100M+ in revenues in 5 years or less does not happen very often. As an example of one sector, here is an interesting data visualization (circa 2008) of the 100 largest publically traded software companies at that time that shows their actual revenue ramp-ups from SEC filings (only 4 out of thes...
The disadvantage(s) are: These answers address the question assuming the large corporation is the largest shareholder in the investment round or at least 40% of the investment offering. Public perception: You raised the issue in your question. How many of your potential customers would percei...
I would disagree with Laura's advice about allowing your communication system to operate in-tandem to what you're trying to displace. Hospital staff have very little appetite to learn or adopt new systems, especially for mission-critical work. I also disagree with the idea that your competitors...
I love this! Congratulations on a smart approach to launching a startup. I got a chance to talk to DHH - founder of Basecamp and hacker. (read about it here: http://blog.unthink.me/what-i-learned-in-1-hour-with-basecamps-founder-david-heinemeier-hansson) One of his biggest pet peeves is the idea...
I think it makes total sense. If you provide some standard dashboards with number of messages over time and similar, you can get everybody started. And it will give you a platform to interact with the subscribers. In my view, that is the cheapest and most low-risk way of developing it - to work w...
Ries owns 'Lean Startup' trademark. I doubt 'lean' by itself is trademark-able, and isn't claimed by Eric. Someone else may claim 'lean career development,' so might be worth a trademark search.
I very much disagree with Mark's assessment. You shouldn't compensate this person for the COO role until they are confirmed into this role and working full-time in this capacity. If they are a part time medical advisor, they should have a very small amount of equity to begin with. It would de...
The best way to go--by far-- is to use a Grunt Fund. A Grunt Fund is a dynamic equity split model designed to provide a perfectly fair equity split for founders of bootstrapped companies. It will tell you exactly how much you and your partner and later partners and employees deserve. It's based o...
I've personally been accepted into two accelerators. The wait time depends on the accelerator. For one accelerator, I didn't hear back until at the absolute last minute (the week before it started). For another accelerator I heard back about a month before it started. In terms of improving yo...
Not sure about the investment to be honest. It could be good for investors to check when you ask them for funds. I would do it, BUT I would hold on announcing a round of investment on AngelList until you have at least half of it. That's my advice, I hope it helps!