The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank will have enormous repercussions for startups and VCs in ways seen and unseen. As for the unseen, SVB had deep relationships among the various players in the venture ecosystem. Founders and investors established banking relationships with SVB in part because of the opportunities SVB provided to network within the
Non-accredited investors are estimated to constitute approximately 92% of the U.S. population. Yet 
restrictive rules governing exempt offerings have significantly limited their freedom to invest in private offerings and prevented or discouraged issuers from selling them privately offered securities. But in a recently issued concept release, the Securities and Exchange Commission has signaled a
Every founder of a growth startup dreams of a big, successful exit — a sale of the company for millions of dollars. But that dream could be shattered if the investors are able to cause the company to be sold prematurely with proceeds only equal to or barely exceeding the investors’ liquidation preferences, leaving little
Earlier this year, Union Square Ventures Managing Partner Fred Wilson famously referred to corporate VCs as “The Devil”, when he asserted that companies should not be investing in other companies, that they should be buying other companies but not taking minority positions in them, that the “access” rationale for corporate venture is a reason
In Part I of this two part series on model structures for seed rounds, I explained how the dramatic decline in the cost of launching an internet-based startup over the last 15 years primarily due to the disruptive effects of open source software and cloud computing has led to a surge in seed stage investing
The cost of launching an Internet-based startup has fallen dramatically over the last 15 years. This democratization of internet-based entrepreneurship resulted primarily from two innovations: open source software and cloud computing. During the dot-com era, Internet-based startups had to build 
infrastructure by acquiring expensive servers and software licenses and hiring IT support staff. So the
At an open meeting on October 30, 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission by a three-to-one vote adopted final rules for equity crowdfunding under Section 4(a)(6) of the Securities Act of 1933, as mandated by Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. The final rules and forms are effective 180 days after publication
It’s never easy to take an entire business day out of the office, but the annual Cornell Entrepreneurship Summit is well worth it. The 2014 edition, dubbed “Beyond the Horizon”, was no exception. One thing that struck me about this year’s summit was that, unlike previous years, none of the entrepreneur speakers were Cornell alums,
Your company is invited by a local meetup group to present at demo day with other startups, and you accept. The group announces the demo day lineup of startups in an e-blast, on its website, on its Facebook page and through banner ads on a tech e-zine. On demo day, the room is packed and
In Part I of this two-part series, I explained how a favorable pre-money valuation can be undercut by a large option pool baked into the pre-money cap table. In this Part II of the series, I will concentrate on one other deal term that can serve to undermine a negotiated valuation: liquidation preferences. Failure to