Maya Elhalal’s Blog

This presentation, used in a recent New Media Entrepreneurship Workshop for Israeli Startup founders, covers:

1. The pros and cons of different equity capital sources (financing by founders, friends and family, angels and Venture Capitals).
2. How to create and deliver effective investment raising presentations.
3. The big DOs and DON’Ts of investment raising presentations.

This presentation was featured in Slideshare and you can view it in full screen by clicking the view button below.

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Here’s a list recommended resources for entrepreneurs looking to get deeper understanding of the subject:

1. The Startup Company Bible For Entrepreneurs: The Complete Guide For Building Successful Companies And Raising Venture Capital
2. Angel Investing: Matching Startup Funds with Startup Companies – A Guide for Entrepreneurs, Individual Investors, and Venture Capitalists
3. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Finance & Business: Wealth Creation Techniques for Growing a Business
4. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
5. The Four Steps to the Epiphany
6. Deal Terms - The Finer Points of Venture Capital Deal Structures, Valuations, Term Sheets, Stock Options and Getting VC Deals Done (Inside the Minds)

In 1995, San Francisco native Craig Newmark, decided to create a way to share news about local events. Working as a software engineer, he began posting news about social events in San Francisco for people in the software and computer industries. This newsletter evolved to become craigslist.org, one of the most recognizable websites on the internet today. With billions of page views every month, craigslist is now (April 2008) rated 12th among web sites in the United States.

The Most Successful Ventures are the Ones where Founders “Scratch Their Own Itch”.

Craigslist is just one of countless examples of highly successful companies, founded by someone who just wanted to solve an aching problem or satisfy a need.

Besides the obvious benefit of tailoring a solution to your need, a startup that “scratches your itch” has great business and entrepreneurial advantages: Read the rest

This 2006 film tells the story of a highly gifted boy whose parents have demanding and ambitious plans for. He on the other hand, has other plans in mind…

With some extraordinary beautiful scenes, witty dialogs and moving story line, I highly recommend this movie.

There are very few panels, forums or boards, where investors evaluate ventures, that the notion of “First Mover Advantage” isn’t raised. In many cases, it is regarded with such awe, that the mere hint of another player “moving” first, may kill the chance of the venture to be financed.

Deadly Crash on the TTM (Time To Market) Highway

It’s almost as a side note of little significance, that Steven Gary Blanks in his brilliant book The Four Steps to the Epiphany (p 136), talks about the fallacy of “First Mover Advantage”. Worthy of serious discussion, I’d like to dedicate this post to this notion. It has driven too many promising startups to exceed the speed limit, loose control and end up in a deadly crash on the TTM (Time To Market) highway. Read the rest

Mind mapping is a visual display of thoughts, tasks, resources and other information around a center idea or topic. I use it quite often in early stages of venture creation when many random thoughts run through my mind and I need a flexible container to hold them. Mind mapping is also very helpful for visual display of other unstructured data.

This, for example, is a Map of the Online Advertising Space that I’ve prepared for a client that wanted to introduce a new product for Ad Networks and needed to understand the playing field. It was created with NovaMind, a very feature rich Mind Mapping software that produces great looking maps.

I have recently dropped NovaMind for Mind Meister, a more accessible application that also allows online collaboration. This is another step in my transition to becoming completely location independent. I will dedicate a post to the LIP (Location Independent Professionals) trend soon.

By accessible I mean first, the obvious, that Mind Meister is browser based rather than OS (Operating System) based. This means, you can work on your mind maps from any device that runs an internet browser. You are not bounded to your PC. The second level of accessibility, and this is were Mind Meister is different from other browser based Mind Mapping applications, is achieved by its implementation (via Ajax), which allows it to run with no additional browser plugins (such as Flash or Java). The benefits are that you can use any public computer where you will probably not be authorized to install plugins and that you can collaborate with anyone, without imposing specific system requirements.

Here’s a good Review of three Web-Based Mind Mapping Tools, that also covers Mind Meister and a good source about Mind Mapping Software in general. And here’s more about Mind Maps from Wikipedia.

“I always wondered…
when a butterfly leaves the safety of it’s cocoon,
does it realize how beautiful I has become,
or does it still just see itself as a caterpillar?”

This is the opening monologue of a brilliant movie I saw last night, The Air I Breathe. It’s based on an ancient Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four emotional cornerstones: happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love. Here’s the trailer:



The monologue continues with:

“When I was a kid, I knew the secret to a happy life.
Play by the rules, work hard in school.
And if you work hard in school,
then your reward is… more school.
And after more school,
you are given the best that life has to offer,
a job and money and a future,
filled with unending pursuit of more…”

It was amazing that of all movies, and on a night it was my spouse’s turn to choose, I should watch the one that raises the exact same questions that have been going through my mind all past week.

At some point in the movie (I don’t want to spoil it for you), Brendan Fraser says: “Some people believe in coincidences. I’m not one of them.” This, on the day I finished reading Deepak Chopra’s book about harnessing the power of coincidence, gets speacial meaning.

Better together: (the movie) The Air I Breathe and (the book) The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire

I’ve been wanting to start blogging for too long and just kept putting it off. Every time I was about to set up a blog and start, the little voice in me would ask “is this really worthy of your first post?”

Sure enough, with every idea that didn’t cut it, expectations built up, till eventually, no post could measure up. No post was quite “sponge worthy”…


Today, on my morning Netvibes routine, I stumbled upon this post: Getting Writing Done: How to Stop Thinking About It and Write . Copyblogger, one of my favorite copy writing blogs, gave me the much needed kick in the butt and there you have it, my first post, the one I’ve been saving myself for, is about nothing. But it’s out there and it feels great!