News Archives - Page 253 of 261

The Startup Bond – Any ideas about this?

December 11, 2009 by shkadmin

So, I've been trying to come up with various exit strategies to present when pitching to an investor, particularly a local one, so trying to find something that makes sense to everyone while not just being the standard "In return for X you are getting Y portion of the company." At the CVCF last month, one of the speakers promoted his method of doing a bond setup which structures the deal more around the return rather the ownership.

See his site for some details: The Startup Bond

I've mentioned this to one investor, and I think they just couldn't get past the word bond (talking about how bonds are for companies with assets, etc.).

Following up on my concept for a startup incubator here, and inspired by this Dragon's Den episode:

I think I would try a tiered structure for the return, so that if a company was able to pay back an agreed amount sooner, then they owe less than if it takes longer to pay it back. Incentivise making a profit earlier, and everything else follows.

Anyhow, does anyone else have other models of how to structure a deal and the exit that is different, but that may be easy for all investors to understand?

Filed Under: News

You are What You Read – What blogs or feeds do you keep up with?

December 11, 2009 by shkadmin

Just thinking about the new stuff that is getting posted here, but what about the old skool stuff. What is it that people read regularly to find this stuff, and what are your favorites?

My list of site feeds from my iGoogle pages:

(Techish Sites)

http://slashdot.org/ – News for Nerds, says it all. No, my ID is not in the single digits, yes it is under a million.

http://www.engadget.com/ – How else do you keep up with what new shiny stuff is coming out?

http://www.techdirt.com/ – Copyright, economics, IP, the source of the "Barbra Streisand Effect".

http://arstechnica.com/index.php – General tech and software including biology and other things.

http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml – Mixed bag, but sometimes good articles and photos.

http://xkcd.com/ – Must read. Where else can you find stick figures doing such insightful things?

(Blogs: These are what I've accumulated in the blogs area. Some are very specific to particular software that I'm using.)

https://startupsgba.org/startupshk/

http://www.sampiplan.com/ – My company site with blog.

http://agilehongkong.com/ – Waiting to see if there is another iteration of this org.

http://www.engageinteractive.co.uk/blog – Random design firm that has some good JavaScript and CSS posts.

http://www.doctrine-project.org/blog – PHP ORM (if you don't understand what that is, then you probably aren't going to need this)

http://www.richarddurnall.com/ – Lean and Agile

http://www.tor.com/ – I watch this for free books and comics.

http://www.hksua.com.hk/

http://bitbucket.org/cleonello/jqplot/overview/ – Charting software for jQuery.

In addition to this, I also regularly go to BoingBoing, but that is more of a go there and look at the pretty pictures and video than read it on a blog reader.

Anyone else care to share?

Filed Under: News

This Week’s 5 Start-Up Websites to Read

December 11, 2009 by shkadmin

So many many start-up websites to read – and not enough time to read them all but stick these into your bookmarks and read them this weekend, and drop down your thoughts in the comments:

(The photo is from a photoshoot from Neonpunch this week, thought you'd all like to see some different photos!)

Filed Under: News