A cap table- short name for “capitalization table”- is a spreadsheet with an overview of who owns a portion of equity of a company and how this equity is distributed among shareholders. When entrepreneurs are looking for financing rounds, the cap table is one of the main files that investors will check to assess whether the venture has a healthy distribution of equity or not. Generally, investors prefer cap tables where all or at least the vast majority of shareholders will contribute to value creation in the future. In some cases, entrepreneurs with appealing and promising business ideas miss funding opportunities due to the so-called broken cap tables. This refers to an inadequate distribution of equity among shareholders or inacceptable terms and conditions, which generates misalignment of interests or interferes with an efficient business management. As a result, the startup losses the ability to raise funds or requires going through a painful restructuring process.

When preparing financial rounds, investors usually ask for cap tables (short version for “capitalization table”). Basically, this is a list or spreadsheet with an overview of all shareholders who have a participation on your company. Sounds easy? But in fact it isn’t, especially in later financing rounds. Why? Well, in the easiest case is the simple share distribution to founders and investors round by round, but in practice the deal structures are more complex. Typically, due to special rights and agreements, the allocation of equity shares deviates from voting rights and from money proceeds distributed after a cash event like an exit (e.g. a trade sale or an IPO). Very often it is complex enough to hire (and pay) external consultants and lawyers to reproduce the contractually fixed distribution and it is a frequent discussion point in due diligence processes on that way. Thus, it is worth paying some attention right from the beginning.

"2021 will be the year of the unicorns," "German startups are raising more money than ever," "From a garage to the most valuable corporation" – there are great success stories of founders to read about in the news. However, barely anyone talks about the many failures in the startup world. And believe me, there are way more than you might think. While it seems deceptively easy to found a successful start-up, this is not really the case. Rarely is a start-up so well-tuned to its niche that it can be kept afloat with minimal effort. The momentum among founders is high, but in the long run only one in ten companies survives. In this article, we present the most common reasons why start-ups fail.

Acquiring new customers and generating revenue is the fuel to keep a company running.

It therefore creates pressure on the sales representative as they are in charge of generating these revenues by acquiring new customers. In addition, they have got to deal with rejection in their daily routines, which is mentally challenging.

The application round for our 12th cohort in the SpinLab is officially open, and with that, we wanted to take some time to highlight some tips we’ve collected over the years to help you make your startup accelerator applications really stand out.

In case you want the short and sweet video version

And believe us, we’ve seen some really bad applications. So we definitely know what you shouldn’t be doing. Collectively between all projects, our team has evaluated over 4,000 applications to various programs, and we are now ”trained” to easily find the most outstanding applications.

Especially during the current pandemic it would be very hard to live without some of our favourite products/services, that mostly appeared since the beginning of the millenium: Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Spotify, HelloFresh - just to name a few.

Although these and other favourite products of generations x, y & z are very different in nature, they often have 1 thing in common: venture capital. Some would even argue that without venture capital financing some of these products wouldn’t even exist today. Nevertheless it is almost guaranteed that those products would be different or their wider adoption level would be less without venture capital.

But what exactly is venture capital?

While Venture Capital (VC) is among the most preferred and frequently used financing options for startups, many founders are not very familiar with the definitions of various venture capital contractual terms – sometimes even after an investment has already taken place. For the sake of fairness, these contractual terms are quite complex and thus contracts are quite long.

Since VC contracts are private agreements, individual arrangements and wordings are up on negotiation. However, there is a basic set of frequently used mechanisms that can be considered somewhat “standard terms.” Still, in contracts – as well as in the dozens of books, presentations and many blogs and comments on those – the language used is formal and based on legal standards.

Therefore, they are close to what founders will officially sign, but are still difficult to understand for beginners.

As you might have heard a lot recently, Leipzig has been found to be a very attractive and livable city in several rankings over the past years.

No wonder the city has attracted a lot of creative minds to stay and join the fascination. Leipzig’s startup scene has grown to a respectable size given the fact that Leipzig is only the 8th biggest city in Germany. With a growing startup scene fueled by lots of meetups, events and co-working spaces, and specialties in the fields of Smart Infrastructure (digital health, energy and smart city) as well as and Social Startups Leipzig has a lot of attractive startup employers to offer. 

Crowdfunding has come a long way. What started with pioneer Kickstarter a little over a decade ago, has become a booming and crowded space with many stories of record-breaking success.

And, of course, failures that have kicked off more sh*tstorms than anyone can keep track of, and sometimes even lawsuits, by disappointed backers. Along the way the market has diversified into basically any vertical one could imagine (e.g. Experiment.com enables scientists to crowdfund their research) and the first platforms have come and gone.

As a spin-off of the Technische Universität Dresden which participated in the EXIST Research Transfer Program, the Energiekoppler team applied to the SpinLab to develop their entrepreneurial skills and expand their network. The team developed a standardized and automated flexibility tool that is used for remote diagnosis and control of decentralized energy generators, storage devices and consumers of small power classes. The "swarmBOX" processes power, heat and mobility requirements in the building per connected system and forecasts the system operation locally. Coordinator "swarmHUB" records further restrictions at grid level or from energy trading and plans the deployment of the networked energy systems in order to help stabilize the energy supply or to realize the sales of excess capacity. 

While you’re busy building your business, expanding quickly and working on your products, HR can often take a backseat at first. For sure you have already created your value proposition and buyer personas. Now it’s all about your startup as an employer, not as a corporate brand.

As you know, a highly motivated and skilled team is the key to success. It’s nearly impossible to overstate the importance of having the right employees working for your startup. Growing a business is for sure a team effort. But how can you create a buzz around your startup, attract motivated talent and keep your existing workforce to stay with your company and stay happy?

There is only one right answer to this question: Employer branding.