Great analysis. A worksheet to fill out would be really helpful for founders in this dating phase-including helpful interview questions they should ask!
Agreed! I ran out of time to create one, but I did think about it. Maybe I'll do one in the near future and then can add it to the Helpful Resources section of the newsletter (and this post).
Love this, thanks for sharing! It's more actionable this way and I just sent it to a few founders who've asked me about it!
Only thing I would change (personally) is that I've tried to gather this data through a few sources, but haven't found a good one besides talking to a specific studio about a specific opportunity or offer. In this case I'm comparing studio offers, not the studios themselves. Most studios are more opportunistic than a single answer for each.
Along those lines, it might be helpful to see what "the ideal" studio/offer is. A benchmark and comparison. That's probably how I would want to adopt this worksheet. But this is a huge start that most people don't even know what questions to ask!
I don’t know if there is an “ideal offer” because there are so many variables. And studios don’t always have 100% standardized offers either, so it’s tough to do a perfectly apples to apples comparison.
Oh for sure—I just meant "ideal" as in "this is what I want" that the founder fills out—then they can compare diffs to what they ideally want. It's how I've found jobs in the past—I had to first define what I personally want.
Great analysis. A worksheet to fill out would be really helpful for founders in this dating phase-including helpful interview questions they should ask!
Agreed! I ran out of time to create one, but I did think about it. Maybe I'll do one in the near future and then can add it to the Helpful Resources section of the newsletter (and this post).
Take a look here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ID_SsQyiZ6pgBbSucst_IECO8Vd625DXeK_WMOePuaI/edit?usp=sharing
Love this, thanks for sharing! It's more actionable this way and I just sent it to a few founders who've asked me about it!
Only thing I would change (personally) is that I've tried to gather this data through a few sources, but haven't found a good one besides talking to a specific studio about a specific opportunity or offer. In this case I'm comparing studio offers, not the studios themselves. Most studios are more opportunistic than a single answer for each.
Along those lines, it might be helpful to see what "the ideal" studio/offer is. A benchmark and comparison. That's probably how I would want to adopt this worksheet. But this is a huge start that most people don't even know what questions to ask!
I don’t know if there is an “ideal offer” because there are so many variables. And studios don’t always have 100% standardized offers either, so it’s tough to do a perfectly apples to apples comparison.
Same is true with VCs.
Oh for sure—I just meant "ideal" as in "this is what I want" that the founder fills out—then they can compare diffs to what they ideally want. It's how I've found jobs in the past—I had to first define what I personally want.
I just added a column at the beginning where someone could put their "Ideal Deal / Terms"