Posts Tagged ‘startup’

Posted on September 9, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

AisleFinder a NewMe Accelerator startup raises angel round & launches new partnership with TaskRabbit

As the saying goes, and then there where three! Leaked via Twitter last night and now public information, AisleFinder which enables shoppers to quickly and efficiently find the items they want to buy within grocery stores announced they have raised an angel round. Curtiss Pope, AisleFinder, CEO doesn’t disclosed how much the company has raised but he tells the story about how and why he raised fund for AisleFinder in a post called Money Talks. From the Facebook announcement Curtis says, that” Aislefinder will use the funds to take care of some things, and also achieve some milestones over the coming months that will help us serve our customers better”.

Along with the funding news AisleFinder announced a new partnership with TaskRabbit to provide grocery delivery for their current users. The new AisleFinder and TaskRabbit partnership currently supports San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston.

This makes the third startup that participated in the NewMe Accelerator summer program to announce have raised startup capital joining OneSchool and BeCouply. I’m sure it’s not the last. Congrats Curtis and the AisleFinder team.

Be sure to read the cnet article that featured Curtiss Pope, AisleFinder and the NewMe Accelerator here: Minority entrepreneurs set up own Valley incubator .

To other minority led startups seeking to raise funds, good luck and continue to prove me wrong!

Posted on September 6, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

BeCouply, a NewMe Accelerator startup receives Pre-Seed Investment from Kapor Capital

Today it was announced that BeCouply, the mobile app that helps couples have epic social lives received Pre-Seed Investment from Kapor Capital. This is the second startup that participated in the NewMe Accelerator that announced they have raised capital. OneSchool was the first as reported in the Wall Street Journal.

As reported on BlackWeb 2.0:

BeCouply just received a pre-seed investment by Kapor Capital.

“We’re making a pre-seed investment in BeCouply to enable them to complete development work on the product, said Mitchell Kapor. We think the team has identified a social network segment, couples, which is currently not well served.”

BeCouply allows couples to engage and interact with each other on a different level. The app intends to capture the moments people share as a couple and connect with other couples on the go. In addition, users will be able to get new date ideas and deals.

With the investment, BeCouply will come to life sooner than later so that couples can start sharing their memories instantly.

This is great news as many has asked how would we measure the success of the NewMe Accelerator. I’ve often said the fact that we decided to launch the accelerator, move to Silicon Valley for the summer and complete the program we’re successful. But in the startup space its all about raising capital and not just launching a program. So… now that makes two NewMe Accelerator startups out of 11. For the startups in the program that are still in the process or trying to raise capital good luck and keep working hard. To investors… #cutthecheckalready!

You can see the full list of startups that participated in the NewMe Accelerator 2011 first class here: http://newmeaccelerator.com/startups/

Posted on September 2, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

infographic – Color vs Rally. What is premature scaling for startups by startup genome

What is premature scaling for startups by startup genome

Posted on May 30, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

For startups, age, gender and if you have a cofounder matters

Findings from a survey of 300 founders helped answer three leading questions – are co-founders more successful than single founders, does age matter, and are repeat founders more likely to be successful than first time founders. Age and gender are two hotly debated subjects in the startup world right now.

Not surprisingly perhaps, 84%-89% of successful startups tend to be spearheaded by co-founders, rather than single founders. Facebook is a notable example of a “suite” of successful co-founders while Zynga is an example of a single founder.

The data seems to suggest that younger founders do disproportionately better, especially in late stage startups. Of startups with an actual or potential exit valuation of $25+ million, 47% of the founders are younger than 30 years vs. 67% for startups with exit valuation of $500+ million.

Similarly, repeat founders do disproportionately better in startups with $500+ million in exit valuation – 90% founders in this category are repeat founders. Notable examples are of course Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame. Sean is currently on startup#5.

via What Makes A Startup Successful? – PSFK.

Posted on May 30, 2011 - by Wayne Sutton

The Startup Genome Report – infographic

If you’re a startup or a single entrepreneur you need to take a look at the infographic by kissmetrics in partnership with blackbox where they collected data from over 650 startups for The Startup Genome Report. Take a look bellow.

1. Founders that learn are more successful: Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth.
2. Startups that pivot once or twice times raise 2.5x more money, have 3.6x better user growth, and are 52% less likely to scale prematurely than startups that pivot more than 2 times or not at all.
3. Many investors invest 2-3x more capital than necessary in startups that haven’t reached problem solution fit yet. They also over-invest in solo founders and founding teams without technical cofounders despite indicators that show that these teams have a much lower probability of success.
4. Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. But the right mentors significantly influence a company’s performance and ability to raise money. (However, this does not mean that investors don’t have a significant effect on valuations and M&A)
5. Solo founders take 3.6x longer to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of 2 and they are 2.3x less likely to pivot.
6. Business-heavy founding teams are 6.2x more likely to successfully scale with sales driven startups than with product centric startups.
7. Technical-heavy founding teams are 3.3x more likely to successfully scale with product-centric startups with no network effects than with product-centric startups that have network effects.
8. Balanced teams with one technical founder and one business founder raise 30% more money, have 2.9x more user growth and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely than technical or business-heavy founding teams.
9. Most successful founders are driven by impact rather than experience or money.
10. Founders overestimate the value of IP before product market fit by 255%.
11. Startups need 2-3 times longer to validate their market than most founders expect. This underestimation creates the pressure to scale prematurely.
12. Startups that haven’t raised money over-estimate their market size by 100x and often misinterpret their market as new.
13. Premature scaling is the most common reason for startups to perform worse. They tend to lose the battle early on by getting ahead of themselves.
14. B2C vs. B2B is not a meaningful segmentation of Internet startups anymore because the Internet has changed the rules of business. We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team.

Check out the full report here for more details.