In this hands-on, practical, and very prescriptive workshop session, multi-exited serial entrepreneur Randy Smerik looks at how to take your company from an initial startup to a scale-ready organization. In the no-nonsense style for which he’s become a Startupfest favorite, Randy tackles the hard questions about when and how to take institutional funding beyond the seed stage.

Randy’s the street-smart champion behind dozens of startup founders, as well as massive exits of his own including iPivot (Intel) and Tarari (LSI.) His years of real-world experience in management, growth, and strategic M&A make this an unmissable session packed with concrete advice for participants.

Key take-aways include:
– How do you know when you are ready to take the leap to a Series A Round?
– Are you sure you have the right co-founders?
– What’s the best way to structure the company?
– How important is a business plan?
– How—or even if—do you take money at this stage?
– How mature should your product development and deployment be?
– How soon do you need to have real paying customers?
– What are the top reasons why all of this may not matter, given that failure is such a likely outcome?

Join Randy in this session and the previous sentence is less likely to be true.