VW Blog Funding & Capital Raising

You’ve noticed it everywhere. Whether you see Mr. Wonderful grilling someone on Shark Tank, hear about Kevin Durant building a tech empire and basketball dynasty in California, or read about George Clooney selling a Tequila brand for $1 billion, everyone […]

A client, who had already raised some money and thus had a few people on his cap table, came in recently with a term sheet whereby the prospective investor had requested “anti-dilution” protection. If you’re not familiar with anti-dilution, it […]

Vesting is the process whereby a recipient of equity earns the equity, or the right to purchase it in the case of options, over time. As I mentioned in my last post, the typical schedule is 4 years with a 1-year cliff. […]

One of the biggest mistakes that startups make is failing to place vesting conditions on founders’ equity. Here’s an example: Two founders, Adam and Blake, are working on their startup, and everything is butterflies and rainbows. They have a great […]

A common mistake that I see aspiring entrepreneurs make all too often is failing to find anyone who will challenge their idea. I addressed this in my review of Silicon Valley S3, Ep7. Affirmation from loved ones is often a […]

Back in the day, like, the early aughts, it was widely believed that you needed a 20 to 40-page business plan and 40-80 hours to create it. The business plan was a written record and forecast of your idea, replete […]

Clients regularly ask a variation of the above question, replacing advisor with CTO, COO, sales manager, front-end engineer, etc. It’s a great question. And one with varying answers and consequences depending on a company’s lifecycle stage. As a founder, one must understand that a company who has completed a late-stage financing round (Series A, Series B, etc.) can’t dispense equity like a fledgling startup can. Why not?

In December of 2015, we released a three-year audit of early stage venture deals facilitated by VW and felt that the data was an indicator of early-stage financing trends and the good health of the venture industry in DFW. We’ve just […]

One of the biggest frustrations we hear from our clients about the capital raise process is that VCs are non-responsive or unwilling to make a firm investment decision. To help with this, I reached out to several VCs whom we see on a regular basis to ask for their input.

Every year around January or February we receive frantic calls and emails from a handful of clients who are utterly shocked by the franchise bill they just received from Delaware. “How can I owe $75,075 in franchise taxes??? We don’t have that kind of cash; do I have to raise more money just to pay this bill? Does this happen every year??”