Sublime

An inspiration engine for ideas

AllPeopleCollectionsArticlesAudioBooksFilesHighlightsImagesLinksNotesTextTweetsVideos

Whether you incubate new products and services from within your enterprise, acquisition is another important tool in the lean enterprise kit.

Trevor Owens • The Lean Enterprise

You should plan to put $1.5 million to work in these fifty deals, which is $30,000 per startup on average. However, you’re probably going to want to put $1 million into the first forty-five deals and an extra $100,000 into each of your top five winners. This gives you a chance to get a five-times return on the winners, any one of which might go to

Jason Calacanis • Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000

Any startup that could be described as a marketplace usually has to start in a subset of the market, but this can work for other startups as well. It's always worth asking if there's a subset of the market in which you can get a critical mass of users quickly.

Paul Graham • Do Things that Don't Scale

But like many entrepreneurs with ambition, Farb didn’t build his MVP just to make a living. He had a vision of a more collaborative, more effective kind of teaching for students everywhere. With his initial traction, he was able to raise money from some of the most prestigious investors in Silicon Valley.

Eric Ries • The Lean Startup: The Million Copy Bestseller Driving Entrepreneurs to Success

To be sure, building a business in a developing country is high risk. OZE was the first subscription app in Ghana, for example, so not only did they need to educate users on mobile accounting, they needed to educate them on the business model. There was no guarantee that it would work. But high risk can mean high reward. By being first to market, O... See more

Packy McCormick • OZE: Not Boring Investment Memo

For hardware startups there's a variant of doing things that don't scale that we call "pulling a Meraki."

Paul Graham • Do Things that Don't Scale

Sometimes as an entrepreneur you have the hard job of positing the creation of a market that develops as a result of a new technology. For example, we were seed investors in 2010

Scott Kupor • Secrets of Sand Hill Road

Iterative — Founders Supporting Founders

iterative.vc

2. If you are in the Pre-seed stage, the first thing is to go out to raise funds and prove the value of the group. In fact, some of the founders we work with have started lowering the valuations to find the funding they need over the next two to three years. In this case, you just need to raise money and go back to work.

Sublime

Trevor Owens • The Lean Enterprise

Jason Calacanis • Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000

Paul Graham • Do Things that Don't Scale

Eric Ries • The Lean Startup: The Million Copy Bestseller Driving Entrepreneurs to Success

Packy McCormick • OZE: Not Boring Investment Memo

Paul Graham • Do Things that Don't Scale

Scott Kupor • Secrets of Sand Hill Road

Iterative — Founders Supporting Founders

Qiao Wang • The Web3 Founder’s Playbook | Imran Khan, Qiao Wang, AllianceDAO