Since it’s a Saturday morning, I thought I’d cover a topic in our Letter of Intent series that my wife Amy would never agree to. Signing a letter of intent starts a serious and expensive process – for both the buyer and seller – as you both work to consumate a deal.  As a result, you should expect […]

Pascal Levensohn just released his latest white paper titled “Rites of Passage: Managing CEO Transition in Venture-Backed Technology Companies.”  Last fall I posted my partner Heidi Roizen’s responses to a set of questions Pascal posed as he was doing research for this paper. “Rites of Passage” is an excellent addition to every entrepreneur and VC’s […]

I regularly get asked the question “why do you bother writing things like the Term Sheet series or the Letter of Intent series.” (yeah – I also get the “why do you bother blogging” question.)  While writing things like the Term Sheet series is fun, gives Jason and I chance to collaborate on something different, gets […]

Well – the first business day of the year is officially over.  Apparently Yahoo just rejected an offer from Microsoft for $80 billion because it wasn’t enough.  My guess is that Microsoft forgot to include the “!” in Yahoo! and pissed someone off (the “!” has got to be worth at least $20 billion.)  I […]

It’s been a little over a month since Jason and I wrote posts for our Letter of Intent series. We took a time out for our 409A series and for actually selling two companies (Commerce5 to Digital River and another that hasn’t been disclosed yet) rather than writing about selling companies. This is the first time […]

In the spirit of the New Year, I’m trying to blog the questions that I’m getting that I think could have broad interest.  Here’s another one.  Remember – I’m not a lawyer so this isn’t legal advice. I have a question regarding the valuation of a startup I’m in and when it takes affect.  When […]

IRS Regulation 409A really sucks. While I’m probably now on some audit watch list as a result of speaking my mind, there really isn’t any other way to state it. Jason Mendelson and I were bitching about this today as we pondered how to deal with it and decided that we might as well try to constructively […]

I had the following conversation recently. Entrepreneur: “Brad, I just got an offer for my company for $15 million from Company X.”Brad: “Awesome.  Who’s Company X – I’ve never heard of them.”Entrepreneur: “It’s a private company funded by Venture Firm Y.”Brad: “Cool – $15 million – is it a cash deal?”Entrepreneur: “No, it’s all stock.”Brad: […]

I periodically get questions from readers of this blog about business plans.  I was pondering the best way to work through a “business plan series” (similar to the Term Sheet series and Letter of Intent series) when Dave Jilk – my partner in Feld Technologies (my first company) – dropped a few documents on my desk, including the […]