December 2009 Entrepreneur's Forum

Bootstrapping vs. Venture Funding

Topics:

• Objectives of this panel
• To help entrepreneurs determine whether venture funding or bootstrapping is more appropriate for their project.
• Understanding how to position your company for financing success under each scenario.
• The investor's perspective
• What is a venture fund (limited partners, general partners)?
• Expected returns on portfiolio companies (~80% failures, ~15% breakeven, ~5% blockbuster)
• Motivations of a venture capitalist in making an investment decision
• Characteristics of a fundable company (concept, market size, team, barriers to entry, etc)
• Venture funding success stories: Google, Amazon...
• The bootstrapper's perspective
• What is bootstrapping?
• Characteristics of a bootstrap-able company (early revenue, low capital requirements, low burn rate, etc)
• Bootstrapping success stories:Placebase, PlentyOfFish, MacRumors.
• Funding sources for bootstrappers: founder savings, full-time job, consulting, organic growth, etc.
• Would I ever want to seek funding for a company that could be bootstrapped? Would I ever want to bootstrap a company that could be venture funded? Why?
• The right time to seek funding. What is the right "state" of the venture for seeking funding?
• Pitfalls to avoid - Common outcomes for non-fundable companies which seek venture funding.

Moderator:

• Owen Davis, Managing Director at NYC Seed

Panelists (alphabetic order):

• Art Chang, CEO of Tipping Point Partners
• Brian Cohen, Founder/President of iFluence PR and Board Member at New York Angels
• Mark Davis, IT Venture Capitalist at DFJ Gotham Ventures
• Dennis Mortensen, Director of Data Insights at Yahoo! and founder of Canvas, Evonax, and IndexTools

Blog Posts about this event

The Daily Start-Up: Online Retailers Hog Friday And Monday (by Wall Street Journal - Venture Capital Dispatch)

IT Companies That Scale (by Mark Davis - Venture Made Transparent)

Ultra Light Startups Takes on the Bootstrapping vs. Venture Funding Debate (by Ultra Light Startups Blog)

How will you fund your business — by Bootstrap or Investment? (by Zimana Blog)

Ultralight Startups Entrepreneurs Forum: a study in contrasts, pizza & pickles (by What's Next Blog)

Ultra Light Startups Talks VC Funding and Bootstrapping (by NY Convergence)

Panelist and Moderator Bios

Art Chang (@achangnyc)
Art is the founder and CEO of Tipping Point Partners, a New York City incubator specializing in growing Internet startups for entrepreneurs and for financial and strategic investors. Art is an addict to speed/punishment, having worked on over 25 startups in the past 25 years, of which at least 20 were under-funded/bootstrapped. The Tipping Point portfolio has included companies like Casebook, Cookstr, Haystack Media, I Do Now I Don't, IGA Worldwide, Mobile Commons, Playspan, and Rapid Ratings.

Brian Cohen (@brianscohen)
Brian, Founder of iFluence PR, is described as the father of Technology PR in New York City. He has launched and helped get funding for more than 100 companies over the last 25 years. As a Board member of the New York Angels and mentor to the NYU and Columbia business entrepreneur competitions he has personally reviewed over 500 business and personally invested in more than a dozen firms.

Mark Davis (@markpeterdavis)
Mark is an IT Venture Capitalist at DFJ Gotham Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based focused primarily on investments in information technology startups. He is Founder of the Columbia Venture Community and the New York Venture Community, groups for entrepreneurs, startup teams, venture capitalists and venture service providers. Mark blogs about the industry and how to raise capital at Venture Made Transparent.

Dennis R. Mortensen (@DennisMortensen)
Dennis is an Entrepreneur, Author and the Director of Data Insights at Yahoo! an Analytics Instructor at the University of British Columbia and he sits on the Board of Directors of the Web Analytics Association. He was the CEO of Canvas (Bootstrapped and acquired by TJ Group), CEO of Evonax (Bootstrapped and bust), COO of IndexTools (Bootstrapped and acquired by Yahoo!). He maintains the highly popular analytics, media and marketing blog, VisualRevenue.

Owen Davis (@owendavis)
Owen is Managing Director at NYC Seed, a seed stage venture capital fund in New York City. Since 1995, Owen has founded startups including Thinking Media, an online marketing firm, Sonata, a location-based wireless services and marketing company, and Petal Computing, a cloud computing company. Owen is the author of various patents in Internet methods and technologies and the book Instant Java Applets. Owen was recently named one of the 100 most influential people in Silicon Alley for 2008.