You’ve just come up with the next big thing. You’re excited. You’ve mapped out the basic concept, convinced yourself this is the future, and you’re ready to throw a few years of your life into it. But then, disaster: a quick search or a chat with a startup friend reveals someone else has already built something… Read more »
Our main focus at M8 Ventures right now is growing our new angel syndicate on the Aussie Angels platform. Although I’ve been a member of a few angel syndicates for a while now, it’s a whole other thing to manage one, and I’ve learned a lot about how most syndicates work, how and when you… Read more »
It’s easy to get these basic things wrong and easy to get them right, so let’s get them right! First up: videos are sometimes an investor deterrent. Unless you’re a video startup or there’s something visual about your customer experience that is essential to understand, don’t send investors videos instead of decks — they are… Read more »
My venture partners and I are raising money for new venture funds at the moment and there’s an awkward moment every time I have an initial conversation with anyone who’s considering investing in VC for the first time: the moment when I have to raise the question of holding a sophisticated investor certificate. When I… Read more »
It’s very early in your startup’s journey. You and your cofounders have a good mutual understanding of what you think your startup should be, but you can’t agree on what to call it. You don’t have time for this right now, but you know you need a brand name. Here’s how to just get it… Read more »
Whether you just closed your rings on your Apple Watch, got an alert saying someone liked your tweet, or stepped out to buy yourself a hot chocolate because you’ve worked hard on a spreadsheet model all day, we all rely on rewards (big and small) to motivate us to engage with technology products. Personally, my… Read more »
The “pre-money valuation” of your startup is the total value of your company before an investment is made: it determines both how much equity an investor will receive in exchange for their investment, and therefore, how much equity you, your team and existing investors will retain once the new round of investment is completed. Pre-money… Read more »
When my alarm goes off an hour before sunrise, I’m always deeply asleep and I never spring out of bed, full of energy, ready to face the day. But I get up, change into my exercise gear, and drive to meet my personal trainer, Maddie, no matter how I feel. I don’t do it because… Read more »
One of the stupid things I did when I first made money was start an indie music label. It was the early 2000’s, online music was just beginning to take off, and I wanted to learn more about it from the inside. I thought I could see many parallels between the tech startup industry and… Read more »
This is gold, I would read this blog post pic.twitter.com/vdPbq7n6YW — Jarrad (Moose) Lawrence (@JarradLawrence) November 3, 2022 I was playing around with a new AI that attempts to tweet like the author (you can try it out here) and Moose Lawrence posted this example, meant to be something that I’d be likely to tweet.… Read more »
Around this time of year, almost all of the startup founders who pitch me or ask for advice will start saying, “…and we’re [hoping/planning/must be ready to] launch by the end of the year. Here’s the thing: “end of the year” is an artefact of the calendar system we use in the West, unchanged since… Read more »
The goal of customer research at the earliest stages of a startup journey is to help us validate/ invalidate the assumptions we have made when believing we that we know what customers want. Chances are, in the first few years, your tech startup is more based on a hypothesis than the satisfied paying customers you’re… Read more »
Want to create a perception that you’re a leader in the customer community your startup serves, or in the professional startup field you work in? It’s not rocket surgery: become the person who creates a regular meetup and community about it. Say you’re a [professional] in [startup category], like [product manager] in [aged care SAAS].… Read more »
(Author’s note: This story begins with the death of a friend and mentor. It is also about something I only just figured out last week — unusual for a ‘wise old sage’ of the Aussie tech startup community. Please bear with me and I promise it’ll be worth your time.) Last week I was on… Read more »
As an early-stage tech startup founder you will often have to write your own startup’s marketing copy, and you may find it difficult if the brand’s tag line is the first line of marketing copy you’ve ever written. Because you spend so much time with your head focused on how to solve the customer problem using… Read more »
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