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For first-time founders and leaders of early-stage startups, determining compensation for the CEO and early employees can be tough. On the one hand, you need to hire the best talent, retain them, and incentivize their performance to have the right team in place to grow. As a founder and/or CEO, you also want to pay yourself enough to get by and prevent money from being an unnecessary distraction. On the other hand, you need to keep cash in the bank and appease your investors and board members that you’re extending responsible offers. How do you determine what’s best? The right approach won’t include a one-size-fits-all answer for every business. However, successful founders do tend to establish consistent tactics early on and lean on research to find their solution. It includes understanding the competitive compensation you can afford, the value of your business, and the sum total of benefits available to you and your employees. Here are some of the best practices and advice on approaching your boards with proposed plans once you’ve determined the right way forward. Average Startup CEO Salary in 2021 In the Kruze Consulting report on 2021 CEO salaries, the team surveyed over 250 startup leaders and found salaries have slightly increased. While they initially dipped at the start of COVID, the average CEO salary is now hovering around $146,000 a year. The salary varies by company stage and industry — learn more below: Startup CEO Salary breakdown by Industry One of the places to start when evaluating your CEO salary is by evaluating the benchmarks and peers in your industry. As you can see below, the average salary of a seed-stage startup CEO varies depending on the industry. The following data is from the Kruze Consulting 2021 Startup CEO Salary Report: Biotech – This has remained fairly consistent year to year as the space is more mature. Ecommerce – Ecommerce companies can be started and built with individuals and smaller teams leading to a smaller salary Fintech – A hot space in VC leading to more companies being funded with more money. Hardware – A more mature space leading to a higher salary. SaaS – Similar to fintech, a hot space in VC leading to more companies being funded with more money.  While the industry certainly has an impact on a CEO’s salary — the stage and capital raised seem to have the largest impact on a startup CEO’s salary Startup CEO Salary breakdown by funding stage Using the same report, Kruze Consulting 2021 Startup CEO Salary Report, as above you can see that the capital raised greatly impacts a startup CEO’s salary. Presumably, as a startup raises more capital they are growing as a company. This means that the CEO likely deserves a higher salary as they continue to bring in the new revenue and grow their bottom line. For example, if a company has gone on to raise their series A that is a testament to the companies growth and should be reflected on the CEO’s salary. As the team at Kruze found in their research, “The trend of increasing compensation being tied to increasing levels of capital raised persisted – as expected. Seed stage salaries – for companies that have raised less than $2 million in total funding – seem to be still recovering from the COVID crisis, and the overall pay there is down from $120,000 in 2019. However, at all other levels pay is more or less flat to up quite a bit.” $0-$2M (Avg) – Companies that have yet to prove product-market fit so likely as a lesser salary $2M-$5M (Avg) – Similar to $0-$2M this range has yet to give investors and board members the full confidence of a large exit $5M-$10M (Avg) – On the path to a larger exit and team warranting a larger salary. $10M+ (Avg) – Likely companies with a solidified model and likelihood of a large exit. Related Reading: The Understandable Guide to Startup Funding Stages How to Determine a Startup CEO Salary Startup CEO Salary Calculator Once you understand the benchmarks and industry trends, it is time to determine what your annual salary should be as a CEO. While there are quite a few factors that go into determining your salary we find the following to be most important. Certainly, there are a few other factors that will go into a startup founder’s salary as well. For example, if a founder is headquartered in Silicon Valley their cost of living is higher and likely requires a higher salary. How much money is in the bank? This is an especially important question to answer when you’re trying to hire your first employees. You have to be able to afford the talent you’re recruiting without cutting your financial runway unnecessarily fast for some quick-to-compete cash package. If the CEO is also a founder, it will be much easier to manage their annual salary because the value of their compensation package will likely lean much heavier toward equity than cash. But bringing in non-founders takes actual dollars and requires confronting these tough questions: how much money do we have? How long will this last us? How does a cash package for X employees change this? What’s your current valuation? Next, it’s time to determine what your business is worth so the value of equity can be established. For venture-backed companies, you can find this answer through an official 409A process or less formally (as Fred Wilson proposed in 2010) by using the valuation of your last financing round or the most recent offer you received to purchase your business. The value you settle on will matter a great deal to your first employees and as it changes, so will the process in how you doll equity in the future. What’s the competitive salary for this position and experience? The reality is most venture-backed startup CEOs typically make somewhere between $75,000-250,000. This has long been an acceptable salary range depending on the cost of living adjustments and the value of the business, and as long as the fledgling business isn’t truly desperate for cash. As noted in Business Insider here, Seth Levine’s observation on CEO salary in 2012 still holds true compared to the 2019 Kruze salary report data above: early on companies that have raised $500,000 or less cap out at $75,000, companies that have raised $1 million or less pay between $75,000-$125,000, companies that have raised between $1-$2.5 million pay closer to $125,000. The greater the fundraising numbers are from there, the more likely the CEO pay range climbs closer to $250,000. How to Determine Startup employees Salary Determining how to properly compensate employees at a startup is also a tricky task. As we wrote about in our post, “How to Fairly Split Startup Equity with Founders,” startup employees are generally looking for something more than a salary — transparency, collaboration, ownership, responsibility, etc. Oftentimes a startup can’t offer the salary an established Fortune 500 company may be able to offer but they can offer equity and intangibles that an employee can’t find elsewhere. With that being said — a salary is what ultimately can be the factor that determines if an ideal candidate will jump ship to join your company. How much common stock will you issue an employee? Your employees have options for where they work. Many of those options will offer greater short-term rewards, while you are likely to offer below market value in cash compensation. But early employees will be attracted to your business in part because of the long-term payoff. “When someone works for less salary than they deserve (meaning: what they could make elsewhere), I think of that as a cash investment they’re making in your company,” Jason Cohen writes. That comes in the form of common stock. Paul Graham has put together some valuable formulas for determining the equity of your first few dozen employees based on the expected value they bring to your business. That said, it’s unlikely in most cases for non-founders to receive more than 5% of the business (bringing on a CTO can be the one common example of exceeding this mark). Previously Brad Feld has argued that a founder CEO will be in the 5-20% range, a founder CTO in the 2-10% range, other co-founders between 3-7% and non-founder early employees between 0.5-5%. Market value for equity is dynamic though and the necessary points to attract an individual employee can vary. Related Resource: How to Fairly Split Startup Equity with Founders Are you issuing stock options or restricted stock to your first employees? In their helpful guide on employee equity, Gusto evaluates the decision to issue stock options, the chance to buy stock at a certain price, and restricted options, the right to buy stock under specified restrictions. The distinction between the two may impact early employee decisions on how they personally value their stock. You will want your boards input on this process early on. Related Reading: Employee Stock Options Guide for Startups What motivates your early hires? Now comes the really hard part. “For your first key hires, three, five, maybe as much as ten, you will probably not be able to use any kind of formula,” Fred Wilson writes. “Getting someone to join your dream before it is much of anything is an art not a science.” You’ve got a package in mind that includes a salary you can afford and an equity stake that makes the offer competitive if your company grows as expected. But you’re hiring unusual people to take this ride with you and understanding the package that will satisfy their ambition will also likely require rounds of negotiations and probing questions from you about their true motivations. Are your investors on board? Much like a competitive package for an employee, a CEO’s compensation and equity stake will require negotiations – this time with your investors. Having the above questions answered will help. Staying within a competitive range is needed to appease your current board and attract new investors (for example Peter Thiel has publicly stated he passes on any startup saying it’s CEO more than $150,000). As a CEO, you also want to examine your own motivations in a negotiation, especially if you are attempting to increase your salary or equity stake. “When two sides in a negotiation can’t come to a deal, it’s often because the two sides don’t have a clear enough view of what each other’s alternatives are if they can’t agree,” Tim Jackson writes. You don’t want to walk away from a tough negotiation having damaged your relationship with investors on your own compensation or shown irresponsibility when proposing packages for early employees. A well-researched proposal that clearly assesses your company’s current financials, demonstrates the expected impact fairly compensating an early employee or CEO will have and honors your commitment to delivering the return they expect on their investment will get you to reach mutually agreeable terms. Transparency and preparation are key. Related Reading: Private Equity vs Venture Capital: Critical Differences Startup CEO Salary FAQ To sum up the common traits that go into determining your salary as a CEO, check out the common FAQs and takeaways below: How much should a startup founder CEO pay themselves? In 2021, the average CEO salary was $147,000. At the end of the day, it is entirely dependant on the business, industry, and lifecycle. How does funding impact startup CEO salary? The later the stage a company is, the higher their salary is. As a company matures and grows, so does the salary of the CEO. How does your industry impact startup CEO salary? Industries and different verticals can lead to varying salaries. Markets that are receiving more funding and exiting at higher clips generally warrant a higher salary. How much equity do startup CEOs get? This is entirely dependent on the funding and financial instruments a company decides to use. Someone that has funded their own company and taken no outside financing might own 100% of the company. On the flipside, a founder that has raised multiple rounds of venture capital might only own a small % of their company.

This is a guest blog post by Erika Rykun. Erika is a content strategist and producer who believes the power of networking and quality writing. She’s an avid reader, writer, and runner. Chances are, as you stand at the beginning of your startup journey, you’re not thinking about all the stuff everyone keeps telling you is essential to protect your new biz from a number of potential issues. After all, dotting all those “i”s and crossing all those “t”s is not exactly the most riveting of your initial concerns. But what if I tell you that about 90% of all startups fail? And one of the most popular reasons for failure is incompetence and failure to pay attention to particular aspects of your startup. As with any business, there are certain things you need to do and know to protect the future of your startup. For example, there are certain legal documents you need to have in place for your new venture. One way to get into the right mindset? Treat your startup today like the successful business you envision it becoming. With that in mind, here are six things you should be thinking about now to protect your startup. 1. You Don’t Have to Go It Alone Even if you’re doing everything all on your own at the start, you’ve got a great business idea and, chances are, your business will grow. So while you’re wearing your solopreneur hat in the beginning, plan on doing business now the way you expect to be doing business in the future. Whether a corporation or an LLC is the right business structure for your startup — or perhaps a partnership is the perfect way to go — be proactive and lay the foundation for your startup by registering the right business structure for your new company. It will save you many headaches down the road. 2. Secure Your Team With the Right Contracts It’s not just boring HR stuff: Having the right contracts in place for each of your team players, whether major or minor, will help ensure that everyone knows their roles and responsibilities. And that’s the kind of thing that’s important for any business’s success. While employment contracts are a priority for your permanent staff, if your team members include independent contractors or consultants, remember that it’s important to get those relationships down in writing, too. 3. Keep Your Trade Secrets Secret Most startups have their share of trade secrets, so, if there’s information about your business that you want to stay confidential, lock those secrets down with a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA. And be careful to look at every relationship your startup has, to see where an NDA might be appropriate. For example, while you’ve probably already thought about getting your independent contractors to sign a confidentiality agreement or NDA, if your business plan contains confidential information, a business plan nondisclosure agreement may be a necessary part of your legal toolkit. 4. Protect Your Intellectual Property Assets Whether your startup revolves around an important invention, unique software code or an emphasis on the brand you’re building, it’s important to protect your intellectual property assets now, rather than later. So, register that copyright, apply for that patent or trademark your brand name. While the potential pirating or infringement of your intellectual property is likely not high on your priority list right now, having the proper protection for these assets now makes battling any future infringement that much easier. Related Resource: A Complete Guide on Founders Agreements 5. Get Insured When you’re first starting out, business insurance premiums can feel like an unnecessary drain on your cash flow. After all, you’ve got a barely there client list. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until you actually have the volume of sales to justify the premiums? Well, no. Liability insurance, for example, can play an important role at any point in your startup’s journey to success, because a risk is a risk, no matter where you are in that journey. And, in many cases, your sole customer is just as likely to get into an accident as your 8,922nd customer. It’s probably not going to be an issue, of course, but having the right business insurance in place gives you the peace of mind that comes with knowing you’re covered for the worst. 6. Know When You Need an Expert’s Help No one wants to pay expert advisers’ fees, but sometimes you need to have the knowledge and experience that an expert can bring to the table. Whether it’s enlisting the services of an attorney to help you draft a particularly complicated agreement, or talking with a CPA to help you structure your business in the most tax-efficient way, it’s always a good idea to prioritize hiring an expert when you need one. You’re at the start of what could turn out to be a beautiful, successful journey. Secure that potential future today by being proactive and treating your fledgling startup like the successful business you know it will be. Related Resources: How to Write a Business Plan For Your Startup

What is Stakeholder Management? Does your startup have a comprehensive stakeholder management plan? Investors, team members, and core decision-makers: these are the critical stakeholders within your business, and these are the people who will influence your company’s success. Stakeholder management is the process by which you communicate with and engage your company’s stakeholders, prioritizing them by importance and ensuring that all stakeholders feel valued. Through stakeholder management, you can acquire better business outcomes, while also developing long-lasting relationships. When you manage stakeholder engagement, you increase the likelihood of raising follow-on funding from your investors, as well as accessing their knowledge, network, experiences, and resources. Stakeholder relationship management leads naturally to stronger relationships between investors, team members, and key decision-makers. Stakeholder management includes: Identifying and prioritizing key stakeholders. Getting to know stakeholders and their preferred communication methods. Interacting with and relating to stakeholders based on their own goals. Determining how much influence a stakeholder has on core business operations. Beginning to influence and engage with the stakeholder, with the goal of improving the relationship. Every stakeholder is different and may have different interests when interacting with and engaging with your business. To properly manage stakeholders, you need to be able to address their concerns — showing them that you understand their personal metrics of success, and taking responsibility for any issues as they arise. Building trust is important. Stakeholders are still human, and it’s important to develop a variety of soft skills when managing them. In addition to providing them with the information that they need to make critical decisions, you also must be willing to work with them and help manage their emotions. A stakeholder analysis cannot forget the fact that stakeholders are independent actors, and they may not always be perfect actors: they may not make decisions purely based on statistics or logic. Rather, stakeholders may be worried about the company’s performance and metrics or may be anxious about new moves that the company is about to make. Managing these fears is a key part of stakeholder management. And, of course, each individual stakeholder will have a different level of influence on the company’s actions. Sometimes, the most difficult to reach stakeholders may have the least amount of influence, and consequently, the management process may be more about reducing disruption. Stakeholder relationship management is a complex skill, which needs to be developed over time. It’s a part of being a successful entrepreneur and running a successful startup and will build relationships that can carry over from business to business as an entrepreneur moves on. Stakeholder Management Strategy Let’s break down a classic stakeholder management strategy. Creating a relationship between investors and team members takes some time — and communication. A classic stakeholder management approach is broken into stages of assessment, communication management, and persistent engagement. These stages can be augmented through the use of stakeholder management tools. Once stakeholders have been prioritized and analyzed, they need to be communicated with and engaged. There are a number of strategies for improving upon stakeholder engagement: Regular stakeholder meetings. These meetings provide an open dialogue, to address any of their concerns or their ideas for the future. Stakeholder meetings are often effective ways to discuss issues quickly, rather than going back-and-forth in written media. Consistent financial reporting. Financial reports give stakeholders a feeling of being connected to the business, and assure them that they understand how the business is doing and the direction that the business is moving in. Many investors or team members may have key insights regarding the financial reports they’ve seen, and may be able to help the business with these insights. Scheduled Updates Newsletters can be prepared for all stakeholders at once, updating them in a single sweep regarding the current initiatives of the business. This is a fast, effective, and easy way to keep all stakeholders on the same page. Timely communications. When investors and team members have questions, they need to be answered quickly. The more involved the investors are in day-to-day operations, the more likely they are to provide accurate direction. Stakeholders want to be involved in the business. They want to feel as though their time is valued, as though they are being notified of major events, and that they are being consulted when applicable. Investors and team members can be kept on the same page through regular communications, such as meetings and newsletters. This allows the business to present the information that it needs to present in an organized fashion. During these communications, investors should be treated as partners rather than a source of capital. They should be engaged as colleagues and peers, and their contributions should be acknowledged. Stakeholders have responsibilities to the company, just as the company has responsibilities to them. Too often, companies only loop their stakeholders in when the company is experiencing a disruption. This stage is too late for true involvement and engagement. Instead, stakeholders should be involved from beginning to end, as their resources may be critical to developing and stabilizing the business. When managing stakeholders, it’s important not to get too wrapped up in the idea of “management.” Managing your stakeholders is about managing your relationship to your stakeholders, not managing the stakeholders themselves. If you are too rigid in developing your relationships, you may find that your stakeholders begin to resent their role in the process. Stakeholder Analysis Before you begin truly engaging your stakeholders, you need to go through the process of stakeholder analysis. A stakeholder analysis investigates the role that investors and team members will play within the business, including how involved they wish to be in the business, and whether they have a significant amount of influence on the organization’s initiatives. When performing a stakeholder analysis, use the following stakeholder analysis template: How interested are they in the company’s success? How much do they personally have riding upon it? What are they motivated by, when they are engaged with the business? What information are they most interested in? How do they feel about the business? What is their disposition to you, the business owner? If they are not positively inclined, why? What would make them support the business more? What resources do they have at their disposal, that they could use to help the business? What opposition could they possibly present, when considering business strategies? When these questions are answered, you’ll have a better idea of how to prioritize and classify your investors and team members. Of course, every stakeholder is unique, and consequently the methods used to interact with them will need to be tailored to them. It is often a business owner’s role to develop personal relationships with these stakeholders, learning more about what drives them, and learning more about what they desire. Apart from the above stakeholder analysis example, stakeholder analysis tools can be used to identify the amount of each stakeholder’s engagement, while also facilitating communication between the business and key interested parties. Stakeholder Matrix To make it easier to manage your stakeholders, you can develop a stakeholder matrix. You can do this manually or using stakeholder management software; either way, you’ll have a better depiction of how your investors and team members fit into your stakeholder management model. There are multiple types of stakeholder matrix, one of the most popular being the power interest matrix. In the power interest matrix, stakeholders will be classified as follows: Powerful, interested stakeholders. These are stakeholders that have a direct interest in the success of a business, as well as a significant amount of influence on how the business is able to develop. These stakeholders must be managed closely and continually communicated with. Powerful, uninterested stakeholders. These are stakeholders who are disinterested in the business, such as an investor who has invested in many other projects. However, they still have a lot of influence and control over the business. These individuals need to be kept satisfied, identifying their core success metrics and pursuing them. Non-powerful, interested stakeholders. These are stakeholders who have a direct interest in the success of a business, but have very little control over how the business develops. These individuals need to be kept informed. Non-powerful, uninterested stakeholders. These are stakeholders who have neither any real interest in the business or engagement with the business, such as lower-level team members. These individuals must be monitored. But this isn’t the only stakeholder management matrix. There’s also a stakeholder analysis matrix, stakeholder engagement assessment matrix, and other unique matrixes that may be developed for a specific company. Hiring a Manager What if you have enough investors and team members that you can’t handle the management process on your own? It’s always possible to outsource your stakeholder management to a project manager. Consider the following project manager interview questions, when looking for a project manager to take on these responsibilities: Which project management skills do you believe will most apply to your role within our business? What is your communication and leadership style? How do you approach fostering new relationships? How do you interact with difficult personalities? Do you have an example of a time when you needed to manage a difficult team member or investor? What position on your project manager CV do you think is most relevant to the role being offered here? Why? A project manager isn’t going to develop the type of in-depth, long-lasting relationship with your team members and investors as you will. However, they will be able to take on the day-to-day communications, financial reporting, and general engagement. This frees you up to focus on developing and building out your business.

What is Startup Culture? Every business has a culture. An offshoot of Silicon Valley culture, startup culture prizes ownership, transparency, growth, and ownership. Startups are about disruption and revolution: they’re about changing the way a market currently solves a problem. A strong culture informs employees of what is expected of them, courts the best and most motivated employees, and builds the foundation for a long-term, successful enterprise. Traditional Startup Culture In recent years, successful startup cultures have experienced an evolution. Rather than being singularly mindful and driven, such as the early days of Apple, they are now embracing failure and work-life balance. Employees have begun to reject the traditional tenets of startup culture, which often had employees working long hours and numerous days in pursuit of perfection. Instead, startup cultures are now taking notes from giants like Google, encouraging both innovation and failure, and allowing employees to experiment. Modern startups have many employee-based amenities and ensure that their employees are inspired and motivated. At the same time, startups use their culture to make sure that their employees remain engaged and invested, and that their employees are continually working to produce ideas and technology. Relationships Startup cultures encompass the company’s relationship not only with their employees, but also their vendors, customers, and even products and services. A startup is often seen as a cutting-edge, maverick company: a company that is willing to try out unique and risky propositions for the greater good. In terms of customer care and product development, startup culture may be customized to suit the business. Not all startups are alike, and not all startups buy into the traditional ideas of Silicon Valley culture. Instead, startups tailor their culture to their mission statement and their values, and they make it clear what their business is about. This is one reason why mission statements and values statements have become an important component of the modern business. A company’s culture may evolve over time, but what is most important is that a company understand its culture in-depth, and enforces its culture at all times. A strong company culture is what ties the company’s employees together, creating the company’s brand and identity, and driving the company onward toward success even as it scales upwards. A company with a weak culture will have uncertain employees who may not necessarily know what is expected of them. There are many examples of different company cultures that a business can pattern itself against, but ultimately the company’s culture is often going to be informed by its higher-level executives and employees. Why Culture is so Important to Startups Culture is incredibly important to startups. Oftentimes startups don’t have the resources and capital to compete with larger corporations to attract top talent. With that said, it is important to offer intangibles (and equity) to attract top talent. In addition to being able to attract top talent, establishing a strong culture from the early days will help build in all aspects of building your business as you continue to grow and hire. Hiring As we mentioned, establishing a strong startup culture is a surefire way to compete for top talent. Early stage startups generally can’t compete with pure salary compensation but can offer intangible benefits that can sway an individual to join your organization. To learn more about how to hire for you startup, check out our guide here. Outside of hiring new employees, culture is incredibly important in other aspects of your business as well. Retention Generally speaking, it is more cost effective to retain an employee than hire a new one. Startups usually do not have the resources (or time) to recruit and train a new employee. With that said retention is vital to success. An easy way to make sure companies retain their top talent is by offering a culture that gives them the intangible benefits they want. No longer are the days of ping pong tables and sparkling water. Happiness Going hand-in-hand with retention is the ability to keep employees happy. If employees are being given the intangibles they want and believe in what they are working towards chances are they will be happy. And a happy employee is someone that will stick around and only strengthen your company culture further. Buy in A strong culture will create buy in from individuals across the organization. As most startup leaders know, building a startup is full of ups and downs. Having buy in from the earliest employees is essential during the downs to keep everyone motivated and focused on the vision. Who Owns Culture Building at Startups When growing your headcount at a startup, everyone plays a role in building the startup culture. Oftentimes the top sets the tone and leaders across the organization help implement and build the culture. Founder(s) and CEO Generally a startup begins with a small headcount of founding members and leaders. They are usually the subject experts or most qualified in their respective department. It is on these founders and leaders to set the tone for the culture of the entire organization. As startups begin or continue to hire it is vital that the leaders lead by example. For example, if you want a culture of transparency and open communication then it is important that the leaders and founders practice transparency and open communication. As the team at First Round Review puts it, “Companies tend to reflect everything about them [founders]— their personality, strengths, weaknesses. So when you start defining culture in an intentional way, first look at yourselves. If you’re not a founder, look at your CEO and the people who were there at the very beginning.” The First Round team goes on to say, “If a founder is competitive, the company will be more aggressive and competitive. If they are analytical and data-driven, the company will tend to make metrics-based decisions. On the other hand, if a founder deliberates too long over decisions, their startup may have a hard time moving as fast as it should. If a founder is a designer, the way the company builds products will likely be led by design.” Human Resources Usually when a startup has less than 10 employees the culture can be fairly rudimentary. It may be based off of how the founders/leaders work and have a few core ideas. Once a startup gets to the point where they can hire a HR leader or team, culture may be elevated to a new level. An HR leader can come in and dissect what is or is not working about the current culture and put the playbook in place to hire individuals that fit the culture. As the team at BambooHR puts it, “One of the roles of HR in a startup is to make sure the company lives up to its values by hiring people that align with the company’s vision.” Leaders As we previously alluded to the leaders of each business department are the role models for culture. Once you grow your headcount to a point where founders are no longer working with every individual, it is on the leaders and managers to practice the values and be the role model for those working on their team. Startup culture generally starts at the top. Even if a startup’s vision and values are not written on paper, the earliest team members are likely practicing them day in and day out. Learn how you can formalize your startup culture below. 5 Steps to Build A Desirable Startup Culture As we mentioned previously, a startup culture usually starts with the founders and what they bring to the table when a company starts. As the team at First Round wrote, “80% of your company’s culture will be defined by its core leaders.” Questions for Leaders While it can feel burdensome to take the time to formalize your culture in the early days, there are a few easy steps you can make to get things headed in the right direction. As we mentioned earlier, if a founder wants a culture of transparency they have to practice it themselves. In the early days, there are things that founders are implementing and practicing if they realize it or not. As a founder, you can ask yourself questions and it will give you a basic outlook of your “culture” (or how you work as a leader). Ask yourself things like: What am I good at? What are my weaknesses? How do I work? What characteristics do I look for in co-workers? What qualities do I dislike about co-workers? etc. Once you answer these questions, your culture will start to take shape. Common characteristics will start to appear and you will have the basis for your “company culture.” Define the Vision Statement Once you are ready to start formalizing the questions above you can start with the vision. As the team at HubSpot describes it, “A vision statement describes where the company aspires to be upon achieving its mission. This statement reveals the “where” of a business.” This is the overarching goal of where you want your business to end up. While it should revel “where” you want to take the business it also plays into “why” you exist. In a slightly varying definition, the team at Matter describes a vision statement as, “A vision statement explains why a company exists at a high-level. It is aspirational, inspirational, motivational, future-looking and coincides with the founder’s vision for a better world. The very word, “vision” has everything to do with seeing; and vision statements have everything to do with how the founder sees the company evolving and impacting the world.” Define the Mission Statement If the vision statement is where you want to go, the mission statement is how you will get there. As the team at Entrepreneur defines it, “Every successful startup has a clear goal or vision as to what they want to accomplish. While cynics would say that the ultimate mission of any business is making money, the most successful startups generally have a larger sense of purpose. And the best way to express that aspiration is with a well-written mission statement that establishes your company’s core values and highlight its goals, no matter what niche you might be working in.” A mission statement is your roadmap for achieving your vision. This is at the core of a startup’s culture and should be looked to often as you set goals and product roadmaps for the future. Define the Core Values At the end of the day, core values are the DNA of your startup culture. They act as a guiding principles for you how you and your team work. As the team at Wired writes, ” Choose values that are actionable and resonate with your company. If you identify your startup culture with values related to being bold but you know that isn’t important to your success or appropriate for your business, perhaps you should take a closer look at what makes your company tick. Values aren’t something that you have to put in writing for public display, that style isn’t for every startup. However, values should be something that most people can relate to and routinely act upon.” Values should be the acting principles of how your team works. If you think back to the original questions a founder should ask themselves, the values and principles will likely be clear. As you continue to bring on new employees look back at your values to see if they’re still being practiced. Practice What You Preach No matter what you put down on paper if you are not practicing what you preach a culture will cease to exist. For a startup culture to last, it is vital that the leaders are practicing the values and working towards the mission and vision each and everyday. If times get tough and the leaders abandon the company culture, chances are everyone else in the organization will as well. Remember what the First Round team said in the fact that, “80% of your company’s culture will be defined by its core leaders.” If you practice what you preach, building culture throughout your organization will come naturally. How to Maintain Culture While Growing Writing your mission, vision, and values is a small part of the battle. In order to best build a startup culture you need to actively maintain it and make sure it is being practiced across the organization. Here are a few ways to make sure you are maintaining culture while growing your headcount. Hire for Culture When bringing on new employees it is important to test if they are a cultural fit. If you have your values written, it should be fairly easy to test if an employee is a fit for your team. You can have multiple team members interview candidates to get their read on a potential candidates fit as well. Make it clear during the interview process what your company values and what mission and vision you are working towards. This should set the tone and expectations for if they do join your team. Tweak & Re-evaluate Even if you do a great job hiring for culture, chances are your company culture will continue to evolve. It is natural! Take the time to look back at your culture every few months and just see if things are changing. Don’t feel like it is something you need to update immediately but keep tabs on to discuss with your team and leaders. Survey A surefire way to see if your building and maintaining your culture is by surveying your team members. Something as simple as a prompt to measure their happiness level at work can do the trick. If something feels off or you are getting negative feedback about the culture — it may be time to make some changes and see what you can be doing differently. At the end of the day, it is up to the leaders to set the tone for the company culture. If they continue to practice what they preach and hire for culture, maintaining culture should be easier across the board. 5 Great Company Culture Examples It’s not always easy to intuit what a company culture is. Taking a look at some company culture examples can help, both in terms of what to do and what not to do. Here are some company culture examples to consider: Lyft vs. Uber Culture Early on in development, Uber established a problematic company culture, with team culture activities that often involved alcohol. Uber experienced numerous complaints and scandals during its growth, due to this problematic company culture. By contrast, Lyft was able to establish a company culture of responsibility and safety. It experienced far fewer complaints and scandals, and garnered a better reputation in the industry. Of course, in terms of market share, Uber eclipsed Lyft. But it has experienced significant and lasting damage to its reputation over time. Company culture isn’t everything to a business, but it is a lot. Neither Uber nor Lyft have been able to achieve profitability within their market. When considering office culture ideas, looking at cultural goals examples can help. Many companies pattern themselves after the companies that they find most successful and inspiring. Consider these examples of company culture statements, from the largest companies in the world: Google’s Ten Things We Know to be True This outline’s Google’s philosophy: customers first, do one thing well, and don’t be evil. Google has long-believed in serving the customer before everything else, as well as focusing on a singular thing at a time. Apple’s Vision Statement Apple is committed to bringing “the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software, and services.” Apple sees itself as being a world leader in technology, bringing customers the best user experience possible. Microsoft’s Corporate Mission Microsoft seeks “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” In recent years, Microsoft has been focusing on behind-the-scenes technologies such as their Azure Services, as well as collaborative and communicative products like Office 365 and MS Teams. As you can see, these cultural statements are brief and impactful. While the actual mission statement, company culture, and guidelines may be more in-depth, the company culture needs to be able to be explained in a simple, succinct way. Of course, these are also some of the largest companies in the world. But they all started out as startups, and their cultures have remained largely unchanged since then. Google started out with the mission of “don’t be evil.” Apple started out providing useful technology with superb interfaces. Similarly, Microsoft has always been user-focused when developing its products. It’s often said that an expert or a professional is an individual who is able to explain complex concepts in simple terms. Similarly, a business that really knows its identity will be able to describe its identity within a single sentence. This single sentence should resonate strongly with both employees and customers. Being able to simplify a company culture is critical, because a company culture has to be simple in order to be followed. An overly convoluted or complex company culture will be impossible to maintain for any business, and will lead to more confusion than is necessary. Amazon’s Culture And then there are the companies that have a more traditional corporate culture. As an example, many have stated that they are dissatisfied with Amazon’s corporate culture in recent years, which puts a performance-driven environment first. Amazon’s culture emphasizes an “outstanding, continuously-improving customer experience,” which has reportedly led to burn out and fatigue in many of its employees. An emphasis on “relentless focus” has led Amazon to be successful, but also the target of a number of high profile labor complaints. What's it like Working for a Startup? Working for a startup is often a cross between passion and a calling. People work in startups not to make the most money, but rather to be a part of something that they feel really matters. Working for a startup salary is often demanding and requires an employee to wear many hats, but there’s the hope that an employee may get in on the ground floor of something special: the next Google or Microsoft. What Talent Wants Consequently, an employee wants to feel as though they are valued, and they want flexibility and perks. Well, employees do value things like a ping pong table and snacks in the office, it can often be boiled down to 4 things that modern talent wants in the workplace: ownership, transparency, growth, and collaboration. Ownership There are two types of ownership for a startup employee, the type that shows up on a cap table and the type that stems from having an opportunity to lead new projects, products, and processes within a company. Transparency Employees want to know how their business is performing and how they will impact the business. At the end of the day they are asking themselves — Are the executives of the company being open and honest about the prospects of the business as well as our current performance? Does the company have systems in place to communicate that performance and give every team and person insight into how their contribution is affecting the growth of the business? Growth Let’s face it, no matter how amazing the culture at your company is, people often take jobs because of what it will mean for them personally. That means everyone that joins your company is doing so because they feel it is the best thing for them to be doing right now so that they can continue on the career path they have visualized for themselves. The difficulty is keeping people engaged enough to continue feeling this way. Collaboration The desire among companies to remain lean along with the uncertainty of what may transpire each week within an emerging business has given rise to the full-stack operator. People with a diverse skill-set (and, again, intellectual curiosity) will quickly form opinions on how the company outside of their specific role is being run and will want to make a contribution. Startups necessarily must be more flexible than traditional companies because they are already asking so much of their employees. A startup is going to ask their employees to work for them far beyond the traditional work week, while also continuously giving their all. Most startups are fairly lean on funding, and consequently they need to be able to reward solid performance in creative ways. Many startups use things such as corporate catering, health plans, on-site childcare, and other quality of life benefits to keep their most talented staff. But it has to be understood that those who are interested in working for startups do know that they’re going to be working for less: they need to believe in the business itself. As long as they believe that the business is going to be successful, disruptive, and innovative, they are likely to remain onboard. Much of this has to do with the culture. Why Should Someone Pick Your Company? Most people who work for a startup have already considered the working for a startup pros and cons. Ultimately, there are two major reasons people decide to work for a startup: The soft benefits are fantastic. The future opportunities are great. An employee may forego a significant salary if they feel that the startup’s soft benefits compensate for the loss of income. If an employee needs flexible time, so they can spend time with their children, or if an employee likes to go on lengthy vacations but still gets their work done, a startup may be the right environment for them. But one of the major benefits of working for a startup relates to future opportunity. Employees often want to buy into a business: they want shares of the business, or they want to be able to have upward mobility within the business. In the tech center, many employees come from businesses that paid them well, but there was no light at the end of the tunnel. And many employees really want to feel like they’re making a difference in the world. They want to feel as though the work they do is appreciated and matters. Working for a startup vs big company means that the big company funding isn’t there, but that the startup can be more flexible in terms of the employee’s own goals and desires. A startup can court better talent by providing opportunities for growth, working around the needs of the employees, and putting an emphasis on quality of life.

Running a Board of Directors Meeting For most businesses, a Board of Directors meeting must be held at least once a year — however, some businesses may choose to schedule them more frequently. A Board of Directors meeting is an excellent opportunity to make sure that key stakeholders are on the same page. During a Board of Directors meeting, stakeholders will be updated regarding the status and finances of the business, as well as offered presentations regarding the company’s future. Perhaps most importantly, stakeholders will be allowed to vote on future strategies and directions. For startups, a board meeting is an data and people. In a board meeting, the right people are exposed to the right data. Profit-and-loss reports, general ledger sheets, and other financial documents are presented to key stakeholders, and these key stakeholders are able to synthesize this information into important insights. Further, board meetings provide a pathway through which key stakeholders are able to discuss the company’s performance. There’s a reason why board meetings are required: because they are essential to a healthy business. Startups often experience more volatile changes than other companies, and may face unique challenges. Consequently, startups may want to have more frequent board meetings, and may find that their board meetings are even more useful than they are in traditional, established companies. Even in preparing for a board meeting, a startup will be able to explore its performance and its challenges, locating and assessing its risks. However, challenges can arise when the principles of a startup don’t have the time to prepare for a board meeting, or feel as though they aren’t certain what’s expected of them. As many startups are loose and informal, a board meeting may provide an unnatural level of formality. Startup founders may need to research board meetings further if they want to run a successful one. Board Meeting Rules How are board meetings run? What are the board meeting rules? Board meetings are 5% the meeting itself and 95% preparation. Before the board meeting occurs, you will need to prepare all of your documents and presentations in advance. You’ll need to determine exactly what you want to talk about during the meeting, as well as establishing what your goals are for that meeting. Ideally, your business has already been tracking its KPIs, metrics, and financial data. After the board meeting is scheduled, and before it starts, you should consider the current state of the business. What are its largest risks and challenges? What items are of the largest strategic importance? Before your board meeting begins, you should: Have completed and compiled the meeting minutes from the previous board meeting (hopefully well in advance). Most board meeting rules of order will have reading the prior meeting minutes first. Prepare financial reports, analysis, and other documents for the board members to review. Board meeting protocol generally suggests that these be reviewed early on, though they will also be sent to the board members in advance. Identify the company’s greatest risks, assets, and challenges, especially those that are most pressing. Create strategies that you would like the board to weigh in on, whether they approve or disapprove. Define clear goals that you want to achieve by the end of the board meeting. Once you have these things in place, it’s time to create an agenda. Your board meeting agenda is comprised of the topics that will be discussed, in order. It’s intended to keep everyone at the board meeting on the same page, as well as to ensure that nothing is missed. Many boards don’t have the best time management, and can potentially spend all of their time on a single issue, when multiple issues need to be discussed. Your agenda should be sent to all the board members directly, before the meeting occurs, so they themselves have time to prepare for the meeting. While it’s just a general outline of the meeting to come, it should still give them enough information that they’ll be able to form some thoughts, opinions, and ideas. A board meeting is a collaborative process, and your goal is to facilitate thought. To that end, your startup should be focused on presenting board members with the information that they need, as well as the challenges that are ahead. As mentioned, each board meeting and each company is different, and startup culture tends to vary significantly. Some startups may have looser and more frequent board meetings, while others may have infrequent, formal meetings. Some have strict board meeting rules of conduct, others don’t. Over time, you’ll discover what a normal “board meeting” for your startup looks like. Board Meeting Agenda What does the actual board meeting look like? How much time should be allotted for different things, and how do you go about voting for specific agenda items? Your board meeting agenda will provide a significant amount of guidance at this stage, but a traditional board meeting will look like this: Review the meeting minutes from the prior meeting. Discuss the company’s financial documents. Address any challenges and risks the company is facing. Host any presentations, regarding the status of the business. Discuss forward-facing strategies for the business. Vote on key decisions regarding the company’s direction. Raise and discuss any additional motions. The agenda should be paced properly, so that everything on the agenda can be covered within the time that has been allotted for the meeting. You will need to take control of the meeting, keeping an eye on the clock, and making sure that the board meeting doesn’t get bogged down. Understandably, the voting aspect of board meetings is often one of the most important. As key stakeholders do have a say in the future of the business, the vote will represent the actions that the business is allowed to take moving forward. Most of the board meeting will be leading up to these votes. The financial statements, challenge statements, presentations, and strategies should all be offering potential solutions to these board members. These board members will then vote on these solutions. Board meeting voting procedure is generally as follows: A motion is put to the table and discussed. Affirmative and negative votes are given. The affirmative and negative votes are tallied. This is for pre-scheduled votes. For non-pre-scheduled votes (new motions), a motion will generally be raised by a board member. From there, it must be seconded by another board member, at which time it will then be put to the table and discussed. Adhering to board meeting voting protocol is often necessary for two reasons: it ensures that votes occur expediently, while also making sure that the vote (and accompanying discussion) remains clear and civil. Often, board meetings may involve votes on topics that the board members consider quite passionately. Robert's Rules of Order Robert’s Rules are an excellent way to maintain order and decorum throughout a board meeting. A board meeting, by necessity, has to be orderly. Even in the most informal of startups, it must at least be clear what is being discussed and what the results were of that discussion. Robert’s Rules of Order can be applied to virtually any type of meeting, with a board meeting being one of the most likely to benefit. It is focused both on conducting meetings generally and also making decisions as a group. Here’s a simple Robert’s Rules one pager: Under Robert’s Rules of Order voting is done through motions, which must be seconded, and when these motions are seconded, they are then voted upon. A motion is defined as an intent to do something. In a board meeting, any planned strategy or decision would be considered to be a motion. Under Robert Rules of Order motions and voting are done with a single speaker at a time: there is no cross-talk, leading to an atmosphere more conducive to progress. Under Robert Rules of Order voting procedures, debates often precede votes, so that board members can discuss votes in full, and each board member can be allowed to share their opinion. In general, a “quorum” is required for most meetings. A quorum is a minimum number of members that the board meeting requires to be considered a full board meeting. Under Robert’s Rules of Order, meeting members have the following rights: to attend meetings, make motions, speak in debate, and to vote. These rights can be applied easily to board meetings. Depending on the way that Robert’s Rules of Order are applied, votes may be required to be unanimous, two-thirds, previous notice, or majority. Robert’s Rules of Order for small boards can be used as a method of structuring board meetings, giving insight into the decision-making process for groups, as well as the most important factors to emphasize. In general, Robert’s Rules place an emphasis on ensuring that an agenda is designed and kept, that everyone has space to talk and discuss, and that discussion is kept orderly and clear.

QuickBooks Chart of Accounts & More Getting your key metrics, custom financials and business data out of QuickBooks Online just got a whole lot easier. Our product team (special thanks to Eugene) just released a stellar improvement to our existing QuickBooks integration. Our improved integration will pull data from your Profit & Loss Statement, Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows. We will sync any headers, sub-headers and specific accounts that are unique to your business. Once connected, the headers will unfurl and you’ll be able to customize which metrics you’d like to pull in along with the headers themselves. If you’re already using our QuickBooks integration, simply edit your current connection and we’ll display all of the new metrics that you can sync. For new users, just connect to QuickBooks as a new integration. We find that most customers love using our formula builder and variance reporting to mash up their QuickBooks data alongside forecasts, budgets, and data from other sources. We hope you love our new QuickBooks functionality. If you have any questions, make sure to contact us or check out our knowledge base for any support-related items. Up & to the right, Mike & The Visible Team

The importance of executing on the product side of the business has long been a primary focus for countless successful founders and notable startup advisers. So it may come as little surprise that one of the fastest growing trends in SaaS is a renewed focus on product—this time as the primary engine for growth. What is product-led growth? Our friends at OpenView have been leading the charge in championing product-led growth as a go-to-market strategy. As defined in this helpful presentation, PLG occurs in “instances when product usage serves as the primary driver of user acquisition, expansion, and retention.” Growth becomes tied to the value of your company’s product. Like most great startup trends, PLG has its massive success stories that have inspired its wider adoption. The rapid growth of Slack, Calendly and Dropbox have all been at least partially attributed to a product-led strategy to scale. In each case, a product has been offered that is easy-to-use, easy-to-share, and immediately valuable – so much so that it drives user acquisition at remarkable rates, slashes customer acquisition costs (CAC), and surges customer lifetime value (CLV). One of the most valuable upsides of a successful PLG strategy is the overwhelming strong unit economics that can accompany the user growth. As OpenView often discusses, PLG often impacts every aspect of a SaaS business. Product Led Growth Impact on Product Considering PLG is based off of a company’s ability to distribute their product there is obviously a huge impact on the product. Everyone and every department in your business needs to have an intense focus on product. “It’s about product being the core DNA of your company,” Hiten Shah writes. “So much so that the default mode for solving problems—including growth challenges—is to figure out how to use the product to address whatever issue is at hand.” So what exactly does this mean for your product? It needs to be simple and focused. You need to deeply understand your user pain points, strip out any unnecessary features, and have a product that delivers value in a quick and efficient manner. This is to enable other core tenants of product-led growth; freemium, self serve, product qualified leads, etc. Product Led Growth Impact on Marketing Product-led growth also has a major impact on your marketing efforts. In order to best leverage a PLG strategy, your product needs to act as its own marketing channel. The product needs to be inherently viral and allow for easy adaptation for other users. The user experience should be the core of what a PLG marketing team does. The marketing team needs to be able to onboard new users, create a stellar experience, and use product data to improve marketing communication and nurturing later in the process. As the team at User Pilot writes, “Typically, this means that your product model includes a freemium or offers a free trial. This is a disruptive, bottom-up sales model…where employees of an organization can choose what products they want to use instead of being forced to use certain tools by IT or operations departments in a traditional top-down approach.” Product Led Growth Impact on Sales With an intense focus on product across a product led growth organization the way the sales team works and sells the product will also change. In the past, most software sales teams embraced a top down approach. A sales representative or account executive would find an executive (or executives) at an organization and do their best to sell a set number of seats for the organization. The traditional B2B sales funnel oftentimes looks like this: With a product led growth strategy, sales teams almost act more like a customer success and inbound sales representative. For example, let’s assume a PLG company uses a free trial. The product and UI/UX need to be able to show the trialing user value as soon as possible. PLG sales goal here is to unlock and show the product’s value to the user on trial. Whereas a top-down approach would have required a sales member to tell a new user about the value now they are directly showing the value of the product. As the team at ChartMogul put it, “The ultimate goal of PLG sales is to motivate your users to use your product, unleash the value as soon as possible, and convert your users to power-users.” Product Led Growth Impact on Pricing Product led growth has a drastic impact on the pricing of a product. PLG allows companies to land and expand their customer base. This often means a free or reduced price plan that scales with a company as they add usage, seats, etc. The 2 most common pricing strategies that have come out of PLG are freemium and free trials. https://website-staging.visible.vc/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/mike-on-plg.mp4 Freemium Pricing As Investopedia defines it, “Under a freemium model, a business gives away a service at no cost to the consumer as a way to establish the foundation for future transactions. By offering basic-level services for free, companies build relationships with customers, eventually offering them advanced services, add-ons, enhanced storage or usage limits, or an ad-free user experience for an extra cost.” The team at OpenView Labs goes on to explain a freemium model further by stating, “A freemium product, by contrast, gives users access to a limited set of features, functionalities, and use cases indefinitely and without charge. There is no time limit, but parts of the product remain off-limits to free users.” This generally works best for a company that has a lower customer acquisition cost and a longer lifetime value (AKA a product led growth company). A freemium strategy opens up the top of funnel for a PLG company. This means that there may be more users coming into the product to give it a try but this generally means users are less likely to get activated (use the product) and may cause issues later in the sales and marketing funnel. Running parallel, and just as popular, is the free trial model. Free Trial Another common pricing and acquisition model is the free trial. As the team at OpenView Labs explains it, “Free trials typically allow users to experience a complete or nearly complete product for a limited time. This means granting free users access to all features, functionality, and use cases for the duration of their trial.” This means that there may be more friction at the top of the funnel. A user inevitably knows that they will have to pay down the road and this may detract them from wanting to give your product a try. However, this means that when a user starts a free trial there is intent behind their decision and they are likely more qualified. The main pro of a free trial method is the sense of urgency it creates. By having a “shot clock” on their trial time a user will inevitably have to make a decision to use the product. Why is product led growth becoming so important? OpenView Labs has coined product leg growth as “SaaS 2.0” and for very good reason. With recent failures of cash intensive/burning business there has been more focus than ever before on building a sustainable and profitable business. One of the most efficient ways to build a profitable business? You guessed it — product led growth. In addition to the lean business becoming more attractive to venture capitalists and the public markets the ways people buy software is changing as well. In the past, software was traditionally a top-down purchase. A leader or executive at a company found a piece of software they liked, implemented it across their team or organization, and expected everyone to use it. Fast forward to today and more companies are embracing a bottoms-up approach. As the team at Origin Ventures wrote, “As an influx of capital has increased competition amongst B2B SaaS companies, bottoms-up sales has become the low-cost, scalable method that provides a quick way for SaaS companies to engage users quickly. By selling directly to ground-floor product users (rather than executive teams), bottoms-up works best when the software is inexpensive or free to start, doesn’t need to be tailored to each customer, and has clear value propositions for small groups of employees.” Benefits of a product led growth strategy A product led growth strategy offers countless benefits. Lower Acquisition Costs One of the most attractive benefits of a PLG strategy is the decreased customer acquisition costs. While it is assuming that you’ll need to invest more in product development the cost of acquiring new customers will continue to lower. This is because the product should do the heavy lifting for your business. By having a product that offers a free trial or freemium experience the top of your funnel will flourish and the product should enable users to upgrade and scale in turn lowering acquisition costs. Upsells & Expansion PLG enables your pricing and contract sizes to scale with your companies. While a set of users may be using a freemium version or are on a free trial, PLG should allow companies to slowly upgrade their plans. In turn this generates more upsell revenue and reduces the likelihood of churn as the price is created to scale and grow with a given customer and business. Better User Experience Ultimately a PLG strategy is a better experience for the end user. First off, in order to properly execute a PLG strategy the product needs to be best-in-class which is already a bonus for a user. On top of that the onboarding, resources, and UI/UX are built to be easy-to-understand and require minimal setup and intervention from a sales or customer success representative. How to become a product led growth company In order to become a product led growth company you need to have an extreme focus and buy in from everyone in the organization. While the benefits are clear there are a few things a SaaS company needs to do before they can fully embrace being a PLG company. Customer Empathy First order of business to become a product led growth company is to deeply understand your customer and the job they are trying to accomplish. A great product is best informed by deeply understanding your customers. You also need to have empathy when it comes to how a customer buys your product. On one hand you may have customers that enjoy speaking to someone when making a decision. On the other hand you may have customers that want to be left along and make a buying decision on their own. Both customers in this instance are correct. It is a PLG companies duty to be able to empathize with and sell to both customer sets. Great Product It probably goes without saying that a PLG company needs a great product. If your product is clunky and requires a hands on setup it is probably not a great option for PLG. If it is intuitive and easy to get started a PLG strategy may sound like a better idea. It is the namesake of the strategy so having your product dialed in a 100% must. Intuitive Onboarding In part of having a great product is having great onboarding. If users are coming to your product via free trial or a freemium experience they need to be able to get setup and understand the product on their own. There is likely an overlap of the product doing the work, resources to help, and a customer success team to help accomplish this. It is imperative that the product is easy to get started. For a freemium experience, it will not scale well to have customer success or support team members helping users in the product. The goal is to allow users uncover the value on their own. Company Culture & Team Focus If you’ve built a great product, chances are your culture—knowingly or not—is centered around putting the product first. As Liz Cain of OpenView puts it, “You live to serve your customer, to make a product that delights and excites… You don’t want your company aligned around a boiler room, ‘always be closing’ sales culture.” While product-led growth might not be for every business, there are learnings that can translate across all businesses. Key product led growth metrics you must know Product Qualified Leads When a potential customer is already using a version of your product—whether that be a trial participant or user in a freemium model—they can qualify as a PQL. With a PQL, the customer has hit a designated trigger that lets the sales team know they are ready for a follow up call. As Christopher O’Donnell notes, by using the product to educate the customer first, you’ve given your sales team a huge advantage. “If we flip the traditional model 180 degrees and start instead with product adoption, we find ourselves selling the product to folks who understand the offering and are potentially already happy with it, before they even pay,” O’Donnell writes. PQLs rely on the product selling itself. With this approach, you’re providing the best possible introduction to demonstrate how the product can be a long-term solution. That’s an easy process to replicate too. “[PQLs] are scalable because they require no human touch and they are high-quality leads,” Tomasz Tunguz writes. “When the sales team calls PQLs, customers typically convert at about 25 to 30%.” If you have a freemium offering of your product, you can gain the benefits of the potential velocity of incoming leads while also earning the financial rewards of an inside sales price point. Furthermore, a focus on PQLs can improve your product roadmap as well. Tunguz notes that PQLs actually serve as a management tool as well because the focus on customer action gets everyone onboard with revenue as the key performance indicator. are a “Typically, the product and engineering teams don’t have goals tied to revenue which bisects a team into revenue generating components (sales and marketing) and cost centers (eng and product).” That can create a lack of effectiveness when it comes to creating a product that sells itself and providing the best ammo for a sales team to finish the job if needed. Of course, your product and engineering teams will have longer-term features that will not be revenue significant in the short-run. However, a mix of both can help get everyone on the same page and quickly end potential arguments. That’s a great addition to any company culture. “PQLs provide a rigorous framework for prioritizing development,” Tunguz writes. “Each feature can be benchmarked to determine the net impact to PQL which is ultimately funnel optimization.” Churn Churn is important in every SaaS business but especially important in a product led growth business. As we wrote in our SaaS Metrics Guide, there are 2 core types of churn that a PLG/SaaS business need to track: “Customer churn rate: This simply refers to customers lost within specific time periods. Hopefully, you can also enhance these SaaS metrics with information about why the churn rate may have either spiked or declined under various circumstances. Revenue churn rate: A SaaS business model may include various prices, based upon the number of unique accounts or levels of features or services. Hopefully, customers upgrade over time; however, if they’re not, SaaS companies should find out why.” Keeping your churn low will not only allow for efficient growth but allow for a greater customer lifetime value so you can bump customer acquisition costs when needed. Customer Lifetime Value Another metric to keep tabs on when evaluating a PLG strategy is customer lifetime value. Simply put, customer lifetime value is the estimated amount that a customer will bring in over the course of their relationship with your business. As we wrote in our SaaS Metrics Guide: “You can estimate the lifetime value of your customers by following these steps: Estimate your customer lifetime rate with this formula: 1/average churn rate. With an average churn rate of one percent, for example, your CLR would be 100. Divide monthly revenue by the number of customers to calculate your average revenue per account, or ARPA. For example, 100 customers and a monthly revenue of $100,000 would work out to an ARPA of $1,000. Finally, calculate the customer lifetime value, or CLV, by multiplying the ARPA by the CLR. In the example above, your CLV would be 1,000 X 100 = $100,000. You can use the CLV to help you estimate the lifetime value of each customer. Companies can also use this handy metric to illustrate their value to investors.” A PLG company should allow for a higher customer lifetime value as the model and pricing is built to scale with a business. For example, a company bringing in $0 in revenue should be paying $0 for their subscription. As they continue to grow their revenue so will their contract size. In theory this should decrease the likelihood of them churning and increase their likelihood of staying on board and increasing their contract/lifetime value. Time to value One of the key aspects to selling a PLG subscription is the amount of time it takes a new user to get to value. If you can measure and continue to improve your time to value, the likelihood of a new customer closing or an existing customer upgrading their plan will greatly increase. Users have essentially limitless options in today’s SaaS world and need to be able to quickly evaluate and make a decision on your product. If a long setup or manual work is required you’ll likely lose the attention of a new user and they will look elsewhere. The team at OpenView labs shares how HubSpot uses TTV with their website grader: “Trials are good to do, but trials are often too long. At HubSpot we had a tool called Website Grader… Its entire existence was about creating time to value. It’s free. You put in a URL – your site or your competitor’s – and we analyze the site using our marketing methodology.“ Upsells/Expansion As we mentioned earlier the likelihood of a customer upselling or expanding their account is a major plus of product led growth. As we described in our Monthly Recurring Revenue Guide, “Expansion monthly recurring revenue is MRR from gained from existing customers when they upgrade their subscriptions” Because users will have the option of a free trial or freemium plan the ability for them to quickly upgrade plans is very likely. While it may only be small jumps from plan-to-plan in you enable a customer to achieve their job, they will continue to upgrade plans as their team and business continues to scale. Examples of businesses with a product led growth strategy While there are countless businesses that run a product led growth strategy, the three below are some of our favorites. Slack Slack is one of our all time favorite examples of product led growth at Visible. Slack has had a freemium plan since day 1 and has become the poster child of freemium. Slack pricing is built to scale with usage and a user’s growth. WIth the Slack PLG strategy, new users get to use the full Slack product for free up until they hit 10,000 messages. This means that once you’ve hit the limit, you fully understand the value of Slack and probably can’t function as a business without it. Tools like Slackbot and their suite of integrations make onboarding and getting setup on Slack easier than ever. The pricing as Slack is built to grow with a business as well. With per seat pricing of around $7/mo it is often times a no-brainer to add on more licenses when needed. Dropbox Another one of our favorite examples of a proper product leg growth strategy is from Dropbox. Dropbox fully supports the bottoms up approach and has mastered it on their march to over $1B in revenue. The Dropbox product is remarkably easy to use. It has a very friendly and simple UI that makes usage an ease. Oftentimes it is considered the best tool for sharing files. On top of that it is inherently viral. There are shared files that make other people intrigued by Dropbox and may sign up for their own use. They also have a powerful referral program that gives free data to new users and the referring user. Dropbox has truly nailed the bottoms up approach and have been a SaaS case study for companies looking to embrace a product led growth strategy. What’s a good product-led growth strategy? In his review of Blake Bartlett’s PLG talk at SaaStr 2017, Drew Beechler outlines the five traits of PLG success: virality, easy sign-up, quick to demonstrate value, slow to hit users with paywalls, and “a focus on making all customers successful across the sales-to-support continuum.” A successful PLG strategy gets your product in the hands of your customers as fast as possible and starts solving their problems right away. “Growth in [PLG] companies has a significant viral component.” Jon Falker of GLIDR writes, “Users can get unique value from the product or service right away and can benefit from helping to attract other new users.” This is why freemium models are remarkably effective in a PLG environment. By providing the user with a valuable experience upfront, you can inspire more frequent use, greater shareability, and focus on the premium aspects of your product that will drive purchasing decisions and ultimately retain these customers. Is product-led growth the right strategy for your company? Your company’s unique financial, growth, and talent considerations will need to be assessed before you can determine the right investment to make into a PLG strategy. As the OpenView PLG Market Map shows, this strategy continues to be adopted across the globe and among an increasingly wide swath of product categories. Still in order to succeed at the five traits of strong PLG companies listed above, you actually have to be a business positioned to offer these benefits. If a freemium model isn’t on the table at the moment or if your product doesn’t currently offer clear network effects, a more gradual approach to achieving PLG success may be the right course of action. For instance, as Shah notes, a company might hire or retain sales talent to attract large customers early on while product-led growth continues to develop at scale. A focus on product can occur simultaneously in an organization that still needs to execute more traditional SaaS sales to achieve a healthy growth rate. On the marketing side, a gradual approach to PLG may include an increased focus on conversion rates on core landing pages to drive faster user acquisition across all customer types. But even in a more incremental approach to PLG, you will refocus your entire team on what matters most. “Everyone in the company should be focused on growth. Everyone should be responsible for revenue,” Shah writes. “Exactly what this looks like will vary from company to company based on which teams have the most say on what ends up getting built and shipped.” Successful PLG companies develop cross-functional teams, demonstrate effective information sharing within their organization, and attach greater significance to shared KPIs to accomplish to inspire a greater focus on growth and accountability to revenue. To learn more about product led growth and best practices for growing and scaling your company, check out the Visible Weekly. Curated resources and insights delivered every Thursday.

In his seminal 1964 book Managing for Results, business management guru Peter Drucker remarked that the success of a business is increasingly dependent on a company’s ability to effectively utilize talented people. Over the years, he spoke of a structural change from manager-controlled businesses to more decentralized structures and a paradigm shift from treating people as a cost center to viewing them as a resource. Peter Drucker believed in empowering employees through ownership, transparency in the workplace, growth, and collaboration. These ideas have stood the test of time and have become a vital proponent of startup culture. On Knowledge Workers: Even if employed full-time by the organization, fewer and fewer people are “subordinates”–even in fairly low-level jobs. Increasingly, they are “knowledge workers”. And knowledge workers are not subordinates; they are “associates”. – Drucker, Management Challenges of the 21st Century On Managing People: “You have to learn to manage in situations where you don’t have command authority, where you are neither controlled nor controlling. That is the fundamental change. Management textbooks still talk mainly about managing subordinates. But you no longer evaluate an executive in terms of how many people report to him or her. That standard doesn’t mean as much as the complexity of the job, the information it uses and generates, and the different kinds of relationships needed to do the work.” – Drucker, HRB: The Post-Capitalist Executive This contrarian insight, cultivated in the age of the rise of grey flannel suit Corporate America, proved prescient, as today’s employees want (or simply have the leverage to demand) more than just a paycheck from their employers. To attempt to wrap up his decades of writing and thinking into one paragraph, his philosophy on hiring, organizing, and managing people is thus: As the success of business ventures become more and more dependent on attracting and retaining talented people, competition for high quality “knowledge workers” increases. Companies who focus on measuring what actually matters and empowering team members through ownership, transparency, growth, and collaboration have a competitive advantage. When it comes to startup culture, the characteristics mentioned above, ownership, transparency in the workplace, growth, and collaboration, can be used to attract talent. Ownership There are two types of ownership for a startup employee, the type that shows up on a cap table and the type that stems from having an opportunity to lead new projects, products, and processes within a company. To compete in a competitive hiring market, fair compensation and an openness to talking about what that compensation looks like under different scenarios is table stakes. Everyone you offer equity compensation to should know how, for example, dilution or a down round will impact how much their options may be worth. Even if you are hiring people with some cap table savvy, sending them something like this or this can be helpful…again, this is table stakes. Where smart companies gain a competitive advantage is by working to maximize the second type of ownership for every team member. This is done by embracing autonomy. The actions taken early in a company’s life have an outsize impact on what it will become in the future and the people you hire early will be the ones taking those actions. If you aren’t focusing on growing the value of what could be called operational ownership, you limit the long-term value of everyone’s equity ownership. “Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy.” – Drucker How employees think about ownership: Is it clear how much of the company I own and what will happen to my ownership under different scenarios? Am I in a position where I am challenged to take ownership of new processes and initiatives, even if I am simply an individual contributor with no direct management responsibilities Do I have a stake in the company that goes beyond what shows up on the cap table? Transparency in the Workplace In a recent guest post on the Visible blog, Wagepoint’s Leena Rao asked whether “radical transparency” is the way forward for startup marketing. While many companies have taken to the idea of transparency in the workplace with regards to their operations and metrics, it remains a difficult balance to maintain. Sharing everything is great in theory but won’t it be distracting for people? And what happens if we have a bad stretch as a company? In reality, there is not a once size fits all answer to how startups should tackle transparency in the workplace. In spite of efforts to standardize how metrics in the private markets are tracked, dictating exactly what metrics and information each company should share (and with who) is a completely different beast. The key takeaway for executives looking to make transparency a part of their business is to remain consistent with what is shared and how it is shared. This helps build trust through predictability. How employees think about transparency in the workplace: Are the executives of the company being open and honest about the prospects of the business as well as our current performance? Does the company have systems in place to communicate that performance and give every team and person insight into how their contribution is affecting the growth of the business? Related resource: 9 Signs It’s Time To Hire in a Startup Growth Let’s face it, no matter how amazing the culture at your company is, people often take jobs because of what it will mean for them personally. That means everyone that joins your company is doing so because they feel it is the best thing for them to be doing right now so that they can continue on the career path they have visualized for themselves. The difficulty is keeping people engaged enough to continue feeling this way. Working to understand what someone is looking for out of the position and over the long term before they come on board is one way to make sure you are setting a relationship up well for the long term. Training and development is another, often neglected, investment that companies can make…and it doesn’t have to involve expensive, comprehensive programs and teachers (read: consultants). If you are bringing intellectually curious people into your company (you shouldn’t be hiring people who aren’t), they will want to take control of their own professional growth and development, you just need to help provide the tools. This can be as simple as a $20/month Kindle allowance or Treehouse membership or a couple of days to attend a conference on their preferred programming language or design discipline. How employees think about growth: Is the company growing the way that it should be and am I contributing to that growth? Is being at this company in this position helping me grow my career? Collaboration The desire among companies to remain lean along with the uncertainty of what may transpire each week within an emerging business has given rise to the full-stack operator. People with a diverse skill-set (and, again, intellectual curiosity) will quickly form opinions on how the company outside of their specific role is being run and will want to make a contribution. Your first inclination may be to look at this as a meddlesome distraction full of meetings that start 10 minutes late and end with no actionable next steps. In fact, it can be just the opposite if executed properly. No matter how great tools like Slack or Trello are at keeping everyone in touch and on the same page, they haven’t (yet) replaced the impact a well thought out discussion can can have on the direction of your business. These discussions make it easier to get to the bottom of what work is most important for everyone at your company to be focusing on each day. That is why, even when it becomes more and more difficult to bring everyone together physically, things like show-and-tells, scheduled team catchups, and 1:1’s can be so impactful for a business that moves quickly. How employees think about collaboration: Do the different teams or functional groups in the company work well together? Am I getting the opportunity to work on different projects and learn from people with different skillsets than my own? Building a startup culture centered around ownership, transparency in the workplace, growth, and collaboration can be an easy way to attract top talent. Want the top content for building a strong startup culture delivered to your inbox every Thursday? Be sure to sign up for our Founders Forward Newsletter here.

Last week, we hosted a webinar on how to raise a Series A. In it, Zylo CEO & Co-Founder Eric Christopher and I shared tactics and advice on how to make sure your Series A raise is a successful one. If you made it, thanks! We had a great turnout of engaged audience members. If you weren’t able to make it, you can check out the recording below: Today, I want to share three key takeaways from the webinar, in the hopes that they might help you raise your next funding round. How to know if you’re ready to raise? Series A readiness is a difficult thing to pin down. So much depends on your specific situation: the industry you’re in, the product you’ve built, your business model. A good breakdown of specific numbers you should be hitting can be found here, but even that list isn’t universal. As a general rule, though, you’ll know you’re probably ready to raise your Series A when you have these three things: an engine, healthy metrics, and a compelling story to tell. “An engine” refers to a predictable engine for acquisition. Acquisition of what, exactly, will depend on your company; it could be users, customers, revenue, etc. The important thing is, do you have a predictable way to acquire more? Healthy metrics refers to three general patterns: accelerated growth, low churn, and efficient acquisition. If your metrics demonstrate all three of these things, you’ll be very attractive to potential investors. The third item is this: can you tell a compelling story? This is potentially the most important item of the three. Every investor wants to invest in a good story. If you can effectively communicate what you’ve done so far, then paint a clear picture of what the future will look like if you keep succeeding, you’re likely to have success with your raise. If an investor likes the sound of that future and they believe you can make it happen, they’ll invest. Before you raise, commitment is key If you think your company is ready to raise a Series A, the first thing you have to do is prepare yourself. You have a lot of hard work ahead of you. A Series A raise takes, on average, about 5.5 months to complete. That’s a lot of time where your focus will be outside of the day-to-day of your business. You’re also going to face a lot of rejection—the most common answer after pitching an investor, after all, is “no.” A CEO/Founder who is undertaking a Series A round needs to be fully prepared to do so—committed to seeing it through, confident in their pitch, and always working with a specific goal in mind. Before diving into your Series A raise, you need to make sure you’re prepared for what it means. Don’t forget about your current investors Your current investors can be absolutely essential in closing your Series A round—whether they participate in the round or not. If your current investors choose not to follow on—for whatever reason—they can still be a huge help to you as you raise your round. They can provide everything from pitch feedback to warm introductions to other investors who might be a better fit. These are just three takeaways from our webinar on raising your Series A round, but there’s plenty more content where that came from. Check out the recording below:

Lessons From the 2018 Amazon Letter to Shareholders Since his original 1997 shareholder letter, Jeff Bezos’ shareholder letters have become known as valuable resources that could feel right at home as material for an MBA course. The 2018 letter to shareholders is not different. Jeff drops loads of knowledge on customer obsession, intuition, curiosity, and the power of wandering. Innovation has always been a core part of Amazon’s rapid growth. It’s almost as if Joseph Schumpeter was writing about Amazon in his economic theory of creative destruction. Schumpeter strongly believed that capitalism was fueled by innovation and the entrepreneurs who are willing to innovate. Creative destruction can be defined as, “a process in which new technologies, new kinds of products, new methods of production and new means of distribution make old ones obsolete, forcing existing companies to quickly adapt to a new environment or fail.” Going back to Jeff Bezos’ original shareholder letter, he claims it will always be “day 1” at Amazon. The idea of “day 1” is that Amazon will always act as a startup, always be an innovator, and will always avoid creative destruction. Not only is Jeff a perfect example of Schumpeter’s entrepreneur who will innovate, so, it seems, are his employees. As Bezos’ puts it in his 2018 shareholder letter: “From very early on in Amazon’s life, we knew we wanted to create a culture of builders – people who are curious, explorers. They like to invent. Even when they’re experts, they are “fresh” with a beginner’s mind. They see the way we do things as just the way we do things now. A builder’s mentality helps us approach big, hard-to-solve opportunities with a humble conviction that success can come through iteration: invent, launch, reinvent, relaunch, start over, rinse, repeat, again and again. They know the path to success is anything but straight.” On their march to a $1T market cap, Amazon has hired talent that matches the description above and put an unbelievable emphasis on their customer base. If Amazon continues to deliver great value to their customers, they will continue to innovate. Intuition, curiosity, and wandering come together to uncover outsized discoveries that can radically change a product or market. Following and executing a plan is the most efficient way to build a business but if you truly want to innovate there has to be a keen desire to wander and test your intuitions. While listening to customers fuels much of Amazon’s growth curiosity and intuition has been at the center of some of their biggest decisions. The story of AWS is a great example: “The biggest needle movers will be things that customers don’t know to ask for. We must invent on their behalf. We have to tap into our own inner imagination about what’s possible…No one asked for AWS. No one. Turns out the world was in fact ready and hungry for an offering like AWS but didn’t know it. We had a hunch, followed our curiosity, took the necessary financial risks, and began building – reworking, experimenting, and iterating countless times as we proceeded.” This simple, yet powerful, idea can be a lesson for all companies. Of course, it is vital to the life of your business to diligently listen to your customer base and deliver what they want, it is also important to listen to the market as a whole and your internal talent. By trusting your intuition and the talent around you, you can take a chance to “invent on their behalf.” While not every company has $40B cash to lean on, implementing a culture of builders and wanderers can help your company innovate and continue to spur rapid growth.

Y Combinator has funded over 1900 startups since their inception in 2005. In the process of funding those startups, YC receives thousands of investor updates on an annual basis. As Aaron Harris, Partner at YC, puts it, “At YC, we get lots of updates from our alums. There seems to be a correlation between quality and frequency of updates and the goodness of the company and founders.” Over the past year, we’ve had thousands of founders share Updates with their investors and other stakeholders. While investor updates come in all different shapes and sizes, we’ve found that most, if not all, include some form of the following: a quick recap of the last month, metrics and KPIs, and specific asks for your investors. To this point, Aaron Harris of YC suggests using the same components but has interesting thoughts about the order of these components what specific information should be shared. Metrics & KPIs Metrics and KPIs are included in almost every Update template we’ve seen come across our table. Including your key metrics with growth percentages is widely expected. Aaron Harris suggests sharing your KPIs and growth percentages first when reporting to your investors. Sharing high-level growth metrics and financial status metrics are what you are looking for here. Examples include revenue, cash in bank, and burn rates. No matter what you decide to share, make sure the metrics are defined and explained to your investors and repeated on a monthly basis. Targeted Asks Making targeted asks to your investors is arguably the most impactful part of an investor update. If engaged properly, investors are more than a source of capital. They have experience, advice, and networks you can leverage. Don’t be afraid to ask your investors help with closing deals, finding talent, and future fundraising. Regardless if you put asks first or second in order, Aaron recommends putting it as close to the top as possible to make sure your investors see it and can help where needed. Quick Recap Interestingly, Aaron suggests putting the qualitative recap of your month towards the bottom of your investor update. While we often see founders lead with a recap, ending with a recap will ensure that your investors see both your metrics and targeted asks. Make this as short as possible and be sure to only add things that are vital to your success. At the end of the day, investors are busy and you want to make sure they read your entire update. These are just a few elements to consider when deciding on the structure of your investor update. To see these elements in context or create an update yourself, check out our Y Combinator update template below. Check out an example of the Y Combinator Investor Update Here >>>

What is a Business Pitch Deck Overview A pitch deck is a vital part of a successful fundraise. Nurturing and constantly communicating with your investors and potential investors throughout the process can double your chances of raising follow-on funding. Founders and other startup leaders choose Visible for their investor reporting because we make it dead-simple to compose, distribute and track all of your updates in one place. Being able to quickly and effectively pitch your business or product is vital to raising capital, attracting talent, and closing customers. A pitch deck should tell a compelling story and give reason for outside stakeholders to invest their time, money, and resources into your business. There are hundreds of free pitch deck presentation templates on the internet. Below we lay out our favorite free pitch deck templates and examples. Recommended Reading: The Understandable Guide to Startup Funding Stages What is a Business Pitch? A Business Pitch Template for Success. A business pitch is a presentation to a group of stakeholders, mainly investors, but can also include potential customers, team members, and potential hires. A business pitch can be given in many forms including a pitch deck, email, PDF, or an impromptu conversation. Once you have a business idea you most likely work on putting together a business plan. Once you have a business plan in place it is time to get a pitch dialed for your startup. The most effective business pitches include a combination of the forms listed. Everyone in your business should be able to pitch your business in some form (e.g. elevator pitch). So what makes up a great business pitch template? First, make sure your business pitch is concise and easy-to-understand. You should be able to pitch your business in a few sentences and should be easy to understand what your business does. Everyone in your organization should be able to complete a simple pitch of your business. Second, you need to answer this question; who is your audience? You need to tailor your business pitch to who are you pitching. Think about what you are trying to accomplish and what the person’s ultimate end goal is. If you’re pitching an investor, why should they give your business money? If you’re pitching a customer, why should they pick your solution over other options? If you’re pitching a potential hire, why should they pick to work for you over a different company? Create a business pitch template to make sure everyone in your business can tell the same story and pitch your business in an effective manner. Below we lay out a free pitch deck template that will help turn your business pitch into a compelling story. Related Resource: Investor Outreach Strategy: 9 Step Guide How to Build Your Investor Pitch Deck (A Best Practices Template) The free pitch deck template here is largely based off of the Guy Kawasaki Pitch Deck Template. Guy’s free pitch deck template is a great start for putting together your pitch deck then tailoring it to your needs. The pitch deck design is built for a total of 10 slides. Below are the pitch deck design and slides that Guy recommends using to pitch your business or product. Download our free pitch deck template here or below: Related resource: 23 Pitch Deck Examples Pitch Deck Slide 1: Company Information The first pitch deck slide of your business pitch is straightforward. A simple slide that shares an overview of your business. Use this slide to set the stage for your pitch deck design. The most important thing to remember when making your cover slide is this is often your first impression with the investors you’re pitching. These are investors who have seen a lot of pitches, so getting their interest and attention quickly is important. Your cover slide is your best shot at doing that. Related resource: Our Guide to Building a Seed Round Pitch Deck: Tips & Templates So what makes a great cover slide? Just a few important elements: Sharp design. If there’s a slide to fuss over, design-wise, it’s this one. Remember, you’re making a first impression here. Good design is key. Related Reading: Pitch Deck Designs That Will Win Your Investors Over Your logo. Obviously. What you do (or tagline). This is the element that is most often omitted, but it’s critical. You want to provide context right away, orienting the listener to what your business is all about. Don’t get cute here—the more straightforward, the better. Contact info. This is especially important when you’re sending the deck via email before or after the pitch. You want the names of the people who are pitching, some direct contact info (probably email) and a place online where the investor can learn more about you, whether that’s your home page or a social media profile. As I mentioned, a lot of startups get this slide wrong. A good example is the cover slide from SteadyBudget, which is now Shape.io. Pitch Deck Slide 2: Problem Solving The second pitch deck slide consists of what problem you are solving. This can take form in what the opportunity is or what the pain your potential customers are feeling. Use social proof or a story to clearly demonstrate how potential customers are evaluating and solving the problem with current solutions vs. your solution. The problem slide from Airbnb’s original pitch deck is a great example. Related Reading: How to Write a Problem Statement [Startup Edition] Pitch Deck Slide 3: Value Proposition The third pitch deck slide should explain the value proposition that you are offering. This explains the direct value that your customers receive when choosing your product or solution. This is where your business pitch template will come in handy as you describe your value. Statistics, stories, and first hand data can be a valuable tool for the third slide. Pitch Deck Slide 4: Your Differentiator The fourth pitch deck slide explains what differentiates your solution than others in the market. Guy Kawasaki suggests using a visual pitch deck design here by using images, charts, and diagrams of your “secret sauce.” Instead of using text to explain the differentiator use visuals. If your secret is in the product, use this as an opportunity to show product screenshots or a demo video. Pitch Deck Slide 5: TAM & Opportunity Breakdown The fifth pitch deck slide should contain your business model. This shows how you are, or plan, to make money. The goal of this slide is to demonstrate the addressable market and portraying why your company has the ability to generate huge amounts of revenue to attract a large payout for the investors. Check out our Total Addressable Market Template to help get started with your TAM model. Mathilde Collins, CEO of Front, has a great example of an opportunity in her Series C pitch deck. The slide clearly shows how the large the opportunity is (and later details how the Front product can win the market). Pitch Deck Slide 6: Customer Acquisition and Go-to-Market Being able to show a repeatable and efficient process for acquiring new customers is a must. Investors want to make sure that they will not be throwing their money down the drain. Going into a pitch with potential investors you need to understand your revenue model and go-to-market strategy like the back of your hand. Make sure your GTM strategy slide is easily digestible and can be easily understood without added context. One of the key metrics that investors will want to understand is your costs to acquire a new customer. (Learn more about CAC here). It is important to demonstrate to your investors that your customer acquisition costs are less than your customer lifetime value. This will help showcase your path to profitability. Ablorde Ashigbi is the Founder and CEO of 4Degrees. Earlier this year, Ablorde wrapped up a round of financing for 4Degrees. We went ahead and asked Ablorde what tips he has for founders looking to showcase their CAC in a pitch deck. His response: Don’t present CAC without a corresponding view of LTV Don’t present a blended CAC (including both organic and paid – only include conversions that came from paid channels) For earlier stage companies, payback period equally (maybe more) important than pure LTV / CAC When it comes to presenting your GTM strategy and customer acquisition costs it all comes down to simplicity. An investor should be able to take a look at your slide and know exactly how your business functions. The CAC slide from Vessel below is a great example. Pitch Deck Slide 7: The Market The seventh pitch deck slide should show what the market looks like. This includes your competitor landscape. Guy suggests that “the more the better” for this slide. If comparing yourself to competitors be sure to prepare for questions and conversation. You shouldn’t be afraid to mention your competition in a pitch deck. If there are already players in the space, it proves that there’s a need to fill. Addressing your competition directly and sharing your competitive advantages is a way to assert confidence in investors that you truly understand the market. Too often, though, pitch decks include a competitor slide, but don’t address how the startup will win against those competitors. A Gartner Magic Quadrant alone doesn’t get the job done—you need to convince investors that your company can be bigger and better than those that already exist in the market. The competitive landscape from Airbnb’s original pitch deck is a great (and dated) example. Pitch Deck Slide 8: The Team The eighth pitch deck slide should be a highlight of your management team. Include a brief profile of your company’s managers and any other associated stakeholders. This can include your investors, board members, and advisors. Related Resource: Crafting the Perfect SaaS Board Deck: Templates, Guidelines, and Best Practices The team slide is included in almost every pitch deck example and outline, and for good reason—investors consistently say the team is one of the top criteria they look at when making an investment decision. What often goes unmentioned, though, is how to structure the team slide so that it’s actually effective. A few headshots with names and titles underneath isn’t going to cut it. A good team slide not only covers the who, but the why, as in “why is this a team I should believe in?” That means an effective team slide includes some context. Things like relevant experience in the market, previous startup exits, and key accomplishments are all worth including. If you have impressive advisors, include them, too. If an investor is deciding whether to fund you based on your team, you want to make the best argument for your team that you can. An example of a great team slide is this one from Square. It’s a little dated now, but it does a good job providing some context for why the Square team was worth investing in, features logos to boost credibility, and includes advisors as well. Pitch Deck Slide 9: Financial Projections & Key Metrics The ninth pitch deck slide should contain your financial projections and key metrics. The key to building a business is generating revenue and having a financial plan to effectively scale and grow. Use a top-down, not bottoms-up, projection to wow your investors. A visual pitch deck design will also help here by using charts to make your projections easy-to-understand. To learn more about financial modeling and projections check out our guide here. Related Resource: Important Startup Financials to Win Investors If the founding team doesn’t take the top spot of what an investor care about, it usually goes to financials and metrics. And while investors want the full picture of your startup’s financial metrics before they invest, the pitch deck should really only include the highlights. What investors want to see in financials is evidence of traction. What that means for your pitch deck is you should include a splash of metrics that are easy to digest and tell a good story. A few key metrics in a big, bold typeface beats a more thorough selection of metrics that are hard to parse. This example from Moz’s Series B Round shows the impact of highly readable traction metrics that tell a good story: Pitch Deck Slide 10: Timeline The last pitch deck slide should be an overall timeline of your business. Where have you been in the past? What are the major accomplishments you’ve achieved so far? Where is your business headed and will the person you are pitching fit into this timeline? It is important to clearly showcase how you will deploy an investor’s capital to hit milestones and goals over the coming months, quarters, and/or years. Front does a great job of showing where Front can be with the capital they need to grow into new markets. Download our free pitch deck template here or below: Related Resource: Pitch Deck Design Cost Breakdown + Options Pitch Deck Examples There are countless websites that share popular pitch deck examples from companies like LinkedIn, AirBnb, and Facebook. To help you put together the perfect pitch deck, we’ve laid out pitch deck examples from our favorite companies and the best pitch decks of 2018. You can find a library for pitch deck examples using this link. LinkedIn Pitch Deck One of our favorite pitch deck examples, the LinkedIn pitch deck is one of the original pitch decks that companies still look to today. While design and details have certainly changed since the 2004 LinkedIn pitch deck there are still relevant lessons and trends that have stood the test of time. One of the most interesting aspects of the LinkedIn pitch deck is their ability to turn it into a compelling story. Keep in mind, at the time of this pitch deck, LinkedIn had zero revenue, were not leaders of a “hot market,” and had little to show for hypergrowth. Reid was aware that investors would have hesitations with LinkedIn’s lack of revenue so he steered immediately into their plan to generate revenue. Instead of immediately jumping into their product, LinkedIn’s first slide is their 3 strategies for generating revenue. Now, it would be ill advised for a consumer facing company to show multiple revenue streams with no conviction in a single product. Luckily for LinkedIn, they launched all 3 products and were an exception. Regardless, Reid does a good job of addressing any push back that he’ll eventually see from investors for their lack of revenue. One of the most interesting aspects of the LinkedIn pitch deck is their plain to become “Professional People Search 2.0.” LinkedIn’s main argument and reasoning for deserving venture capital, is the fact that the way people do professional research was inadequate and the market was ready for a new way to conduct professional research. Ideally, the investors believed that professional people search was in need of a revamp. The next step in LinkedIn’s story is to show investors examples of the “1.0” to “2.0” jump in other companies Reid then offers examples of other markets and verticals that have been lifted going from “1.0” to “2.0.” Using analogies Reid was able to paint a picture of how LinkedIn can radically change the market just as his presented examples, Google, PayPal, and eBay, had done in the past. The LinkedIn pitch deck is a great example of how you can still build a compelling story with a lack of revenue and hypergrowth. Facebook Pitch Deck Another classic pitch deck example is Facebook’s pitch deck from 2004. The Facebook pitch deck comes from about the same time as the LinkedIn pitch deck as above. While it originally was not a pitch deck, rather a media kit, the original Facebook pitch deck has interesting examples that are worth mentioning. It is also fun to see how much Facebook has transformed from their original pitch deck to now. The original Facebook pitch deck has a laser focus on the numbers. Covering everything from their own product to market data, Mark Zuckerberg uses data to tell the Facebook growth story. Facebook drills the stickiness and engagement with their product throughout the pitch and how Facebook can be a powerful advertising platform. While it may not tell as compelling a story as the LinkedIn pitch deck, the Facebook pitch deck is an example of a company using their growth metrics as the driving force of their pitch. Pitch Deck Template by Guy Kawasaki Guy Kawasaki is a marketing specialist. He worked for Apple in the 1980s and is responsible for marketing the original Macintosh computer line in 1984. Guy is infamous for coining the term evangelist in marketing. He might be most famous for his simple pitch deck template and the 10/20/20 rule of Powerpoint and pitch decks. Guy Kawasaki was one of the earliest Apple employees and was largely responsible for marketing the original Macintosh. The pitch deck template by Guy Kawasaki has almost become a staple in the startup world. Simple, yet effective, the pitch deck template by guy kawasaki is a great starting point for any pitch. The pitch deck template is based off of a rule that Guy calls the 10/20/30 rule: 10 – A pitch should have 10 slides. 20 – A pitch should last no longer than 20 minutes. 30 – A pitch should contain no font smaller than 30 point font. The presentation template by Guy Kawasaki embodies the idea that “less is more.” By having only 10 slides, you are forced to focus on the things that are absolutely necessary. A 20 minute pitch, allows time for discussion and is a reasonable amount of time for everyone involved to stay focused. 30 point font, makes sure that you and your audience are in sync. The pitch deck template by Guy Kawasaki is a great starting point for any point. Airbnb Pitch Deck Airbnb is one of the most infamous stories from Silicon Valley. From their radically different idea to their scrappy early stages the Airbnb story is filled with plenty of tips and stories for startups. The original Airbnb pitch deck has turned to one of the most popular pitch deck examples for companies to turn to. AirBed&Breakfast at the time of the Airbnb pitch deck, Airbnb is now on the path to an IPO with a value north of $30B. We’ve laid out a few of our favorite slides and ideas from the Airbnb pitch deck. One of the first things that jumps out from the Airbnb pitch deck is on the first slide. The description, “Book rooms with locals, rather than hotels.” is straightforward and easy-to-understand. Airbnb clearly lays out what they do in the first 10 seconds of their presentation. From here, Airbnb uses a good combination of market data and the problems that their users face to create a compelling story. The Airbnb pitch deck also does a good job of clearly stating how they generate revenue; “we take a 10% commission on each transaction.” A common, yet well done, slide from the Airbnb pitch deck is the “Competition” slide. They use a common 2-axis diagram to show where they stand amongst their competition. Just like everything else in the Airbnb pitch deck, the competition slide is easy to understand and you get an immediate grasp where Airbnb stands. Airbnb went on to raise $600k with the pitch deck. Their identity has obviously changed since their original pitch deck but the lessons and practices still stand today. We hope the slides laid out from the Airbnb pitch deck will help as you gear up for your venture raise. While every business differs, the Guy Kawasaki pitch deck template is a great place to start. Lay out your pitch using his style and see what you think. From here you can tailor it to your businesses’ needs. Once you’ve got your pitch deck in place, it is time to kick off your fundraise. Uber Pitch Deck Starting as a daring idea, to raising $25B in venture capital, to being publicly traded with a $60B+ market cap, Uber is arguably the most famous VC backed company today. Just like any successful company, Uber was once a tiny startup doing their best to raise capital for their business. Uber’s fundraising journey started in 2009 with a small $200,000 seed round. Since then, their original pitch deck has almost turned into a folklore. An almost ludicrous idea at the time has turned into everyday vocabulary across the globe. Even the founders of Uber had a limited understanding of how truly large their business could be back then. For example, their “UberCab” concept slide presents a black car type experience. At the time, the only way to book an Uber was via SMS. How the times have changed! One are that really sticks out is the total addressable market that Uber originally modeled. At the time, Uber shared that their original target market was $4.2B. In 2019, they almost tripled their original estimated market opportunity in revenue ($14B+). Although they were a niche service at the time and have expanded globally and horizontally in the market it is still shocking to look back at the opportunity they originally presented and how they’ve managed to dramatically change the market. Related Resource: Check out our free guide and downloadable template, Our Favorite Seed Round Pitch Deck Template (and Why It Works) Best Pitch Deck of the Past Year The pitch deck examples above are great starting point but it is also good to get a look at more recent pitch deck. We have found the Front App pitch deck to be our favorite startup pitch deck of the past year. The pitch deck was used to raise Front’s Series C round. Front has certainly experienced hypergrowth — they’ve raised their Series A, B, and C since 2016. All of which were more than $10M. Luckily for other founders, Mathilde Collin, the CEO of Front, has made all of their pitch decks available to the public. While some founders may not be able to directly compare numbers to their Series C deck there are still a number of important takeaways. The Mission From the get-go of Mathilde’s pitch deck it is clear that Front is a mission driven company. The first 5 slides add a personal touch from Mathilde and clearly demonstrates that she, and her team, care deeply about the problem. This sets the stage for the story and kicks off a compelling pitch. The Opportunity Slide 6 shows just how huge the opportunity is. The market data is straightforward and jumps off the page. It clearly demonstrates that there is a huge market there that Front’s product can penetrate and become a successful exit for an investor. The Metrics & Data The metrics and data slide is one of the most impressive in the pitch deck. While it may be to difficult to compare to the actual data it is a powerful narrative for the pitch. Mathilde knows exactly where Front is world class and focuses on the data to portray why an investor should back their business. Simple and powerful. Pitching your company is equal parts storytelling, data, and passion. To best pitch your company you need to personally understand why and how you are going to tackle a product, market, or problem. The next step is to truly understand what an investor looks for in an investment and how you can fit into their vision. Putting together a pitch deck is only the start of a successful fundraise. You need to find the right investors, manage conversations, and distribute your pitch deck. To get started with your next fundraise check out our investor database to help you find your investors. Related Resource: Best Practices for Creating a Top-Notch Investment Presentation Looking for best practices for sharing your pitch deck? Check out our template for sharing your pitch deck here.

Our Thoughts on Do Better Work There are two basic types of leadership book. The first is the philosophical book. Books in this category are full of fresh ideas and illustrative stories that are meant to inspire. Reading them feels good, and finishing them feels even better. They’re empowering. The best books of this type include one or two key concepts that stick with us long after we’ve turned the last page, influencing our future behavior; the others give us a temporary boost of energy and enthusiasm before they’re forgotten. The second type of leadership book is the practical book. These books forego inspiration and ideology for marching orders. Full of specific guidelines and tactics, the most effective practical books become trusted manuals for doing business well. The majority get bookmarked and put down about a third of the way through, never to be picked up again. Do Better Work is a rare book that falls in both categories. In it, author Max Yoder weaves the philosophical and the practical together, seamlessly and to great effect. The result is a leadership book that is not only helpful, but delightful and surprising to read—one where step-by-step instructions for, say, sharing work before you’re ready or achieving clarity, fit neatly alongside the lessons we can learn from philosopher J. Krishnamurti or the vulnerability of superheroes. I’m acquainted with Max—Visible and his company, Lessonly, share common investors—and his warmth and optimism, both immediately obvious when you meet him, make up the DNA of Do Better Work. Other touches, like the Vonnegut-esque sketches scattered throughout, make the book feel less like a typical leadership volume and more like a diary. Although Yoder writes about himself very little in Do Better Work, it still feels like a deeply personal read. Each of the book’s chapters is a vignette, with a simple title printed to look like handwriting. Fittingly, each of the chapter titles reads like it’s taken from a to-do list: Look For Opportunity, Ask Clarifying Questions, Get More Agreements. If there’s a central theme, it’s one of empathy and vulnerability, presenting interpersonal risk-taking and openness as the true path to better business outcomes. If there’s a flaw here, it stems from the author’s apparent reticence to insert himself into the work. It’s telling that Yoder gives a paragraph each to three of the major turning points in his life, but spends almost four pages on the lessons we can learn from production issues on the set of Jaws. It’s unclear whether more details about, say, Yoder’s failed first startup, Quipol, would’ve made the book better, but it is apparent that he’s more comfortable sharing others’ stories than his own. Do Better Work was self-published, largely because Yoder was resistant to publishers’ requests to inflate the word count. The final product is refreshingly free of fluff, but the book’s independent status may keep it from getting the full recognition it deserves. In the spirit of optimism, I have to hope that does not end up being the case. Do Better Work is a singular, winsome and challenging book for leaders and their teams alike.

Founders are in constant competition for 2 resources — capital and talent. In order to attract the best talent, founders need a culture, strong business model, capital, etc. to bring in new talent. However, talent will also require financial means and ownership to take the leap to work for a startup. Related Resource: How do you Determine Proper Compensation for Startup CEOs and Early Employees? In order to best attract top talent, founders need to have a gameplan to split and distribute equity in their business. Learn more about splitting equity with co-founders, early employees, and advisors below: What is the difference between equity and stock? Stock and equity are generally one in the same. As put by the team at Investopedia, “Equity, typically referred to as shareholders’ equity , represents the amount of money that would be returned to a company’s shareholders if all of the assets were liquidated and all of the company’s debt was paid off in the case of liquidation.” This is largely made up of shares or stock, which can be defined as, “A stock, is a security that represents the ownership of a fraction of the issuing corporation.” Understand Options vs Shares When determining how to split equity amongst your founders and early employees, it is important to understand the language you’ll encounter. Learn more about the difference between equity and stock below: What are options? Note: When determining your startup equity structure, we recommend consulting with your lawyer. Investopedia defines employee stock options as, “a type of equity compensation granted by companies to their employees and executives. Rather than granting shares of stock directly, the company gives derivative options on the stock instead. These options come in the form of regular call options and give the employee the right to buy the company’s stock at a specified price for a finite period of time.” What are shares? As defined by Investopedia shares are, “Shares are units of equity ownership interest in a corporation that exist as a financial asset providing for an equal distribution in any residual profits, if any are declared, in the form of dividends. Shareholders may also enjoy capital gains if the value of the company rises.” Key differences between stock options and shares Options and shares are closely related. Ultimately an option gives the founding team the “option” to buy shares at a set price at a later date. When determining how to split up equity among your early team and founders remember that it can be a tool to keep everyone involved motivated and invested in the success of your business. Related Resource: What is a Cap Table & Why is it Important for Your Startup Company ownership When it comes to company ownership, stock options and shares have slightly different meanings. As put by the team at Seed Legals, “Shares give the holder immediate ownership of a stake in the company. Options are the promise of ownership of a stake in the company at a fixed point in the future, at a fixed price. Option holders only become shareholders when their options are exercised and have converted into shares.” Related Resource: Startup Syndicate Funding: Here’s How it Works Vesting Schedules As we wrote in our Employee Stock Options Guide, “when you receive a stock option this is not actual shares but rather the ability to buy shares at a later date. In order to retain employees, most companies will include a vesting schedule with their offer. This is the schedule in which you will have the ability to exercise your shares. A vesting schedule usually takes place over a period of time and may be split over the course of a few years or milestones. The most common vesting schedule for startups is a time-based schedule. This means that you’ll receive a set amount of shares over a set amount of time. Usually, there is a “cliff” which is a set date when you get the first portion of your shares. The most common startup setup is a 4-year vesting schedule with a 1-year cliff. This means that after working for a company for a full year, the employee will receive the first quarter of their shares (1-year cliff). After the first year, the employee will receive their remaining shares over the next 3 years on a specific calendar. Usually 1/36 of the remaining shares each month.” Cash Requirements As options are the ability to buy stock at a future date at a set price, employees will likely need cash to exercise their stock options. On the flip side, stockholders will not need to cash to exercise, as they already have their ownership/stock in the business. Taxes Determining when to exercise stock options can have tax implications. As put by the team at Crunchbase, “For incentive stock options—popular among startups—in addition to paying the strike price to buy those stock options, employees face taxes based on the difference in a company’s fair market value, and could potentially be exposed to alternative minimum tax as well.” Splitting Startup Equity with Founders There is no “one size fits all” strategy for distributing startup equity. Determining how to split equity among investors and later employees is fairly straightforward, but determining the equity split among founders and the earliest employees can be tricky. You can learn more about dilution and distributing equity with investors here. Even the most experienced leaders struggle with the issue of fairly dividing startup equity. To help alleviate the stress, we laid out a few thoughts for determining how you want to split your startup equity. Related Resource: The Main Difference Between ISOs and NSOs When do you split founder equity? Generally speaking, you will want to split founder equity in the earliest days of the business. If you are approaching investors for a pre-seed or seed round of capital and have yet to split equity with the founding team that could be a red flag for investors. By getting the buy-in from the founding members you’ll be able to approach customers, investors, and partners easier knowing the founding team is motivated and invested in the success of the business. Generally, if you are about to make the leap to be a full-time founder you will want to understand your equity split by this point too. How do you split founder equity? Splitting startup equity among startup founders is one of the first tough decisions a founding team will make. If you do a quick Google search for how to split startup equity among founders, you’ll get countless different ideas and suggestions. Commonly, you’ll see lawyers, startup founders, and VCs recommending to split depending on a number of different qualities. We’ve listed a few examples below: Experience – Do you have experience running and scaling a successful startup? Expertise – Do you have knowledge in the specific market you’ll be operating? Ideas/Intellectual Property – Did someone come up with the original idea for the company and turn it into intellectual property? Time – Are you dedicated to the company? As investor and founder Mike Moyer puts it; “The right way to think about equity is to think about a startup as a gamble… The value of each person’s bet is always equal to the unpaid fair market value of his or her contribution. Each day people bet time, money, etc. The betting continues until the company reaches break even or Series A.” On the other hand, Michael Siebel, CEO of YC, offers a controversial take for splitting startup equity: equal equity splits among co-founders. Michael shares many reasons why it makes sense to equally split your startup equity and not use the factors listed above. The more equity, the more motivation. The more motivated your founding team, the higher the changes for success. Another reason Michael shares is the idea that if the CEO or Founder does not value co-founders, no one else will, either. For example, if co-founder equity greatly varies, this suggests to your investors that the certain co-founders might not be as valuable or qualified. As Michael puts it, “Why communicate to investors that you have a team that you don’t highly value?” Related Reading: How do you Determine Proper Compensation for Startup CEOs and Early Employees? + 4 Ways To Find the Perfect Startup Co-Founder Still searching for your co-founder? Check out why Yaw Aning, Founder of Malomo, believes finding a solid co-founder is one of the best things you can do when building your company: Equity for employees Once you have determined your equity split among founders, you’ll be able to use your remaining equity and option pools to attract top talent. If you want your earliest employees to be your most impactful, creating an emotional attachment to your startup’s success is vital. Your first hires are key, and creating the perfect split between their salary, equity, and benefits can be difficult. There is no magic formula for splitting startup equity among your earliest hires. When do you give equity to employees? Leo Polovets, VC at Sosa Ventures, studied job postings and laid out the typical amount of equity depending on what number hire the person is: Splitting startup equity with your first hires will often require negotiations, and the process will vary from employee to employee. Once you start hiring outside your core team, you’ll want some type of predictable system in place for sharing equity. There is no right answer for sharing startup equity with co-founders and early-stage employees. It is more art than science in the earliest days. Just remember to be fair as you’ll be spending every day with these people. A solid relationship among the founding team will greatly increase the chances of building a successful company. How do you distribute equity to employees? As we wrote in our Employee Stock Options guide, “Deciding when and how to issue employee stock options can be a difficult task. A startup or founder needs to understand how much they should pay employees in cash and then add in stock options. When setting out to issue stock options it probably looks something like this: Define the role you are looking to hire. Decide what their total compensation should be. This can be taken from similar job postings and the market as a whole. Decide how much of their total compensation you would like to pay in cash (AKA their salary). Determine the gap between their salary and total compensation. This is entirely up to the startup or founder. It can be difficult to place a number here as the value of the company is solely on paper. Samuel Gil of JME Partners recommends doubling the value here. For example if there was a $10K difference in their salary and total compensation a startup should offer $20K in added compensation. The next step is to determine the exercise price for the stock options. As Samuel Gil writes, “As we have previously reasoned, we will assume that a fair price for the stock options is the same as the price of the common stock. So, how much is the common stock worth? The most frequent procedure is to apply a discount (e.g. 25%) to the latest preferred stock value, since common stock doesn’t have the same economical and political rights that preferred stock (what VCs usually buy) does.” Issue the number of shares. This is up to the startup and founder but can be calculated with the logic above. If you find the common stock price to be $5 and need to compensate an employee $20K that would be 4000 shares. This can be quite subjective as we need to remember dilution and valuation can rapidly change.” Splitting equity can sound intimidating when approaching it for the first time. By taking care of it and having a game plan in your early days will help as you continue to scale your business. To learn more about specific stock options and equity structure check out our employee stock options guide here. Related Reading: How do you Determine Proper Compensation for Startup CEOs and Early Employees? Dividing equity for directors and advisors Outside of employees and investors, startups have the ability to give other stakeholders in the business equity. One of the common/debated people startups grant equity to are both directors and advisors. Equity for directors Ultimately, determinig to give equity to directors is a choice startup founders can make. If you do decide to give equity to directors, you should expect to give up less than .25% of your business. As put by the team at TechCXO, “Independent directors also expect to receive equity grants along with their cash compensation. The amount and frequency of such grants also varies by the stage of the company. However, an early stage company should expect to grant 0.1% to 0.25% of equity with a vesting period of 2 to 3 years. Additional annual grants are also expected” Equity for advisors As we know by now, equity is a prized possession for startups. However, there are countless people and shareholders along the way that will help move your business forward. We constantly are asked if you, as an early-stage founder, should share equity with advisors and mentors. Support your startup’s growth with Visible In order to best keep all of your stakeholders headed in the right direction, founders need a system in place to keep tabs on their most expensive asset — equity. By regularly communicating with investors, teammembers, and advisors, founders will be able to tap into their capital, resources, network, and experience. Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days.

You’ve just gotten through an exhausting fundraise, congratulations are in order, and now you have an unsigned Series A term sheet in your hand. What’s next? It’s often assumed that you will know what you’re looking at when handed a Series A term sheet, but if you’re a first-time founder, that usually isn’t the case. To help you navigate your Series A term sheet we’ve briefly summarized common fields and terms and what you should be looking for under each one. The fields below are largely based off of Y-Combinators post and Series A Term Sheet template, “A Standard and Clean Series A Term Sheet.” As a note, this is not legal advise and we suggest consulting with your lawyer while reviewing your term sheet. Liquidation Preferences Liquidation preference is simply the order in which stakeholders are paid out in case of a company liquidation (e.g. company sale). Liquidation preference is important to your investors because it gives some security (well, as much security as there is at the Series A) to the risk of their investment. If you see more than 1x, which means the investor would get back more than they first invested, that should raise a red flag. To learn more about liquidation preferences check out this article, “Liquidation Preference: Everything You Need to Know.” Dividends In the eyes of an early stage investor, dividends are not a main point of focus. As Brad Feld puts it, “For early stage investments, dividends generally do not provide “venture returns” – they are simply modest juice in a deal.” Dividends will typically be from 5-15% depending on the investor. Series A investors are looking to generate huge returns so a mere 5-15% on an investment is simply a little added “juice.” There are 2 types of dividends; cumulative and non-cumulative. YC warns against cumulative dividends; “the investor compounds its liquidation preference every year by X%, which increases the economic hurdle that has to be cleared before founders and employees see any value.” Conversion to Common Stock Common practice will automatically convert preferred stock into common stock in the case of an IPO or acquisition. Generally, Series A investors will have the right to convert their preferred stock to common stock at any time. As Brad Feld puts it, “This allows the buyer of preferred stock to convert to common stock should he determine on a liquidation that he is better off getting paid on a pro rata common basis rather than accepting the liquidation preference and participating amount.” Voting Rights On a Series A term sheet, the voting rights simply states the voting rights of the investor. Generally, your Series A investors will likely receive the same number of votes as the number of common shares they could convert to at any given time. In the Y Combinator example, as with most term sheets, this section can include some technical jargon that is not easy to understand. The most important vetoes that a Series A investor usually receives is the veto of financing and the veto of a sale of the company. Board Structure One of the more important sections when navigating your Series A term sheet is the board structure. Ultimately, the board structure designates who has control of the board and the company. How your Series A investors want to structure the board should be a sign of how they perceive you and your company.  The most “founder-friendly” structure is 2-1. A scenario in which 2 seats are given to the common majority (e.g. the founders who control a majority of the common stock) and 1 given to the investors. This allows founders to maintain control of their company. On the flip side, there is a 2-2-1 structure (2 founders, 2 investors, 1 outside member). In this scenario, it is possible for the founders to lose control of the company. While a common structure, be sure that the board structure is in line with conversations while fundraising. As Jason Kwon of YC puts it, “So when an investor says that they’re committed to partnering with you for the long-term – or that they’re betting everything on you – but then tells you something else with the terms that they insist on, believe the terms.” Drag Along As defined by the Morgan Lewis law firm, “Drag along is the right to obligate other stockholders to sell their securities along with securities sold by the investor.” Drag along rights give investors confidence that founders and the common majority will not block the sale of a company. While there is no way around drag along rights, some people will suggest that founders negotiate for a higher “trigger point” (e.g. ⅔ votes as opposed to 51%). You can learn more about drag along clauses in this post, Demystifying the VC term sheet: Drag-along provisions. While there are countless other aspects and negotiations tactics when navigating your Series A term sheet, we’ve found the ones above to be most difficult to understand and offer an opportunity to negotiate. Always be sure to consult with your lawyer before signing your term sheet. Ready to start your Series A fundraise? Check out Visible to nurture your potential investors through your fundraise.