First, you have to be VERY arrogant to think you are the only person in the world who has thought of your idea. EVERY time I have ever had a ‘unique’ idea I have ultimately found at least ten other people working on something very similar. Additionally, hundreds, if not thousands, of other folks have likely ‘thought’ about my idea, but failed to act on it. For example, at ShopSavvy we struggle to keep our focus narrow, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have ideas for other potentially very cool apps that leverage our technology. Lots of people outside of ShopSavvy contact us all of the time with their ‘unique’ ideas. They almost always want us to sign an NDA so they can reveal their idea to us – an idea that has likely occurred to us previously given our focus on the space. We began licensing our technology (barcode scanning SDK and product API) so that we could help these people develop their ideas. Nine out of ten people who bring their ideas to us never take us up on our offer to license our technology, but hundreds of companies have – building all sorts of applications.

Second, suing someone for ‘stealing’ your idea is plain silly. All of the time, energy and capital that you will spend suing the ‘idea thief’ would be better spent actually turning your idea into a business. The sad sad truth is that your idea wasn’t all that great to begin with and the person or company that stole your idea will fail. Most entrepreneurs must ‘pivot’ multiple times before their company turns into an instant success. Stay out of the court room – get back in the board room.

Finally, Sand Hill Road is an amazing resource for entrepreneurs. Billions of dollars to be had by entrepreneurs all on a single road in a single town. At no other point in history has been easier to raise as much money as quickly – don’t burn your bridge. Raj may be right or wrong. Nirav Tolia might have ‘stolen’ Raj’s idea, but the solution is not to sue Benchmark. We have all heard the stories about bad actors in the Valley, but the vast majority of VCs are professionals who are great to work with. Find a bad actor? The solution is to NOT work with them again. By suing a VC, Raj is forever burning his bridge to Sand Hill Road. Do you think he will ever be able to get a meeting to pitch an idea again? I doubt it. Don’t commit suicide to get even…

Tip One: Make sure you are dissatisfied with your current job before entertaining a meeting with a prospective employer.

Why are you willing to consider another offer? Understanding the ‘why’ is very important. If you are underpaid or under appreciated have you talked to your boss? What would make you happier? Have you discussed these issues with your boss? If not, meet with him and talk about how to get your job back on track before taking a meeting with a new employer. Never make a threat, instead ask your boss for career advice – ask him to help you build a road map for your career at the company.

Tip Two: Before you resign make sure you are ‘sold’ on the new company so that a counter offer won’t persuade you to stay.

If the only reason you are considering making a move is money – I bet you aren’t working hard enough to find the right company to work for. Sure, more money is great, but if your current employer matches or beats the new offer and you are persuaded to stay you are likely committing career suicide. The Capital H Group conducted a study of counteroffers and determined that after accepting a counteroffer the average employee is with the company for less than one year. If you really were dissatisfied with your job more money won’t make you happier. Your dissatisfaction will bleed into every part of your work and personal life. Employees who are dissatisfied with their jobs are 75% less likely to get promoted, are 50% more likely to get a divorce and shorten their lives by an average of seven years. Finally, if you accept a counteroffer your relationships with your coworkers will likely be damaged. They may be envious that you turned in your notice and were rewarded with a raise – they may wonder if you really deserved the raise (this is a good reason companies should not make counteroffers as well). In summary (via):

1. The current employer is attempting to cover their tush. When you quit they lose money. When you quit the manager looks bad. Better to keep you on board until they can find a replacement. If that happens your pink slip will follow in short order.
2. You become a fidelity risk to your current employer. You’ve threatened to quit once. It’s only a matter of time before you do it again, and smart companies won’t allow themselves to be put into this situation. You will never be perceived the same to them once you’ve threatened to quit and decided to stay.
3. Any situation which causes an employee to seek outside offers is suspect. For example, if money is your issue why does it take a full court press for your employer to realize they need to pay you more? If you’re worth more money now, why weren’t you worth it 15 minutes earlier?
4. The reasons for you wanting to quit will still remain, even if they are temporarily shaded.
5. Quality, well-run companies won’t give counteroffers…ever! How would you feel if one of your employees forced you into something? ”If you don’t X, then I’m quitting.” I know I’d be angry. I’d be more than angry. If they don’t like working for you then they should go.

Tip Three: Don’t buy an employers threat to sue your or the new company if you quit.

Some employers may skip the counteroffer route and simply threaten to sue you if you take the new offer. First, you don’t really want to work for a company that threatens to sue you. Second, in all likelihood they won’t sue you because they don’t have a case. Here in Texas the law says that the loser pays – it makes it hard to use lawsuits as intimidation. Your employer doesn’t have a case and he knows it and once he realizes that if you call his bluff he will have to pay your legal expenses he will drop the matter. In fact, your new employer will likely cover your legal costs if they are really interested in having you on board (ShopSavvy will).

If you have ever attempted to raise capital for your startup idea you are in pretty good company. Once you have actually raised capital for your startup idea you are part of a relatively exclusive club. Your close friends and family (who know how long you have been working on raising a round) will congratulate you. The other members of your team will want to celebrate. The PR folks will prepare a press release and try to get TechCrunch interested in the funding story. But, if you are like me, you might not feel entirely comfortable accepting congratulations or celebrating or even getting some TechCrunch love.

Raising money is a lot of work. First, you have to come up with a startup idea that resonates with investors – if it doesn’t resonate they won’t meet with you. Of course getting an investor to meet with you based on an elevator pitch is pretty easy once you figure out what sort of investments they are looking for (assuming that is the sort of business you want to start). Once the meetings begin you will experience a roller coaster of excitement, disappointment and despair. Some investors will LOVE your idea, your team and generally be ready to put a term sheet together only to learn their partners aren’t the least bit interested in having your deal on their website. If you are lucky you will hear no a LOT. If you aren’t as lucky you will hear a lot of maybes. But eventually, you might get a term sheet. Of course once you get the term sheet you are on your own 10th yard line. You still must negotiate the terms and agree on a final term sheet. Once you have signed the term sheet you are on the 50th yard line. Of course sometimes closing is harder than you think. Papering disclosures, employment agreements, charters, financial statements – all can throw a wrench into a deal. When you finally get the wire you are likely so exhausted you may feel relieved, but I would argue that you are actually back on your own 10th yard line.

The congratulations, celebrations and press coverage should make you feel uncomfortable. Your team won’t understand at first, but raising outside capital is a HUGE responsibility and you should start feeling the pressure at about the same time the wire hits the bank. Your investor believed in you, your team and your idea – enough to put their hard earned treasure at risk. While your Mom, Dad and close friends were more than happy to cheer you on – how many of them wrote checks to fund your deal? Maybe a few, but generally encouragement is free. Your investor is not looking for a standard return – he is specifically looking for outsized returns 10x is the norm. For every dollar you spend you have to figure out how to make it worth $10. People who can do that are few and far in between. If you think the venture backed entrepreneurs is exclusive – try getting in the ‘provided outsized returns to investors’ club – it is downright lonely there. Outside capital isn’t for every startup or every entrepreneur, but if you decide to accept it be sure you understand the responsibility you have placed firmly on your shoulders.

Raising money is a lot of work. First, you have to come up with a startup idea that resonates with investors – if it doesn’t resonate they won’t meet with you. Of course getting an investor to meet with you based on an elevator pitch is pretty easy once you figure out what sort of investments they are looking for (assuming that is the sort of business you want to start). Once the meetings begin you will experience a roller coaster of excitement, disappointment and despair. Some investors will LOVE your idea, your team and generally be ready to put a term sheet together only to learn their partners aren’t the least bit interested in having your deal on their website. If you are lucky you will hear no a LOT. If you aren’t as lucky you will hear a lot of maybes. But eventually, you might get a term sheet. Of course once you get the term sheet you are on your own 10th yard line. You still must negotiate the terms and agree on a final term sheet. Once you have signed the term sheet you are on the 50th yard line. Of course sometimes closing is harder than you think. Papering disclosures, employment agreements, charters, financial statements – all can throw a wrench into a deal. When you finally get the wire you are likely so exhausted you may feel relieved, but I would argue that you are actually back on your own 10th yard line.

The congratulations, celebrations and press coverage should make you feel uncomfortable. Your team won’t understand at first, but raising outside capital is a HUGE responsibility and you should start feeling the pressure at about the same time the wire hits the bank. Your investor believed in you, your team and your idea – enough to put their hard earned treasure at risk. While your Mom, Dad and close friends were more than happy to cheer you on – how many of them wrote checks to fund your deal? Maybe a few, but generally encouragement is free. Your investor is not looking for a standard return – he is specifically looking for outsized returns 10x is the norm. For every dollar you spend you have to figure out how to make it worth $10. People who can do that are few and far in between. If you think the venture backed entrepreneurs is exclusive – try getting in the ‘provided outsized returns to investors’ club – it is downright lonely there. Outside capital isn’t for every startup or every entrepreneur, but if you decide to accept it be sure you understand the responsibility you have placed firmly on your shoulders.

“That’s right…it’s time to get your applications in for the fall class.  We are looking for up to 10 of the best and brightest b2b tech startups from around the world.  Check out the companies we’ve funded so far here.  They have gone on to raise tier one venture capital, angel rounds, and generate significant revenue.  Will you be next?

Named as one of the top 10 seed accelerators by the Kauffman Foundation, Tech Wildcatters has proven that it can get your startup to the next level.”

Here are the main dates and deadlines:

July 24th, 2011          Application deadline.
July 27th, 2011          Finalists for quick pitch day will be notified.
Aug 3rd, 2011            Fall quick pitch day.
Aug 10th, 2011          Fall offers sent out.
Sept. 6th, 2011           Fall orientation begins.
Dec. 8th, 2011            Pitch Day!
Dec. 16th, 2011          Fall program ends

Of course we didn’t just come up with this idea in a vacuum, instead we talked to some of the best and brightest minds in the Bay Area, Boulder and Dallas to make sure we were on the right track. As a direct result of those conversations we have put together an all-star cast of angel investors including Jeff Clavier, Mark Cuban, Dave McClure, David Cohen, Jay Adelson, Gabriella Draney and Aaron Patzer.

The first GreyScale pitch was to Jeff Clavier who has invested in startups like Truveo (acquired by AOL), MyBlogLog (acquired by Yahoo), Tapulous (acquired by Disney) and Milo (acquired by ebay). I think he liked what he heard because his response was, “Let me have the banking coordinates.” I knew I was on to something. The next investor I reached out to was Mark Cuban who had two words for me, “I’m in”. I was getting a little cocky at this point, but despite that the next few pitches went equally as well. When I pitched the idea to Dave McClure who has invested in over 100 startups including Twilio and SlideShare he immediately indicated he was in. I had similar experiences with other investors like David Cohen of TechStars, Jay Adelson formerly of Digg, Gabriella Draney of TechWildcatters and Aaron Patzer CEO of Mint.com. Once we had a rockstar cast of angel investors we knew we had to move forward.

We figured it would only cost us $10-20 to build GreyScale, but there was so much investor demand we had to increase the round size to $41 and even afterward we had to turn some investors away.

Taking a page from Jack Dorsey‘s playbook I have decided to divide my time between ShopSavvy and GreyScale and commit to give 200% to both endeavors. You can read the press release here.

About the company: FiveRuns has developed a new breed of systems management software a simple, straightforward, open source answer for your monitoring, analyzing, reporting and predicting needs. FiveRuns is a sleek, hosted web application built with the user in mind. Perfect for IT professionals using open source software such as Linux, Apache, JBoss, Tomcat, and MySQL, it also fully supports those maintaining traditional systems running Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris, or Mac OS X.

About the CEO: Steven Smith started FiveRuns with the goal of bringing a simpler, smarter solution to the Systems Management market which has been stagnant for over a decade. Prior to FiveRuns, Steven was the CTO of Tonic Software and SVP of R&D at Neon Systems. He was also Founder and CEO of Relational Development, Inc., a software company specializing in System Management solutions from 1991 to 1998. Steven has seven patents pending in the areas of dynamic program modification and advanced performance instrumentation techniques, and holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Troy State University in Troy, Alabama.

Funding: FiveRuns closed their Series A round in September 2005 and plans to raise a second round in the fall of 2006.

Why Texas: Steve explains, “Texas is a great place for any business, but especially a high-tech business. Talent pools are enormous in the major metropolitan areas and the cost of living is still very low when compared to other high-tech areas of the country.”