fundraising

Toptal Finance Expert and fundraising guru Jeffrey Fidelman put together a list of the top 5 pitch deck mistakes he sees most often. Within these common mistakes, Fidelman also highlights best practices and shows you how to write a perfect pitch deck.

How do you value a startup or a scaleup? This is a question that plagues both founders and investors. Arriving at a figure all parties can agree upon is not very straightforward: ultimately, valuation is more of an art than a science.

For many years, the IPO market appeared dormant. 2019, however, is bucking the trend with a large number of high-profile tech companies going live on stock exchanges. Not all of these IPOs have been successes. What is the process and what determines success (or lack thereof)?

One of the most notable developments of recent years has been the boom in veganism. The Beyond Meat Company’s IPO in May 2019 captured this zeitgeist and is one of the stand-out financial events of the year. Can the company live up to the hype and satisfy its investors?

Leveraged buyouts are among the most mythical, and highly-touted transactions on Wall Street. Yet, their success is predicated on successful comprehension of a business’ potential and negotiating the right terms for a deal

As a founder, how should you decide how to fund your start up and think about bootstrapping vs. venture capital? Each comes with advantages and limitations. A framework can help compare the two and decide how to get funding for a startup.

Revenue-based financing allows an entrepreneur to repay an investment over time, to retake ownership of their business, and give a capped return to investors. With founders increasingly rejecting the scale-at-all-costs mentality, this article investigates the math of revenue-based investing and whether in VC it is possible to play averages over home runs.

Startup investors are not benevolent creatures, they’re looking for certain signals that help to persuade them to part with their money. This guide, written from an investor’s perspective, intends to help startups understand the key areas to focus on and emphasize when raising money.

Due in part to the unceremonial nature of its title, the value-creation potential of business plan consultants is often misunderstood and underappreciated. Questions such as, "What do they do that I can’t?", "Why do they cost so much?” and, "Don’t you think we can handle this ourselves?", all too often haunt their practice. Having prolifically added value to 25+ clients across a range of industries, sizes, and mandates, Toptal Finance Expert, Josh Chapman, sheds light on the full scope of business plan consulting. What it is to be a great business plan consultant, how they create value, and what skills, attributes and experiences constitute the greats vs. the pretenders.