Crowdfunding Goes Mainstream

  By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Originally posted on LinkedIn Crowdfunding has gone mainstream! Crowdfunding platforms across the world raised $16.2bn in 2014 – a growth of 167% vs. 2013. In the past, crowdfunding as a means of financing a business was a novelty, a rare exception to the traditional methods of bank loans, credit [...]

By | April 30th, 2015|

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Friends & Family Funding

  By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Authors of The Purpose Is Profit: The Truth about Starting and Building Your Own Business A startup typically goes through several rounds of funding from different investment sources as it expands. One of those sources is the “friends and family” round – one of the most common [...]

By | April 29th, 2015|

Why WeWork Is Worth $5B

  By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Eyebrows rose recently when it was announced that WeWork, which is basically an office leasing company,  was valued at a whopping $5B.  The valuation was set when the company raised $355 million in Series A funding last December. The reason the four-year-old company, which divvies up rented office space and [...]

By | April 15th, 2015|

Splitting Equity with a Handshake

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker How to split equity is one of the most important decisions a founding team will make. Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman wrote that nearly 40% of startup teams spend a day or less hammering out an agreement. They frequently want to get it over with - often with a [...]

By | April 9th, 2015|