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image of Technical VC shares decision making frameworks on how to spend your startup money wisely (Troy Henikoff, MATH Venture Partners)
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
38:07
minutes

Technical VC shares decision making frameworks on how to spend your startup money wisely (Troy Henikoff, MATH Venture Partners)

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Episode Details

In this episode I’m interviewing a VC who used to be a software engineer Troy Henikoff, Managing Director from MATH Venture Partners.

Show notes

As a founder, are you optimizing for greed or fear? 

Each of use inevitably does one or the other. 

In the first case, “I want the least dilution so I’m going to fundraise in increments”.

The latter is “damn, what if I can’t raise again? Let’s get as much cash in the bank as a we can”.


Here are the main talking points: 
  • why raising the money is not always the answer
  • what are the risks of raising too much capital too early
  • how to make decisions that extend your runway
  • how Troy evaluates each company before investing

About Troy:

Troy Henikoff is Managing Director of MATH Venture Partners. Additionally, Troy is an active mentor with Techstars. Troy was the Co-founder of Excelerate Labs, which became Techstars Chicago in 2013. He also helps manage the FireStarter Fund, teaches Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business and is on the board of the Chicago-land Entrepreneurial Center. Prior to Techstars Chicago, Troy was the CEO of OneWed.com, the President of Amacai, and co-founder and CEO of SurePayroll.com.


Resources mentioned on the show:

Troy's investment & startup advice videos on vimeo.

What is Off the Record with Aram?

Made by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Off the Record is about the journey. It’s about fears, doubts, wins, and devastating losses. It’s about how people kept going no matter what to build their businesses, raise cash and hire the team. Here battle-tested CEOs and VCs share how they jumped out of the airplane and tried to assemble it on the way down.I hope you like it.

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