Funding
What to look for in investors?
How to get funding
Continuous fundraising
Hidden dilution
Cap table nightmares
Bootstrapping vs. investor money
Getting funding is easy
Batman and Robin funding model
Purpose ‘n Clarity -podcast
We talk about startup life, the good, the bad, the insight, the experiences, the mistakes, the failures and everything between. The focus is on practical tips and tools to help you build your company from an idea stage, bootstrapping to investor funded growth companies.
We share everyday decision-making knowledge, situation and views so that you as a founder or CEO can avoid some of the mistakes and hardship along the way.
You can find more information at https://www.petrikajander.com/purposenclarity/.
Do you need an advisory board, or is the board enough? What do you want from external experts, and how can you get them?
Startup books
What to expect, experiences and practical examples.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
What you should know before you need to know it
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Classic that puts you on right track with your ambition level
Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business
A must-read for startup CEOs
With a few more words: https://www.petrikajander.com/startup-ceo/
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Very influential and inspiring read
Startup, Scaleup, Screwup: 42 Tools to Accelerate Lean and Agile Business Growth
Practical handbook with the very latest knowhow combined with interviews from the Northern European startups
See my review: https://www.petrikajander.com/startup-scaleup-screwup/
Loops: Building Products with Clarity & Confidence
How to build products?
There are two ways to build a product. Either you start with a solution in mind and launch it to the market or you start with a group of people with a problem and then solve it for them.
This book is about the latter.
I have also written a few words about it: https://www.petrikajander.com/loops/
Category Creation: How to Build a Brand that Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love
Great guide when considering your positioning
See my review: https://www.petrikajander.com/category-creation/
Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors
What you need to know when it's time to build a professional board, and before
High Stakes, No Prisoners : A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars
90's Internet and how to make it
The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story
High tech scene in the 90's
Eat People: And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs
Think big and find innovations worth building
Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos
Global entrepreneurship is the future
Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
It's good to know how innovations are built. Timing matters, luck matters, and hard work matters. Current legends were just mostly regular people before their success who did extraordinary things.
How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone
There are never too many stories and you can always learn from the past experiences. The history does not repeat but it rhymes and helps you to figure out your next moves (see Range for why 🙂
Survival to Thrival: Building the Enterprise Startup - Book 2 Change or Be Changed
The internal change within the organisation and the people
Unleash Your Inner Company: Use Passion and Perseverance to Build Your Ideal Business
A practical guide for nurturing your idea into business
Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City
Startup Communities is about the inspiring story and the message that you can build a vibrant startup ecosystem anywhere. If you can do it with a small 100 000 inhabitant city in Colorado it can be done elsewhere.
Read more: https://www.petrikajander.com/startup-communities/
Startup funding essentials
Startup finance classics
This is a very short list on purpose. If you have more time and interest it's easy to elaborate on each topic with a book or two but it's important to have an overall perspective first.
Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist
If you read one book pick this one.
Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It
Excellent and contemporary
See my review https://www.petrikajander.com/secrets-of-sand-hill-road/
High Tech Start Up, Revised and Updated (text only) Rev Upd Su edition by J. L. Nesheim
Classic but have good info even thought it is rather old in startup years
Learn from other founders – Talks with Petri
Petri follows his curiosity and shares his talks with people building the future. The show explores personal discoveries and experiences with lessons learned. The real-talk conversations go deep where the purpose is always to learn more and share the know-how with others.
Visit https://www.petrikajander.com/talkswithpetri/ for episode notes.
Ahti Heinla talks about building companies that impact a massive amount of people, how even successful founders struggle and fail at times but also what’s the right approach to build a business case. He also reveals how his company managed to pull off something that a tier-one VC told to be impossible.
See the episode notes: https://www.petrikajander.com/ahti.
Guest bio
Ahti Heinla is the co-founder and CTO of Starship Technologies which is the world’s leading company creating local delivery robots. In 2002, he was part of the founding team of Skype and was the company’s Chief Technical Architect for the first five years. In 2008, Ahti helped to mobilise 3% of the population to clean Estonia’s forests in a day.
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Podcast website: https://www.petrikajander.com/talkswithpetri/. Subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Youtube. Follow on Twitter for updates. You can also send suggestions. Please consider leaving a short review or share the episode so that others can find the show.
Videos
Startup funding
Building your company (strategy, management, leadership)
Adapting to change in the 2020s
