If you want to better understand how venture capitalists make decisions, follow ​Denis Kalyshkin and Ask VC​ on LinkedIn. If you need need an advice on your business case, please reach out to Denis via dk@askvc.org. I'd like to explore a question that many B2B founders seem to overlook. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that AI optimists are right. Imagine LLMs eliminate tens of percent of today's jobs, and many of those workers never find new employment. Some founders

I recently took part in yet another discussion about moats and barriers to entry. Among startup founders, it's quite common to hear that moats are just another obsession of venture capital investors. Whenever I share my alternative perspective, I usually receive plenty of negative comments. Still, I'd like to explain once again why barriers to entry matter. You can decide for yourself whom to believe. To understand my argument, you first need to understand the concept of perf

If you want to better understand how venture capitalists make decisions, follow ​ Denis Kalyshkin and Ask VC ​ on LinkedIn. If you need need an advice on your business case, please reach out to Denis via dk@askvc.org . When I develop services for entrepreneurs I tend to act first and only then analyze how my clients responded. Today, I want to share how I learned to observe my own “magic” (as my business coach calls it) and turn it into products. My business coach often ask

If you want to better understand how venture capitalists make decisions, follow ​ Denis Kalyshkin and Ask VC ​ on LinkedIn. I regularly run my “Venture Analyst” course there, answer questions, and analyze venture deals. When I analyze a startup, I look at 20+ parameters. But there’s one question among them that annoys founders the most. Nevertheless, Y Combinator, Sequoia, and other top VCs ask it in one form or another. The question is: “Why can’t your startup be replicate

If you want to better understand how venture capitalists make decisions, follow ​ Denis Kalyshkin and Ask VC ​ on LinkedIn. I regularly run my “Venture Analyst” course there, answer questions, and analyze venture deals. ​ I love people. I believe in people—especially in those as talented and unconventional as the ones in the startup industry. Unfortunately, some of you are experiencing fear and discouragement because you’re worried that AI will replace you. Today, I won’t d

Venture capitalists are human too, which means they make mistakes and are susceptible to emotions. Today, I want to talk about how the sunk cost bias affects VCs and how founders can use this to their advantage. I hope this post helps you understand why maintaining good personal relationships with venture investors is so important. As a reminder, this cognitive bias occurs when someone has already invested significant effort or resources into a project and finds it hard to ab

When you talk to a VC about raising capital, one of the cornerstones of the conversation is your startup’s valuation. This is much harder for founders to understand than for investors, because investors do such valuations every day, while founders usually face it for the first time in their lives. Today, I’ll explain how investors think about valuation. By the way, you won’t need expensive consultants for this. Please also subscribe to me on LinkedIn ( Denis Kalyshkin ). Let

This week, Denis Kalyshkin together with Anna Naumova ran a brainstorming session and generated 141 AI startup ideas . Sixty people participated. Denis talked about the focal object method and the double diamond framework and showed how to apply them in practice. In general, this approach can be used to find creative solutions to almost any problem—from choosing a gift for your spouse to competing with a rival. It helps expand your associative thinking and g

When you talk to investors, they always discuss your startup valuation with you. However, when you sign an investment agreement, it specifies the price per share (for simplicity, we’re not considering SAFEs and convertible notes here). So what’s the difference? Let me start from afar. We often use words in everyday life whose meanings we think we understand. For example, what is the price? It’s the number on a price tag in a store, which I can pay at the checkout to purchase

One of the common reasons VCs decline to invest in a startup is an inflated valuation. Of course, the higher the valuation, the smaller the investor’s share, which is beneficial for the founder. But there are several ways in which an overinflated valuation can actually harm a startup. 1. Paradoxically, the valuation negotiation is often about a few percentage points. These points significantly affect the investor’s return but don’t drastically reduce the founder’s share. Let

Last week, I ran a poll among my followers on the topic “When will the AI bubble burst?” First, I noticed that not everyone understands that a bubble is a financial term. It refers to how overvalued company stocks are — and how much they could fall. The underlying technology itself can still be extremely useful and transformative — like the Internet 30 years ago. Now to the poll results. Around 600 people took part, so the sample is fairly large. The largest group believes t

In Sequoia Capital’s pitch deck template, there is a dedicated slide addressing the question: “Why is now the right time to launch your startup?” Why was it too early to launch a similar solution two or three years ago, and why might it be too late in a couple of years? Startup founders often provide counter-examples, trying to show that this question isn’t important. Based on my experience, for the vast majority of startups, it is possible to explain why the timing is right

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