New VCIC summary page in topics

Posted on 26. Jan, 2009 by in Site Specific

As part of the ramp-up in posts specifically related to VCIC, a new summary page is available under the topics drop down menu on this site. Additionally the VCIC summary page can be found under the Students’ Guide TOC (Table of Contents).

Venture Capital investments in C-Corporations

Posted on 26. Jan, 2009 by in Basics

In most circumstances, a company must be a C-Corporation when taking investments from venture capital firms. There are a few reasons for this: VC Limited Partners (LPs) contractually obligate the VC General Partners (GPs) to avoid any pass through tax liabilities that may result in an investment into a portfolio company that wasn’t a C-Corp. [...]

VCIC 2009: Due Diligence Q&A session, Part 1

Posted on 21. Jan, 2009 by in VCIC

Having attended many VCIC competitions as a competitor, observer, and judge I wanted to share with everyone a few pieces of advice for the due diligence session. With such a limited amount of time, it is critical to prioritize your questions and manage the response time. Manage the entrepreneur’s responses Your time will quickly run [...]

VCIC 2009: MBA competition season starts

Posted on 20. Jan, 2009 by in VCIC

One of my most beneficial experiences in business school was the VCIC (Venture Capital Investment Competition). Many of my fellow VCIC alumni as well as those in the startup industry feel the same and support the competition through a variety of means. In the next few weeks a variety of content will be posted on [...]

Revenue recognition impact on company valuation

Posted on 16. Dec, 2008 by in Company Valuation

One of the key aspects when looking at comparables (revenue, EBITDA, etc) is revenue recognition.  To help illustrate revenue recognition, let’s take a company that charges clients $120,000 for services over a year long period.  The income statement shows that income at $10,000/month accounting for when the services are performed and realized by the customer [...]

Taking Guy Kawasaki’s advice, Twitter as a Tool/Twool

Posted on 05. Dec, 2008 by in Term Sheets

Today I started using Twitter.  For those that want to follow LearnVC.com related topics on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JeffreyBoardman External Links Guy’s original post

Learning how to teach through a web-site

Posted on 25. Nov, 2008 by in Site Specific

When I meet with entrepreneurs or students in person, it is inevitably easier to cover the basics of raising capital.  Even when teaching to a classroom it is easier than through this web-site.  The missing component being the interactivity of the audience. It would be of great help to me if those using the web-site [...]

Compensation for founders and executives in startups

Posted on 20. Nov, 2008 by in Formation

Every founding team wants to know if their equity split is fair. Additionally, outside executives are often brought into early stage companies as “hired guns” and desire to be fairly compensated. After spending quite a bit of time researching the best sources of information on early stage company compensation, we’ve linked to a variety of [...]

Example Term Sheets and Equity Financing Docs

Posted on 12. Nov, 2008 by in Examples

Two great resources that we’ve come across are included in the links below. The first from Y Combinator and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is an open source set of equity financing documents. This set of documents can save startups a lot of time and money. The second set of documents is from the The [...]

Business Model: TAM, Revenue Model, and Product Roadmap

Posted on 11. Nov, 2008 by in Business Plan

The business model is loosely comprised of your market size and revenue model. We also include the product roadmap in this discussion to show how helpful it can be to iterate through your business model numerous times.  In an effort to simplify the process, we recommend starting with determining your addressable market. The TAM (Target [...]