Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, 2nd Edition

Appendix C: Additional Resources

Over the past few years there has been a Cambrian explosion of entrepreneurial resources, including many around financing a company. Following are several important ones.

Accelerators Accelerators modeled after TechStars (www.techstars.com) and Y Combinator (http://ycombinator.com) have emerged all over the world. These programs typically invest a modest amount of money (around $20,000) in companies in exchange for a small amount of equity (typically 6 percent). The companies then go through a 90-day, intensive, full-time program where they accelerate their start-up via help from the accelerator, mentors, and the surrounding start-up community. Several years ago, TechStars founded the Global Accelerator Network (http://globalacceleratornetwork.com) in an effort to link the best accelerators and provide a series of best practices across them. Recently, several corporate accelerators, such as the Microsoft Accelerator (www.microsoft.com/bizspark/accelerator) have begun appearing.

Angel and Seed Listing Web Sites If you are an entrepreneur raising money or are an angel or seed VC looking for seed or early stage investments, there are a number of websites that are effectively a listing or matching service for you. The two most popular ones, AngelList (www.angel.co) and Gust (www.gust.com), have become very powerful resources for both entrepreneurs and investors.

Ask the VC (www.askthevc.com) This is the companion web site for Venture Deals and is maintained ...