would-be entrepreneurs looking to start their business. This workshop helps you determine your roadmap to success.

Underscore VC has enjoyed collaborating with innovators on their planned ventures and helping them explore their value propositions. However, many entrepreneurs lose out, due to never truly articulating a compelling value proposition. Establishing a substantive value proposition is critical if you want to start the journey from your “idea” to building a successful company. In this workshop, we explain our framework for one of the first stages of creating a new venture: defining, evaluating, and building a compelling value proposition.

You’ve developed a great product, but how do you build a successful company around that product? Regardless of product innovation, it can take several years to build a company. Markets change! In addition to investing in R&D, you need to prove market acceptance—then repeat and scale through sales and marketing. This workshop offers a framework designed to help founders and entrepreneurs bridge the product-company gap and includes the best practices for 1. developing foundations, 2. designing to fit, 3. architecting to attract.