sycophantic demagoguery: 7 Tips on Negotiating Venture Capital Financing From Breaking Bad ...

Friday, August 24, 2012

7 Tips on Negotiating Venture Capital Financing From Breaking Bad ...

Editorial Note: This article was made possible through the input and advice from three great entrepreneurs in the D.C. startup community, Manpreet and Gurpreet of Seva Call, and Navroop of Gryphn.?

One of the most treacherous areas to launching your business and startup is negotiating the venture capital financing details in your term sheet. If you ask any founder who has ever had to deal with the minefield of speaking with investors, lawyers, and other co-founders, you?ll find that agreeing upon a final term sheet can be a taxing process that comes with a slew of pitfalls you can find yourself getting caught in.

Interestingly enough, many of these pitfalls are similar to those of my favorite show, Breaking Bad. For those unfamiliar with this Emmy Award-winning show, it?s essentially a drama that chronicles the life of a desperate chemistry teacher (Walter White) that turns to cooking meth to pay for his cancer treatments and from his forays into the criminal world, finds himself becoming one of the most sought after meth cookers in the country. Launching a meth empire has similar tasks and duties to that of launching a small business or startup: you have to make sure you?ve covered all of your bases, do your research, and of course, ensure your math is right (in Walt?s case, his chemistry).

With that said, I?ve put together seven tips on negotiating venture capital financing inspired from quotes and moments from Breaking Bad. Hopefully they?ll help with any aspiring entrepreneurs out there trying to figure out how to best negotiate their term sheet, and at the very least, it?s a great way to combine my two favorite things: Breaking Bad and Startups.

Enjoy.

{ "slides" : 8, "transition_speed": 400 ,"fx": "fade" }