As an early-stage entrepreneur, your first instinct might be to go straight to angels or venture capital firms to help accelerate you from the idea or prototype stage to a successful launch. However, that can be a losing strategy with investors looking to see market traction of some kind and measure your product-market fit. At […]
Up until now, our ongoing term sheet series has focused on how to read an equity term sheet and a convertible debt term sheet. But before you learn to read term sheets, you need to know what your financing options are. Specially, as an entrepreneur, what kind of deal structure makes the most sense for your […]
We launched the final program in our Entrepreneurial Education Series, “How to Find Advisors, Board Members, and Investors,” on November 12th with our partner 1871 and sponsor The Wall Street Journal. The event brought together powerhouse entrepreneurs and investors Bruce Barron (Co-Founder & Partner, Origin Ventures), Corey Ferengul (CEO, Undertone), Constance Freedman (Founder & Managing […]
Register for “How to Work with Your Advisors, Board Members, and Investors” on November 12 at 6:00 pm at 1871 to learn more about this and other topics on our blog. As an entrepreneur raising capital, you have many options on what type of round to pursue: equity, safe, or even convertible debt. Especially in […]
In the first post of our cap table series, we broke down a cap table into its most basic parts and defined each one. As a quick refresher, cap tables all of the shareholders in your business and lay out who owns what, how much each one owns, and what value is assigned to the […]
Join Hyde Park Angels at 1871 on Thursday, November 12 from 6:00 pm — 8:00 pm to learn from the expert investors, executives, and board members behind Chicago’s biggest exits and most successful investments. Discover how startups like Grubhub, Answers.com, and others found the advisors, board members, and investors that helped them drive growth and achieve success, […]
To really succeed at building relationships with angel groups and getting investments from them, you have to understand how they work. If you match an angel group’s investment criteria, the next step is to go through their process. But for a lot of entrepreneurs, that process is opaque. While some angel groups might provide you […]
Note: Since their successful pitch on Shark Tank, the entrepreneurs of Packback have evolved the startup to seize greater market opportunity. Packback is now a learning platform powered by proprietary artificial intelligence that both quantifies and improves college students’ critical thinking skills. The Packback story nicely illustrates the value of a great team of entrepreneurs […]
Cloud may be a buzzword, but it isn’t a fad. In business and life, people are relying on the remote technology of cloud computing to keep their data accessible and secure. As an entrepreneur building a business, especially a tech-enabled business, you need to understand the different cloud options available and how they fit into […]
We launched the third program in our Entrepreneurial Education Series, “Connecting Corporations and Startups,” on September 24th with our partner 1871 and sponsor The Wall Street Journal. The event brought together powerhouse entrepreneurs, corporate venturers, and corporate executives Jacob Babcock (CEO & Co-Founder, NuCurrent), Hardik Bhatt (CIO, State of Illinois), Rob Diebold (Strategic Business Development […]
