It is impossible to plan everything that can go wrong while building a startup.

A definitive guide should include chapters like “So You Hire the Wrong Person” or “Five Ways to Tell if an Investor Is Lying to You.”

Mentors and advisors are useful, but startups move at lightning speed. Investors say they want to add value, but for founders under pressure, it’s hard to know exactly when to ask for help.

Before Tracy Young was co-founder and CEO of TigerEye, she held the same roles at construction productivity software startup PlanGrid.

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Although she led the company to $100 million in ARR before it was acquired by Autodesk, she “had years to dissect the mistakes I made with my first startup,” she writes in TC+.

Young looks back at “five key failure points” that are common pitfalls in every founder’s path and shares tactical advice for dealing with internal conflict, losing product-market fit, and other stumbling blocks.

“If these reflections help even one founder make one less mistake, I would consider this effort worth it.”

On Thursday, January 19 at 10am PST / 1pm EST, Tracy Young will join me in a Twitter Space to talk about how she dealt with these and other common founder challenges. Come with your questions and join the chat!

One last note: TC+ roundup is australiabusinessblog.com’s fastest growing newsletter! Thank you very much for reading and subscribing!

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, australiabusinessblog.com+
@your protagonist

3 questions founders should be asking investors in the first quarter of 2023

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Money is power, and VCs know it.

It’s one of the reasons why so many founders don’t do enough due diligence on their investors, says Talia Rafaeli, a partner of European early-stage VC fund Kompas.

Rather than going to a pitch meeting hoping to get favorable terms, Rafaeli recommends that entrepreneurs poll investors with direct questions about liquidity, exit expectations and how they plan to add value over time.

“A difficult economic climate does not mean that the power dynamic automatically swings in favor of those with the money,” she says.

“The best working relationships are those built on an equitable foundation with honesty and clarity.”

Will record levels of dry powder lead to a delayed explosion of startup investment?

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There’s subtext to the waves of layoffs and Craigslist ads for discounted office furniture: tech investors have amassed about $290 billion in dry powder.

“Despite the recession, strong cash flow and tailwinds for digitization spending lead some market participants to believe we are in a strong investment cycle,” said Raphael Mukomilow and Pierre Bourdon of Picus Capital.

After tracking uninvested capital by year, going back to 2006, the pair found that “a crisis in the investment landscape was often followed by years of systematic outperformance, and history tends to repeat itself.”

oops! Is generative AI becoming a bubble yet?

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Generative AI is making waves with apps like Lensa AI, DALL-E and ChatGPT, but does that make it a strong investment?

Several VCs who responded to a recent australiabusinessblog.com+ survey “said that the growth of the technology reminds them too much of crypto,” writes Rebecca Szkutak.

“Everyone is piling up faster than they should.”

When will IPOs return? The past may hold some clues

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Natalia Holgado Sanchez, head of capital markets at Secfi, studied the impact of five recessions since 2002 to see how well private startups held up, “and, most importantly, how long it took for the IPO market to reopen.”

For each period, Sanchez looked at the inciting events, the similarities and differences between this recession and past crises, and how startups were affected.

“Based on historical data, the IPO market has opened on average after 18 to 24 months,” she found. “As we are now about nine months since our window closed, we could see movement by June 2023.”

Dear Sophie: How can I transfer my H-1B to my new startup in 2023?

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Dear Sophie,

I’m DECISION: This is the year I finally live my dream and create my startup! I currently hold an H-1B for my full-time engineering role at another company.

How can I transfer my visa to my startup? How do we structure the startup for immigration success?

— Restless & Resolved

Teach yourself growth marketing: how to set up a landing page

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In the first article of a five-part series on growth marketing fundamentals, Jonathan Martinez explains how to create an essential part of any business’ sales funnel: a landing page.

This overview provides basic steps for writing a clear headline, providing visitors with social proof that builds credibility, and crafting calls to action that get results.

Next week, Martinez, who has helped scale startups like Uber, Postmates, and Chime, will share his tips for launching a paid acquisition channel.