Category archives: Startup Life
The Pre-Seed FAQ
One of the people I respect the most in the VC/PE media ecosystem is Dan Primack. I’ve been an avid reader of Dan’s Term Sheet while he was at Fortune, and now Pro Rata at Axios. His writings and knowledge of the inner workings of the VC/PE ecosystem is impressive, and I have learned a […]
Read moreHow to reference check your prospective investor
Of all the advice I have given founders over the years, one of the most important ones is to make sure they do reference checks on their prospective investors. When founders do their homework on investors, they make informed choices about who they will be working with for many many years to come. As the […]
Read moreSeed Is The New A – #PreMoney 2015 Talk
Here is the video recording of the talk I gave at 500 Startups‘ PreMoney Conference in San Francisco on 12 June. Seed Is The New A: What The Seed-Stage Explosion Means For Founders, GPs & LPs And the deck from my talk Thanks to 500 Startups #PreMoney As always I welcome your thoughts […]
Read moreThe Seeds Have Changed: An Epilogue
Note: This is a long post and it’s based on reflecting on a couple of years of observations in the venture industry. It’s a work-in-progress and I expect to update (last update 10 June) and refine the content, especially in the next week as I prepare for a talk I’m giving at the PreMoney […]
Read moreStartup Revenue Milestones
At K9 we invest in companies which have a clear/direct revenue model and typically don’t invest in companies that follow the Ubiquity first Revenue Later (URL) revenue model made famous by Eric Schmidt in 2007. In my discussions with K9 portfolio founders about scaling revenue, I very often end up drawing the same picture: […]
Read moreFundraising is for CEOs
I’ve been on the receiving end of many many pitches by this point both via email and in person. One of the patterns that I have seen is that for pre-seed and seed stage companies (could be for later stages like Series A and B as well, but once a company is mature, some […]
Read moreSolo Co-founders
The title of this post is an oxymoron — but it is intentional as it most succinctly captures the essence of this post. Conventional wisdom in the startup world dictates that two founders are ideal for a startup. There are lots of famous pairs of duo co-founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang and […]
Read moreFinding a Problem Worth Solving
Patagonia, Ben O’Bryan When we started in the PhD program in Computer Science at Stanford, Prof. Rajeev Motwani, who was the “default PhD advisor” for all incoming PhD students told us that our only priority should be to find a research topic that we care about. In fact, Prof. Motwani was so adamant that […]
Read moreManu Kumar in discussion with Joe Beninato
Last fall, Joe Beninato interviewed K9 Ventures founder and Chief Firestarter, Manu Kumar, on his weekly webcast FounderLine Manu talks about the history of K9 Ventures including the origin of the firm’s name. Joe and Manu also talk about K9 Ventures’ investment focus (hint: new technology/new market), investment stage (hint: frighteningly early), teams (hint: need a […]
Read moreIf I had a hammer…
If I had a hammer,I’d hammer in the morningI’d hammer in the evening,All over this land. So goes The Hammer Song by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. Well, most VCs have just one tool in their toolbox. And yes, they use the tool to hammer in the morning and hammer in the evening. That tool […]
Read moreHope and Numbers
The seed round happens on hope. The Series A happens on a combination of hope and numbers. And the Series B and beyond, happen largely based on numbers.
Read moreOn Geography
Put simply: “What happens in Silicon Valley, simply doesn’t happen anywhere else,” and, “If you want to be an actor move to Hollywood.”
Read moreFounder Liquidity
My recommendation is that founders should consider selling between 5%-10% of their stake once a company gets to a high-priced Series B or a Series C.
Read moreIdeas Matter
The idea is the seed. It is the kernel that is the start of something new.
Ideas are powerful because they invade the mind. Once you are introduced to an idea, you cannot get it out of your head.
Ideas are what provide that little twist of ingenuity that can make or break a company.
Sometimes ideas are not revolutionary, but they get the ball rolling and without them, that wouldn’t happened. The best ideas are often simple ones. Maybe that is what a revolutionary idea is — an idea so simple that it sparks a revolution.
Startups: Just say NO to outsourcing, contracting, and distributed teams
If you are a tech startup, where the technology is your business and not just supporting your business, then you shouldn’t be relying on any outsourcing, contracting, or distributed teams for developing your core product. I believe that the chance of success of a team is an order of magnitude higher when the entire team is local, in one room and working closely with each other. Bottom line: “When you stick a couple of smart people in a room together good things happen”
Read moreThe investment that didn’t happen
The story of Modista.com — a young startup that was forced to shutdown before it even really got going because of a patent infringement lawsuit by Like.com.
Read more#20tweets (updated)
Here are the slides from a talk I gave at a Carnegie Mellon Alumni event in the Bay Area today. #20tweets is tweet-sized advice for founders of tech startups. In the presentation I went into more detail and provided some rationale/anecdotes behind these tweets. For now, here are just the tweets: #20tweets by @manukumar View […]
Read moreMy story and support for the Founders Visa
In the past few days there has been a lot of discussion on the topic of a Founders Visa. The credit for starting this fire goes to Paul Graham from Y Combinator, who wrote a great essay titled The Founders Visa in April 2009. Brad Feld (Brad is an advisor to K9) from the Foundry Group was instrumental in keeping the flame alive by […]
Read moreTips for TechCrunch50 DemoPit companies
Yesterday, while attending TechCrunch50, I tweeted some tips for the companies presenting at the conference and those participating in the demo pit. By popular demand, I’m aggregating these tweets in a blog post:
Read more