October 2010
Beginner
352 pages
6h 11m
English
Content preview from Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
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Chapter 58. Practice Like You Play
Alex White
Alex is founder and CEO of Next Big Sound, a company that provides online music analytics and insights, which raised about $1 million from Foundry Group, Alsop-Louie Partners, and SoftTech VC after completing TechStars in 2009.
Raising money from investors was unlike anything else I'd ever done in my life. When I tried my hardest in school, previous jobs, and extracurricular activities, I had a sense that if I exceeded some threshold I'd be able to get the A, promotion, or leadership position I wanted. When raising the first round of financing for my company, I could give the best presentation in the world, but if the investor was uncomfortable with any part of the team, idea, revenue model, competition, industry, market size, amount of money we were asking for, our development time line, how it fit with their portfolio companies, or an almost infinite list of other variables, then the funding wouldn't happen.
With so many factors at play, there are numerous issues that can derail a financing. The trick is to present a compelling solution to a big problem and then have the right answers to every conceivable question the potential investor might ask. For me, the first part is the easy one since most entrepreneurs wouldn't be pouring their hearts into a business if they didn't think they had a great answer to a big problem. The trouble comes ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.