| Here are the FeedBlitz blog updates for paul.r.friday@gmail.com There is 1 new post in "A VC" Social RecruitingI'm giving the keynote talk at the Social Recruiting Summit in NYC on Monday. I've been working on my presentation over the past few days and some themes are worth talking about. 1) Since we started Union Square Ventures in 2003/2004, we have only been involved with one retained search. Our portfolio companies have certainly used search firms, but our use of them has been extremely rare. We prefer to source candidates ourselves using our networks, and increasingly our social networks. 2) We sourced both of our junior investment professionals, Andrew Parker and Eric Friedman, with blog posts at USV.com. 3) We have sourced countless senior hires for our portfolio companies off of this blog and USV.com. I would bet that we've done a couple dozen successful hires that way in the past couple years. 4) Many of our companies have internal recruiters and we work hand in hand with them, sourcing talent, vetting talent, and closing the sale. 5) LinkedIn is a terrific place to find talent and to find references. When I want to check someone out, I invite them to connect to me on LinkedIn, I find who we know in common, and that is my reference list. Charlie O'Donnell taught me these LinkedIn tricks about five years ago and I use them all the time. 6) Tracked.com is also a terrific place to find talent and figure out who they know. Let's say you wanted to find the top execs at LinkedIn. You can find them all in one place here. 7) Hunting for talent is necessary but not always sufficient. You need to get the word out. Like all things on the internet, there are free ways and paid ways to do that. 8) The best free way is get your jobs indexed by Indeed so they can be found by the over 10 million people a month who go there looking for jobs. We feature all the jobs in our portfolio on the front page of USV.com by running an Indeed stored query of all the jobs in our portfolio companies. 9) Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are also great free ways to get the word out. Post the job on your website and tweet it out, get it retweeted, searched, and discovered and the resumes will start coming in. 10) You can also pay to get your jobs "sponsored" in Indeed. You can post job ads via Facebook's self serve ad system and target them at very specific locations and job types. And we'll see more social media/networks offer paid systems like this in the next year. 11) There are all sorts of niche communities on the web you should be hanging out in if you want to find talent. For tech/engineering talent, we like to look at Meetup groups on certain tech topics (there are eight Ruby On Rails meetups within 25 miles of NYC), open source projects, and niche communities like Hacker News and Stack Overflow. You can play the same game with communities for other kinds of job types. The key is you have to hang out there a bit, get to know the community and the people in it, and build trust and add value. That last point is the big point. Social media is about showing up, hanging out, and earning trust. If you want to use social media to source talent, you can't fake it. You have to really participate in these systems. But if and when you do, they are incredibly powerful and are changing the face of recruiting. I look forward to talking to the recruiting community about this topic more on Monday. And if you have ideas for other things I should be talking about, please leave them in the comments.
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Monday, March 15, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
An article from Seeking Alpha has been sent to you
I thought you might find this article on Seeking Alpha interesting:
Income ETFs: Safer Than Stocks, Better Returns Than Bonds
Income ETF's - safer than stocks.
Income ETFs: Safer Than Stocks, Better Returns Than Bonds
Income ETF's - safer than stocks.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
What are ISOs?
What are ISOs?
The main tax benefits of incentive stock options are that the option holder can:
(1) delay his or her personal taxable event until the stock is actually sold by the holder (instead of at the exercise of the option), and
(2) receive long-term capital gains treatment for taxable gain at the stock sale (instead of ordinary income tax rates).
In order to receive the tax benefits of ISOs, the startup and stock option holder must comply with various rules. The main requirements are:
ISO Recipient
Only employees of the startup can receive ISOs.
Continuous Employment
The employee must remain continuously employed with the startup for the period from the date of the ISO grant until 3 months before the date of an ISO stock option exercise.
Stock Option Plan
The ISO must be granted pursuant to a written stock option plan. Additionally, the grant must take place within 10 years from the date the stock plan is either adopted or approved by the startup’s shareholders.
ISO Option Length
An ISO cannot be exercised more than 10 years after its grant. (See “Special Rules” below)
ISO Exercise Price
The exercise price for an ISO must be set at FMV (or higher) of the startup’s stock subject to the ISO grant. (See “Special Rules” below)
Nontransferable ISO
ISOs must be nontransferable and can only be exercised by the employee. However, if the employee dies, the employee’s heirs or beneficiaries can exercise the ISOs.
ISO Holding Period
The ISO holder can not dispose the startup’s shares within (i) 1 year from the ISO exercise, or (ii) 2 years from the ISO grant. Thus, the earliest the ISO shares can be sold (and receive favorable tax treatment) is 2 years from the ISO grant (not 3 years).
Special Rules for Founder ISO Grants (i.e. to large shareholders)
A ISO grant to a shareholder with more than 10% of the startup’s voting stock must (i) be set at an exercise price at least equal to 110% of the FMV of the stock subject to the option, and (ii) the ISO option may not be exercised more than 5 years after its grant.
Please note that the above list is not exhaustive regarding ISO requirements.
NYC SEEDSTART Summer 2010 Program
NYC SEEDSTART Summer 2010 Program
http://www.nycseed.com/seedstart.html
Applications are due by February 28, 2010. We will notify finalists by March 15, 2010. We are accepting applications here.
What Is It?
NYC SeedStart is an 8-week summer program designed to provide seed funding for technology teams to build a product and launch their company. We will give up to 10 teams a small amount of funding, space, and mentorship in exchange for a small piece of equity in whatever they build. We do not expect companies, we expect entrepreneurs and hackers who are passionate about their product. If selected, you can spend a summer building your product, freed from thinking about office space or living expenses and with access to our network for help. At the end of the summer, groups will present their work to investors with the hope of finding additional funding.
SeedStart is a joint effort among:
We offer $20,000 to up to 10 teams (minimum 2 people, maximum 4 people). In exchange for this, we will receive 5% equity stake in your company. At the end of every summer we will convene a panel of NYC-based investors and provide the opportunity for SeedStart companies to present their projects.
Why SeedStart?
Extremely early-stage money and guidance for young entrepreneurs and hackers is hard to find. NYC is an expensive place to live and we want to help smart entrepreneurs who live in NYC get going.
No Better Time
We believe there is no better time to start a company in NYC.
What Is It?
NYC SeedStart is an 8-week summer program designed to provide seed funding for technology teams to build a product and launch their company. We will give up to 10 teams a small amount of funding, space, and mentorship in exchange for a small piece of equity in whatever they build. We do not expect companies, we expect entrepreneurs and hackers who are passionate about their product. If selected, you can spend a summer building your product, freed from thinking about office space or living expenses and with access to our network for help. At the end of the summer, groups will present their work to investors with the hope of finding additional funding.
SeedStart is a joint effort among:
- Contour Venture Partners
- IA Ventures
- NYC Seed
- Polaris Venture Partners
- RRE Ventures
- Fish and Richardson
- Manatt, Phelps and Phillips
- SVB Financial Group
We offer $20,000 to up to 10 teams (minimum 2 people, maximum 4 people). In exchange for this, we will receive 5% equity stake in your company. At the end of every summer we will convene a panel of NYC-based investors and provide the opportunity for SeedStart companies to present their projects.
Why SeedStart?
Extremely early-stage money and guidance for young entrepreneurs and hackers is hard to find. NYC is an expensive place to live and we want to help smart entrepreneurs who live in NYC get going.
No Better Time
We believe there is no better time to start a company in NYC.
Apply Here
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs - Times Online
I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs - Times Online
So far, so lucrative. But isn’t it simply unfair? Isn’t Goldman acting as the modern equivalent of war-time profiteer, taking advantage of global crisis and emergency government action to mint millions? Even the veteran financier George Soros says the big profits made by Wall Street banks are "hidden gifts" from the state.
So far, so lucrative. But isn’t it simply unfair? Isn’t Goldman acting as the modern equivalent of war-time profiteer, taking advantage of global crisis and emergency government action to mint millions? Even the veteran financier George Soros says the big profits made by Wall Street banks are "hidden gifts" from the state.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Fw: [A VC] There is 1 new post in "A VC"
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Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:37:54 -0500
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Kadavu has shared: Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn
Kadavu shared a presentation 'Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn' on SlideShare with this message:
"I think you will find this presentation useful."
Check out the presentation here:
http://www.slideshare.net/eldon/sequoia-capital-on-startups-and-the-economic-downturn-presentation.
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
kadavu has shared a presentation on Slideshare
Hi,
Check out this cool presentation on SlideShare:
Title: "Startup Cfo Bdo Term Sheet Event 051109"
Link: http://www.slideshare.net/startupcfo/startup-cfo-bdo-term-sheet-event-051109
kadavu
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