TK Kader

Why Buying Your First Business is the hardest & Financing The Fear is Being seen as too risky by lenders and investors. The Solution: Prepare a solid business plan with detailed financial projections. Work with a financial advisor to enhance your credibility. Consider alternative financing options like SBA loans or seller financing.

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We invite YOU to join us at VSC Ventures' inaugural Dirty Jobs Summit! Across the world, companies relying on blue-collar workers face challenges in finding reliable labor as boomers retire and younger generations choose other paths over trade roles. We believe software, automation, and robotics in these Dirty, Dusty, and Dangerous industries is a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ Over the past two years, Vijay Chattha and I have actively invested in seed-stage companies bringing automation, efficiency, and digital transformation to legacy industries through companies like PaintJet, Glacier, concrete.ai AI, Sesame Solar, Presso®, Homemade, and more… and we’re just getting started! ***Why a Dirty Jobs summit?*** Incredible founders are tackling key issues in slow-to-digitize, hard-to-decarbonize sectors like manufacturing, construction, recycling, and logistics, but they lack a space to share learnings and grow their network with kindred operators and investors. The Dirty Jobs Summit has curated a group of top founders, investors, operators, marketers, and decision-makers, creating a forum for founders to be seen and heard. Our Summit will distill specific takeaways, including strategies and tactics the most ambitious startups are deploying, the solutions legacy players are adopting, and the capital investors are deploying to bring huge transformations to dirty jobs ***Who’s going to be in the room?*** Seed through Series B Founders from Rapid Robotics, Inc, GrayMatter Robotics, Renewell Energy, Jacobi Robotics, Kodama Systems, Reshape Automation, Olis Robotics, Raise Robotics, Urban Machine, Polymath Robotics, Bedrock Energy, Cambium, First Resonance, Plantd, GaeaStar,r CivilGrid, Gritt.ai, Voltair, and many more GPs and Partners from Lowercarbon Capital, Eclipse, G2VP, Lux Capital, Pathbreaker Ventures, HCVC, Outsiders Fund, Brick & Mortar Ventures, At One Ventures, Voyager Ventures, Congruent Ventures, AlleyCorp, Blue Bear Capital, F-Prime Capital, Union Labs Ventures, Wireframe, Bee Partners, Schematic, Ravelin, Counterpart, 81 Collection, Climactic, Dart Ventures, Sandhill Angels, and so many more Plus, a number of Strategics from the biggest companies who are actively investing in their own industrial transformation and climate adaptation initiatives. ***What will be discussed at Dirty Jobs?*** Proposed topics we’ll cover in our roundtable discussions: — Accessing downstream capital in unsexy industries (Series A & beyond) — Navigating nearshoring of critical manufacturing — Frameworks for effective storytelling in legacy industries — Writing & winning grants in 2024 — What strategics actually care about and look for — Customer acquisition strategies that actually work We've got a great group already with just a *few* more open spots. If you'd be a good fit for Dirty Jobs please RSVP ASAP: https://lu.ma/4dus91nm Special thanks to our incredible sponsors Fidelity Private Shares, Trinity Capital, SVB and Goodwin. See you on June 4th!

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Want to build wealth faster? Skip startups. Buy Boring Old Businesses. Here’s why: 1. They’re already making money. 2. They come with customers, systems, and momentum. 3. They’re undervalued – 2.5x profits is standard. 4. SBA loans or seller financing make them accessible. 5. Easy profit boosters: raise prices or add new products. 6. They’re easier to scale than startups. Startups fail 65% of the time within the first 5 years. But "boring" businesses? They’re built to last. Don’t build from scratch. Buy something proven. If you could buy a "boring" business, what type of business would you buy?

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Advisory boards have been pivotal throughout my career, and this new report from the Boardstream team is a must-read. It’s packed with actionable insights on how to build and leverage an advisory board that truly drives impact and growth. Well done, Evan Kraut and Marina Ilishaev! 👉 https://lnkd.in/dPTAS4-Y #AdvisoryBoards #CAB #Leadership #Boardstream #WhitePaper

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That's why it's often very difficult to recognize new leaders – their ideas go beyond the conventional frameworks we're accustomed to. Keep your mind open. Don't let yesterday's templates define your future. #Leadership, #Innovation, #OpenMind, #FutureThinking, #venturethinking,   https://lnkd.in/eASPGsuu

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Great post by Josh Wagner on the importance of urgency. If you don't want to build a company characterized by urgency and extreme intensity over a long period of time - at least a decade - you would be better off not raising venture capital.

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Venture Capital is broken right now. AVL Growth Partners released a new guide that highlights the key three financial drivers of a startup, along with recommendations to help founders avoid common financial modeling pitfalls and the best way to project business growth. A few of the common mistakes AVL Growth discusses in this guide include: - Overestimating attainable revenue - Misunderstanding how quickly revenue can grow related to COGs - Underestimating customer acquisition cost We, as startups, are often given mixed advice from the venture world. - If your intent is to raise VC funding you must have a pro forma that shows you going to $50M in revenue in 5 years - Your pro forma is not realistic This can be confusing as hell because not many businesses go from very little revenue to $50M in 5 years. My advice is to create a real pro forma and build your business off of that. There is a shift in the VC world towards higher progress hurdles for funding. It's both a buyer's market right now and VCs are having their own troubles with their business model, resulting in a double whammy on investment activity. The VC market will come back around when liquidity starts to happen. Short of that, I urge you to examine how to build your business without the venture capital world. This means: - finding earlier paths to revenue - doing consulting in your space to find other sources of early revenue - finding grants (especially in the climate tech space) - getting creative with a combination of crowd funding and angel networks and the vehicles you use to raise

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🌱 For founders taking on venture debt, covenants are the fine print you cannot afford to ignore. 📃 They set the boundaries for how you can operate and manage your company’s finances. If you don’t play by these rules, the consequences can be pretty dire. It’s all about negotiating terms that align with your startup’s financial health. Be sure to read the original post by Kruze Consulting to get the full breakdown. Link in the 1st comment. 👇 #StartupFinance

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As we explore a seed round of VC funding for Avnir, a mentor has driven into me to "interview them as much as they'll do their due diligence on you!" When I consider professional etiquette important to me (and probably every serious founder), I am reminded of what I've coached hundreds of executives on over the past two decades: "Your culture is a culmination of behaviors you're willing to tolerate!" So, here is a Top 10 List of Professional Etiquette crucial to long-term strategic relationships between VCs and founders: 1️⃣ Respect for Time—Punctuality, Efficient Communication, and Timely Feedforward are demonstrated and genuinely felt. We would both rather me invest time in building the business. 2️⃣ Transparency—Clear Expectations, Honest Feedforward, and Disclosures on conflicts of interest or resource limitations save everyone unnecessarily wasted cycles! 3️⃣ Professionalism—Politeness, Confidentiality, and Objective Evaluation allow courteous interactions, respect for proprietary information, and avoiding bias in evaluating the founder's meritocracy. 4️⃣ Empathy—Understanding the Journey and Constructive Dialogue acknowledge the uphill battle founders face while avoiding unnecessary criticism and providing supportive guidance, demonstrating a genuine interest in their vision. 5️⃣ Integrity—Fair Terms, Follow Through, and Avoiding Overpromising honor commitments during discussions, and create realistic expectations from the relationship. 6️⃣ Co-Creation—Value-adding Mindset and Team Player Attitude accelerate the founder's ability to gain traction and position the VC relationship as transformational vs. simply transactional. 7️⃣ Humility—Avoiding Arrogance, Condescension, and Open-Mindedness acknowledges that both parties have unique expertise to add and enhance the receptivity to unconventional ideas, approaches, and perspectives. 8️⃣ Listening Louder—Present, Engaged, and Clarity of Intent eliminates distractions, brings out what's not being said, and jointly crafts better questions to help uncover the unknown and the undiscovered. 9️⃣ Encouraging—Supportive Communication, Positive Reinforcement, and Inspiration help celebrate small wins and key milestone achievements. It's ideal to light a fire within the relationship rather than under anyone, which seldom lasts! 🔟 Playing the Long Game—Relationship Nurturing and Post-Investment Care establishes the runway for a lasting partnership rather than simply pitching a deck and closing a deal. After the investment decision, sustaining the relationship will determine the partnership's long-term perspective. Jason M. Lemkin, Peter Bell, Cassie Young, and Ed Sim - you exemplify world-class in the relationships you build with your founders. Did I miss anything? #VCFounderRelationship #AlignedExpectations #RelationshipsMatterMoreThanEver

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A few weeks ago, I was at Techstars Los Angeles Accelerator Meeting with a dozen different companies. - I love getting to help people bring their vision to the life. - Seeing their products start as seeds and then become reality. - Building the future in emerging tech or any industry. It always reminds me of the reason I founded First Principles. ↳ To improve the human condition, one product at a time. There can be tough days in the journey for founding teams: - Losing deals you spend hours, weeks, or even months developing. - Investing time testing great ideas only to discover no one cares. - Creating good content no one reads or bad content everyone loves 🙂. - Sacrificing time and focus when with family and friends. But being in a room full of motivated people at the earliest phases of the journey always re-energizes my personal mission. Because nothing feels better than helping others to have an impact on a seemingly intractable problem.

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What is cap table debt & how does it hurt startup founders? Cap tables need to reflect all current and potential shareholders (which includes investors who signed a SAFE or convertible note). Because of the complexity of vesting schedules, repurchase rights, options vs. shares, the variable nature of ownership calculations with convertible instruments, etc., the simple spreadsheets used by most founders are woefully inadequate. We dive deep into the topic of cap table debt and show why founders need to stop using spreadsheets to track your startup cap table in our webinar on "Best Practices with Founder Equity and Cap Tables". You can watch a replay of this webinar here: https://lnkd.in/giHWZkWS

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Generally speaking, investors will invest in a product, and invest for growth - but not invest to figure out how to grow. If you're about to finish building your product and are looking to raise capital for growth, you're probably not in as good of a spot as you think. #startups #founders #entrepreneurship Mark Russell Filaroski 🤳 Faith, Family and Fairways Josh Stanley Kai Brunner

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In 2020, I took Carpedia full time, a business where I'd worked part time for 5 years prior to that. Despite prior experience, startup landscape still felt like a foreign land to me. The terms venture capitals, angel investors, pitch decks were all seemed like a different language. Thanks to startups accelerators programs, I gained exposure to this new scene. For those who are new to this, an accelerator program is a 3-4 months structured program designed to help nurture early-stage startups. Typically, they offer a combination of funding, mentorship, education and networking opportunities. The program usually ends with a session called demo-day, the part where you get to pitch to investors in a 'shark tank' kind of mode. To me, the true education happens not really in the classroom session, but in rubbing shoulders with the startup community. You get to see fellow founders, sharing stories, connecting with real mentors that gives you real-life insights based on their experience. A standout moment for me? Direct mentorship with Alibaba's HR team during an accelerator program. They revealed their cultural playbook, sharing how mission, vision, and core values fueled their early growth. It wasn't just Alibaba's recipe; it then later became ours, and I have to admit it is one of a key driver to our growth today. So if you ask me, I highly recommend early stage founders to join accelerators. There are plenty of them out there. Personally, I would recommend to join minimum 2 accelerators for better exposure and understanding.

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I recently got to chat with Mohak Nahta on Funded about raising his $12M Series A for Atlys in a tough market. He shared a TON of information valuable to founders Here are my top 3 takeaways: 1. Early-stage Investors are Buying Your Conviction "People who invest in you early on aren’t buying your ability to build a product. They're not buying your ability to build a business. They're just buying your conviction to do something great" - Mohak I talk about this idea of early-stage investors looking for two things when talking with founders. Those are: - Is this a huge opportunity? - Is this the team that can do it? If you're an early-stage founder meeting with an investor, your job is to convince them of those two things. Investors want to know if you are the person that can handle all of the crazy things building a startup can and WILL throw at you 2. Find Your Way In "One thing I did was that I actually found the warmest source between a seed stage fund that I wanted to talk to . . . So it wasn't that I'm asking one person to introduce me to 10 others, or I'm asking a sort of everyone would introduce me to random firms. It was just like, ‘Okay, do you know this firm really really well, or this partner really really well? . . . Can you make a warm introduction?’" - Mohak Mohak took the route of warm intros for his seed round, which I'm sure you all know I'm a huge fan of by now. Warm intros are even more important when it comes to raising a seed or pre-seed round because without it, investors have barely anything to go off of. They're all secretly wondering "who is this person and why should I trust them?" So - look at your network. Figure out which of those people are connected to the firms you want to get in touch with, draft up a killer forwardable email and get to work. 3. Momentum is Your Best Friend "So the other thing was that, this cap table is very well connected, right? They knew everyone, almost everyone. So what I did was as we started getting any term sheets . . . I started just sending it to the group, right? And it was still like 30 odd people, but the thing is that . . .these people, because they talk to investors all the time, they started talking about it naturally. [They're] like, look, I funded this company early on and now they have this term sheet or that term sheet. And that created more and more hype, right?" - Mohak Momentum is everything in fundraising. From the moment you launch your fundraise your job is to not let that momentum stop. Mohak found a genius and extremely efficient way to keep the momentum going by leveraging his existing cap table to create FOMO around his raise. Remember - investors talk. Alright, those were just three of my takeaways from this episode! If you want to hear the full story behind his raise, make sure to give the full episode a listen. I'll leave it down below!

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Big Company or Big Network: Which is the better partner? When you think partnerships, It’s easy to think of collaborating with companies. But have you considered partnering with a network? When I was in Austin, I struck a deal with Capital Factory. Community of 100,000 entrepreneurs. Portfolio valuation of $21 billion. This partnership opened doors to New brands, New investors, New level of growth. The takeaway? Partnering with a network doesn’t just add value— it channels it 🔮 #Networking #Innovation #Entrepreneurship

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The Techstars B2B Services Guide is live. This guide connects you with over 300 Techstars companies offering a wide range of B2B solutions  – from legal automation to employee benefits. Worth a look if you're scaling your business. Check it out: https://lnkd.in/gEs5pci9 

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I'm excited to reshare this timeless episode of #Supermanagers featuring David O. Sacks, a member of the PayPal Mafia, founder of Yammer, Inc., and General Partner at Craft Ventures. David offers invaluable advice for CEOs, managers, founders, and anyone looking to elevate their organization. In this episode, David dives into:  - Introverted leadership - Managing hyper-growth - Knowing when to throw out processes  - And so much more. Don't miss out on his unique perspective and leadership journey. Tune in to learn from one of the best in the business! 🎧 Link in comments 👇

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VCs have a playbook... But it’s not about trends. It’s about fundamentals. Here’s what they’re looking for: 1) Strong Founders Passion, resilience, and vision win every time. 2) Innovative Products Solve real problems and have a unique edge. 3) Market Potential Show there’s a large, growing market to capture. 4) Sustainable Revenue Prove you’re built for long-term growth. 5) Scalability Can you grow fast and keep up with demand? Founders who understand this are ahead of the game. Focus on these 5 elements, and VCs will notice.

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Rebuilding a business isn't just about patching up what’s broken—it’s about strategically evolving what’s already in place to create a stronger foundation for the future. By aligning every team member with a shared vision and being willing to let go of outdated processes, leaders can foster a more resilient and adaptable company. This approach not only helps businesses navigate immediate challenges but also positions them for sustainable growth and success in the long run. #AI

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