e-commerce & social media

Finding funding as a startup can be a scavenger hunt, with nuggets of information hidden by bureaucracy and scattered across the Internet.

You’ve got a brilliant, multimillion-dollar business idea and want to start a startup. Great! … Uh, now what?

To steal a joke from a 1998 South Park episode, the void between ideation and value creation often looks like: Phase 1 — Start company. Phase 2 — ?????. Phase 3 — Profit!

How startups develop the second, mystery phase depends on how strong their resolve to raise cash is, how developed their contact network is and how much risk they’re willing to take. Read more: click image or title.

 

 

Learn more about funding, find great funding sources, get a free business plan template, post your funding request for free, and more: www.Business-Funding-Insider.com

Via Enzo Calamo, Marc Kneepkens

Many in Silicon Valley may be worrying more and more about how to transform their startup stakes into cold, hard cash. But that's not stopping institutionalinvestors from writing out some very big checks to venture capital firms.

Somewhat astonishingly, U.S. firms just closed on more capital commitments than they have since the second quarter of 2006, according to new data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters. In hard numbers, 57 U.S. firms raised $12 billion in the first quarter, a 59 percent jump in dollar commitments over the first quarter of 2015.

Institutional investors aren’t necessarily spreading the wealth, with the number of funds raised down 17 percent from this time last year.

Indeed, as you can see from this downloadable fund list, roughly half the new capital commitments in the first quarter were locked up by just four firms: Founders Fund, which announced a new $1.3 billion fund; Norwest Venture Partners, which closed on $1.2 billion; Accel Partners, which raised $2 billion across two funds; and Lightspeed Venture Partners, which sealed up two funds totaling $1.2 billion.

Close behind them,...  Read more: click image or title.

 

 

Via Marc Kneepkens

The number one takeaway of the VC Unlocked investor training program was that there are lots of different paths to becoming a successful investor – and no one way is best.

This was great news for the diverse group of participants, who came to Silicon Valley from all over the world for an intensive two week course run by 500 Startups in partnership with Stanford Center for Professional Development.

The program, Venture Capital Unlocked: Secrets of Silicon Valley Investing, ran from Feb 8 – 19th, 2016.

On the last day of the program, participants reflected on the question, “Did we really unlock the secrets to venture capital?”

The answer was a resounding yes. Read more: click image or title.

 

 

FREE Business Plan Template here: http://bit.ly/1aKy7km

Via Arnaud Bonzom, Samuel Pavin, Marc Kneepkens

Here's where to find the next big thing.

Product Hunt, founded by Ryan Hoover, is used by a lot of familiar names in Silicon Valley and New York: Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Raptor Ventures, Betaworks, SV Angel, Y Combinator, 500 Startups (Dave McClure), Techstars, Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Google Ventures (Kevin Rose, MG Siegler), Dave Morin, VaynerRSE, Cowboy Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Greycroft, Andrew Chen and others.

The site looks like Hacker News or Reddit, with up-votes to signal which new products are most popular. But instead of sorting through news articles or photos, Product Hunters can expect to find apps that have just bubbled up, like a crowd-sourced Google Play or App Store.

Via Jeff Domansky