Preventing Timesheet Fraud Strategies for Ensuring Accuracy and Compliance
What's a good startup ? - Founder and Investor Point of View
1. What’s a good
startup?
Investor and Founder point of view
Jeremie Berrebi (@jberrebi)
November 2014
www.berrebi.org
2. About Jeremie
Born in Paris, Jeremie Berrebi is one of
the most famous French entrepreneurs in
the high tech industry who began his
carrier as a journalist for ZDNet and
founded, or cofounded, 11 companies to
date.
Since 2010, Jeremie is considered the
most active angel investor in the world.
Having invested directly, or indirectly
via Kima Ventures, in more than 300
companies in 25 countries.
He’s still investing 1 to 3 companies a
week all over the world.
Jeremie was voted the ‘Best Seed/
Angel Investor’ in Europe in 2014 at
The Europas.
Jeremie has already sold companies
to Google, OpenTable, LinkedIn,
OutBrain, Jive Software, Incomm,
ShareThis, Naspers, Fotolia, TNS etc…
Jeremie Berrebi is living in Bnei Brak,
the main Jewish Orthodox city in
Israel and part of the Charedi
Community.
11. Think about a potential
Business Model (Acquisition
Cost<Potential Revenues) with
potential for very big and fast
growth
12. Build the right team
• Find the right cofounders you already know well
• Define exactly what’s the role of each one.
• Write a Cofounder agreement.
• Begin with a test period
• Build a Killer, Experienced and Passionate Team
who shares your vision. (Don’t hire robots)
15. Multiple types of startups
• If you’re launching an app or software
• If you’re building a new complicated technology
• If you’re building a hardware company/IoT
17. Bootstrap as much
as you can
• No paid office to begin
• Be a coder yourself! and use Freelancers for difficult tasks
(Odesk)
Avoid employing people!
• Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) => Remove as many
features as possible
• All productivity tools are now free (Google Docs, Skype)… You
just need a computer!
• Most of big companies have a Startup Program (SVB, ZenDesk,
Amazon, Google, RackSpace etc…)
18. It’s taking a lot of time to
find the real product fit
• Don’t raise money too early
• Iterate, iterate and iterate
• Measure and write down your 3 KPIs (including
RETENTION) every DAY!
19. But what if I’m really
working on building a
new technology?
20. New Tech Financing
• Build an awesome cofounding team+top Advisory
Board
• Find potential awesome employees ready to jump
• Try to build and show an awesome prototype
• Show your experience and expertise in the current
field
• Raise enough money to launch your product in the
market.
22. Hardware company
• Build a team who have already built hardware
• Develop a prototype
• Find potential customers/channels ready to pre-order
• Launch your product on Kickstarter and Indiegogo
• Raise at least $1M after your successful
campaign. Hardware is hard & expensive
24. When do I need to raise
money?
• When you’ve found that you’re answering a real
need with a real product (and resolve retention
problems)
• When you want to push the accelerator in ONE
direction
• When you need more people to serve your
customers.
25. When do I need to NOT
raise money?
• When you’re still iterating, iterating, iterating…
• When you still don’t know what your company
will look like in 1 year
• When you have no very satisfied customers…
• When you need to raise only because you need
a salary
26. What is an investor checking
before investing in a company?
• How nice is your deck? How big and clear is your vision?
• Are you answering to a real need? => Are potential customers and users waiting for
you?
• Do you know how to promote/sell the product? (Potential chicken and egg
problems) How much money do you need?
• How innovative is the technology?
• What’s the entry barrier?
• Did I find the right and best team to make this company big?
• How many months of runway will the company have with the current investment?
What will be their status after all these months?
• How do you plan to use the money raised? (big salaries, great sofas, big office,
hiring an expensive sales guy, lots of travel…)
27. Don’t lie to your investors
before or after a round!
NEVER!