Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup(Techstars)

Practical advice from some of today's top early stage investors and entrepreneurs TechStars is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator with operations in three U.S. cities. Once a year in each city, it funds about ten Internet startups with a small amount of capital and surrounds them with around fifty top Internet entrepreneurs and investors. Historically, about seventy-five percent of the companies that go through TechStars raise a meaningful amount of angel or venture capital. Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup is a collection of advice that comes from individuals who have passed through, or are part of, this proven program. Each vignette is an exploration of information often heard during the TechStars program and provides practical insights into early stage entrepreneurship. Contains seven sections, each focusing on a major theme within the TechStars program, including idea and vision, fundraising, legal and structure, and work/life balance Created by two highly regarded experts in the world of early stage investing Essays in each section come from the experienced author team as well as TechStar mentors, entrepreneurs, and founders of companies While you'll ultimately have to make your own decisions about what's right for your business, Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup can get your entrepreneurial endeavor headed in the right direction.

Table of Contents:
Foreword ix Preface xiii About TechStars xv Theme 1: Idea and Vision 1 Trust Me, Your Idea Is Worthless 3 Start With Your Passion 7 Look for the Pain 11 Get Feedback Early 15 Usage Is Like Oxygen for Ideas 19 Forget the Kitchen Sink 23 Find That One Thing They Love 27 Don’t Plan. Prototype! 29 You Never Need Another Original Idea 35 Get It Out There 37 Avoid Tunnel Vision 41 Focus 45 Iterate Again 49 Fail Fast 53 Pull the Plug When You KnowIt’s Time 57 Theme 2: People 61 Don’t Go It Alone 63 Avoid Co-Founder Conflict 67 Hire People Better than You 71 Hire Slowly, Fire Quickly 75 If You Can Quit, You Should 79 Build a Balanced Team 83 Startups Seek Friends 87 Engage Great Mentors 91 Define Your Culture 95 Two Strikes and You Are Out 101 Karma Matters 105 Be Open to Randomness 109 Theme 3: Execution 113 Do More Faster 115 Assume that You’re Wrong 119 Make Decisions Quickly 123 It’s Just Data 127 Use Your Head, then Trust Your Gut 129 Progress Equals Validated Learning 133 The Plural of Anecdote Is Not Data 137 Don’t Suck at E-Mail 141 Use What’s Free 145 Be Tiny Until You Shouldn’t Be 147 Don’t Celebrate the Wrong Things 151 Be Specific 157 Learn from Your Failures 159 Quality over Quantity 161 Have a Bias Toward Action 165 Do or Do Not, There Is No Try 169 Theme 4: Product 171 Don’t Wait Until You Are Proud of Your Product 173 Find Your Whitespace 177 Focus on What Matters 181 Obsess over Metrics 183 Avoid Distractions 185 Know Your Customer 189 Beware the Big Companies 193 Throw Things Away 197 Pivot 201 Theme 5: Fundraising 203 You Don’t Have to Raise Money 205 There’s More than One Way to Raise Money 209 Don’t Forget about Bootstrapping 213 Beware of Angel Investors Who Aren’t 215 Seed Investors Care about Three Things 219 Practice Like You Play 223 If You Want Money, Ask for Advice 227 Show, Don’t Tell 231 Turn the Knife after You Stick It in 233 Don’t Overoptimize on Valuations 235 Get Help with Your Term Sheet 237 Focus on the First One-Third 241 Theme 6: Legal and Structure 243 Form the Company Early 245 Choose the Right Company Structure 249 Default to Delaware 253 Lawyers Don’t Have to Be Expensive 257 Vesting Is Good for You 261 Your Brother-in-Law Is Probably Not the Right Corporate Lawyer 265 To 83(b) or Not to 83(b), There Is No Question 269 Theme 7: Work–Life Balance 273 Discover Work–Life Balance 275 Practice Your Passion 279 Follow Your Heart 283 Turn Work into Play 287 Get Out from behind Your Computer 291 Stay Healthy 295 Get Away from It All 299 The Evolution of TechStars 303 What Motivated Me to Start TechStars? 305 Why TechStars Started in Boulder 309 How TechStars Came to Boston 313 How TechStars Came to Seattle 317 So You Want to Start TechStars in Your City? 321 Appendix: The TechStars Companies 323 About the Authors 329 Acknowledgments 331 Index 333

About the Author :
David Cohen is the founder and CEO of TechStars. He previously founded and successfully exited several companies and is now an angel investor in over 100 Internet startups. BRAD FELD is a managing director of Foundry Group, an early stage venture capital firm. He has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty-five years.