Startup Hacks
My name is Alex Iskold and I am a Founder and Managing Partner at 2048 Ventures – a first-check venture firm. I am an investor in over 100 early stage companies. Startup Hacks is a collection of the blog posts that I’ve written over the years for the founders.
This page is organized as a simple index by topic so that you can scroll through. If you are looking for the archive instead, visit Recent Posts.
I hope you find this page, and the topics helpful. Please feel free to drop me a note with feedback at alex @ 2048 dot vc, and let me know what other startup topics you’d like me to write about.
FUNDRAISING
- 30 Questions Investors Will Ask Founders
- 11 Questions Founders Need to Ask Investors
- 9 Seed Funding Gotchas
- 8 Things you Need to Know about Venture Capital
- The Perfect Investor Deck for Seed Round
- 7 Sources of Seed Capital
- How to Get Seed Funding Every Single Time
- How Much Capital Should Your Raise?
- How to Setup Your Investor Funnel
- Founders, Beware of Happy Ears
- How to Actually Commit Investors to your Round
- Don’t Send Your Deck Ahead of the Meeting
- The Fast Route to a Partner Meeting is a Route to a NO
- Why NO is the Next Best Thing After YES
- Raise More Capital When you can
- What to do When Fundraising is not going well
- 7 Tips for Raising Capital in a Slower Market
- 4 Tips for Raising Capital During Holidays
- 25 Epic, Must-Read Posts About Fundraising
MANAGING INVESTORS
- How to Run a Simple and Effective Board Meeting
- How to use Mailing List to Update Mentors & Investors
- How and Why to Send Investor Updates
VC & BUSINESS INTRODUCTIONS
- How to Write a Forwardable Email Introduction
- How to Introduce your Startup in an Email
- How to Ask Me and Others for an Introduction
- The WHY in the Investor Ask
- How to Ask (and NOT to ask) for VC introduction
- Don’t Take Intros from Investors Who aren’t Investing
METRICS & KPIs
- Intro to Startup Metrics
- How to Setup KPI Dashboard for your Pre-seed and Seed Stage Startup
- Funnels for Startups: A primer
- What is the Magic Moment for Your Startup?
PRODUCT & MARKETING
- Your MVP is Minimal, but is it Viable?
- Dude, You Need a Marketing Plan
- Why Product Demo is Your Secret Weapon
- What is the API for Your Startup?
- Understanding Network Effects
- What is the Customer Elevator Pitch for Your Startup
- 5 Tips for Startup Engineering Teams
- 6 Things You can do to Help your Content go Viral
PRODUCTIVITY
- Self-care: 8 Tips for Founders to take care of themselves
- Inbox 0
- 7 Calendar Tips for Startups
- Action and Idea Lists for Startups
- 7 Biz Dev Tips for Startups
- The Culture of Writing Things Down
- What is your GMT – the Next Goal Milestone or Task
- 6 Ways Startup Founders can Deal with Stress
- 12 Tips for Getting Most out of Mentor Meetings
- 3 Basic Principles Founders can Apply to Achieve Quality
- 12 Ways to Give Time Back to Others and to Yourself
- 51 basic Productivity and Biz Dev Tips for Startups
FOUNDERS, TEAM, COMPETITION
- Why Strong Vision is so Important
- Why Founder-Market-Fit is so Important
- 7 Things That Define Great Founding Teams
- Are You a Resilient Founder?
- How to create a Hiring Plan for your startup
- WHY NOW is a trick question
- How to Create the Future
- What is the Core of Your Startup?
- 8 Tips for Dealing with Competitors
