Mercedes Bent

  • FMB 15: How Founders Choose Investors

    This is an extension of my #FMB “Founders are Made, not Born: How Founders Become Learning Animals” series. Originals based on research at Stanford: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, and Part VII. Extensions: Parts 7, 8,9, 10,11, 12, 13, 14. During fundraises, founders often ask how to choose investors. I’ve met 1,000+ of investors and been part of dozens of boards.…

    mercebent

  • FMB 14: The Anatomy of a “Why Now”

    See the original linkedin post. This is an extension of my #FMB “Founders are Made, not Born: How Founders Become Learning Animals” series. Originals based on research at Stanford: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, and Part VII. Extensions: Parts 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. One of…

    mercebent

  • The Hierarchy of Metrics

    Metrics are not all made equal I’m on the board of a startup where, a few weeks ago, our board group chat got into a fun debate over text. It wasn’t about product direction or hiring plans, but about metrics. Ranking metrics. One of the founders shared this metrics snapshot and asked, “which metrics should…

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  • NIM Innovation: A Lending Mental Model

    Foreword: I’ve long been a mentor of startups in the Entrepreneurship and VC class at Stanford. Recently I was hosting several GSB students from the class who were working on a lending startup, and we got to “whiteboarding.” Well, napkin writing. I shared my lending mental model with them and realized I’ve never encapsulated it…

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