Featured Articles & Advice

Top 10 Questions Founders Should Be Asking Investors

In order to develop key relationships with the investment community, founders must be prepared to answer plenty of hard questions.  However, the founder-investor relationship is hardly one-sided.  Founders looking for a financing partner must develop the analytical skills to help them judge which relationships make the most sense for their startup.  In this month’s meeting you’ll receive insight from top investors about the type of questions you should be asking as you advance your business.

Sign up for this Event:  http://foundersspacesvapril2012.eventbrite.com/

Presenters: Bruce Schechter of Band of Angels, Dafina Toncheva of Tugboat Ventures and  Andy Bartley of Angels Forum.

Dafina Toncheva Andy Bartley  Read more...

Mobile Games are Big Business – Check out this Market Data

Jen Rhee of BusinessDegree.net brings us this fun infographic about the fast growth of mobile games.

- Games make up 64% of the apps used on a daily basis.

- People spend an average of 14.7 hours playing games on their iPhone each month.

- People play games in bed 31% of the time.

- In the US, there are 100 million mobile gamers.

- 34% of the top grossing apps in the app store use the freemium model.

- Gamers typically spend $12.92 per user per month on freemium games.  Read more...

WavePlay’s Financing Secret Sauce: Passion

Here’s the next installment in WavePlay’s new Secret Sauce Series. In this video, Waveplay interviews some of Silicon Valley’s top VCs and asks them about “passion and chemistry”. Check it out…

5 Time Saving Systems Must Haves for the Small Business Owner

Suzen Pettit

Suzen Pettit

by Suzen Pettit at Omaginarium

If you’re looking to grow you can’t do it all on your own. You just can’t. Your foundation must be laid so that you can be freed up to do your thing. You know, your thing? The thing that makes you money.

As much as we may look like Wonder Woman, or so as not to be sexist, Superman, and feel like them too, we cannot be a one person band and expect that the everything will just fall into place. It’ll fall alright, down, into bed, if you make it that far, from exhaustion.  Read more...

Cazoomi Launches ‘Free for Life’ SyncApps

As part of our Founders Spotlight series, we like to feature members of Founders Space and what their startups are doing.  This week, we’re featuring Cazoomi, which helps the applications you use every day talk to each other using a simple framework: SyncApps.

Clint Wilson, the CEO, has been a member of Founders Space since the early days, and you’ve probably seen him at many of our Roundtables.

This week, I’m happy to say that Cazoomi has launched a co-offering, ‘Free for Life’ SyncApps, exclusively for Constant Contact customers.  So if you’re using Constant Contact, you should check it out.  Read more...

Why You Should Patent your Inventions

Feisal Mosleh

Feisal Mosleh

By Fas Mosleh on April 5, 2012 in his Blog – Feisal Mosleh New Ventures Partner at Juldee Innovation Ventures

Are you an entrepreneur in High tech? You may have a passion to launch a software startup or a new website or even a new kind of consumer electronic device like a video or camera phone.

Whatever your dream product, consider patenting any original, novel aspects by either filing a provisional or a full patent application at the US Patent Office. Why do this?

1) Using a Patent to Get Ahead in your Market  Read more...


Getting Involved:

5 Tips for Entering the U.S Market

Lyne Noella

Lyne Noella

by Lyne Noella, CEO, WavePlay LLC

If you are a company taking its first steps toward expansion to the U.S. market, check out these five promotional tools to help you succeed, even when you cannot commit to a full-time presence in the U.S.

Branding and promotions will never take the place of interpersonal relationships. However, if you have personnel in the U.S. on a somewhat regular basis, even if it’s one week per month or two, you can leverage promotional tools to establish your brand, raise your visibility, make sales calls more effective, and create an on-going dialogue with clients, prospects and partners.  Read more...

Email Marketing : Alive and Well

Suzen Pettit

Suzen Pettit

by Suzen Pettit at Omaginarium

You can relax now. All this buzz about blogging. Blah-blah-blah-blah- blogging. Will she never shut up about the many great virtues of  blogging?  

Probably not, but today I will give you all a break and tell you what you’ve been longing to hear for a while now: email marketing is still alive.  Read more...

Get Answers to Your Unique Entrepreneurial Questions

Jose Baldizon

Jose Baldizon

by Jose Baldizon of Learn Writer

Every entrepreneur, aspiring or established, has questions that are unique to his or her business. How should I price my seasonal blueberry muffins? How can I incentivize my seasonal blueberry muffin customers to tell their friends about my muffin shop?

It won’t hurt to conduct an online search, but if your question is specific to your business, you may have trouble finding answers. The more unique your question, the less likely you are to find an answer you’re satisfied with.  Read more...

Silicon Valley Geeks vs. Seattle Geeks

How to Focus in the Age of Distraction

Idle Worship – Best Social Game of the Year

Have you ever played Idle Worship? If not, you should! We think Idle Worship blows away the competition.  We want to see if this small startup can beat Zynga at its own game.

The CEO of Idle Games, Jeff Hyman, will be speaking at the upcoming San Francisco Roundtable: http://foundersspacesfapril2012.eventbrite.com/

The Funding Landscape – Which Companies Are More Likely To Receive Funding in 2012

80 people showed up for our most recent Founders Space Roundtable, with Peter Craddock of Shoreline Ventures, Dave Feinleib of VCDave, and Steve Bernardez of Onset Ventures.  Here are some photos…

Raising Capital Curve

The Funding Cake