How to Find and Invest in the Next Billion-Dollar Startups!

Learn how to find the right startups, build a profitable investing portfolio, and beat the S&P by aiming for mega-hits through early, small bets and your own independent investing.

Learn to assess startup risk and navigate terms to build a startup portfolio through due diligence and informed decision making.

Apply Blankenship's startup valuation method, scoring people, product, process, traction, and financials for a 100-point total. Investments scale with scores from 90 to 95 and beyond, up to 50 million.

Learn why our valuation methods stay strict to protect investors and save startups time, by using objective criteria and rigorous due diligence to present only the best startups.

Explore the traits and skills of visionary billion-dollar founders, including passion, calculated risk-taking, fear of inaction, continuous reading and learning, and unwavering dedication to stay ahead of the competition.

Explore the three core roles behind a billion-dollar startup—hacker, hustler, and growth hacker—and learn red flags to watch for, such as outsourcing everything, feature creeping, and hiring.

Identify startup founders using paste x factors—passionate, ambiverts, calculated risk takers, erudite and well-read, and dedicated and all-in—to boost founder success.

Identify four founder archetypes: dropout geniuses, rebellious challengers, underdogs and dyslexics, and self-empowered visionaries, and learn to spot narratives that signal strong investment potential.

Explore what ambiverts are and why investors value founders who listen, speak strategically, and hyper-focus on a niche topic; identify early adopters who dominate their category.

Discover how to spot ambivert founders by balancing introvert and extrovert traits, using interviews and listening-based due diligence to guide angel investments.

Invest in ambivert founders who balance speaking and listening, as Originals by Adam Grant show they outperform strong extroverts and introverts in sales.

Read up on each founder's topic, ask open-ended questions, and differentiate yourself by following up with a phone call within 48 hours or a thoughtful card.

Discover how to spot calculated risk takers by evaluating founders who avoid first-to-market hype, pair with co-founders, build an MVP with proven demand, and invest their own money.

The inaction principle shows that fearless action, not fear of failure, drives startup success, illustrated by Originals insights and quotes from Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling.

Discover the top 5 startup failures in history and why failure drives breakthrough products. Learn from notable founders, omissions, and the fear of inaction shaping billion-dollar startup outcomes.

Identify founders who fear inaction by asking five key questions about motivation, fault for failures, whether to move on, and the mission before failure to reveal ego-driven red flags.

Identify erudite founders who read prolifically, share knowledge, question the status quo, and learn new languages; assess investable talent with four key questions.

Embrace the all-in founder mindset: commit full-time, avoid part-time ventures, and sacrifice sleep for long-term value, illustrated by Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Tory Burch.

Use seven questions to score startups via the Blankenship method, seeking 90 out of 100 by evaluating founders, money exposure, and the five parts—people, product, process, traction, financials.

Identify future billion-dollar founders who are busy on campus, in incubators and accelerators, erudite, and active in meetups; they let you pitch when they see potential.

Explore how part one profiles people who built billion-dollar empires, such as Harry Potter, Apple, and Virgin Media, using 100 Blankenship's valuation method and noting dinero, Shopify, and Stripe.

Discover three must-read books for building billion-dollar startups: Zero to One, Hooked, and Kings of races, detailing monopolies, habit-forming products, and calculated investing.

Identify the core product by asking six key questions, including excitement, longevity, customer sentiment, market size, skeptics, and repeat purchases, to guide startup investments.

Apply the elevator framework to evaluate a startup’s product and spot billion-dollar potential. Check excitement, brand potential, evangelical products, verified demand, growth, total addressable market, open sharing, and repeat business.

Apply the Blankenship startup valuation method to assess startups with a 100-point score across five components: people, product, process, traction, and financials. Guide investment decisions from seed to IPO.

Assess a product by whether you enjoy using it and would invest in its long-term potential. Measure your excitement to evangelize the product every time you log on.

Learn why startup products fail under the no way framework—no market demand, complexity, clones, or timing—and how simple, revolutionary products win investors.

Discover your next product by using it and getting excited; those feelings guide you to invest in companies you love, which could become the next billion-dollar startups.

Evaluate if a startup's product has billion-dollar brand potential by assessing competitors' presence, turning the product name into a verb, and creating a product monopoly to endure 20 years.

Discover how to spot billion-dollar startups by assessing evangelical adoption and addictiveness, using Apple, Facebook, and Potter girls case studies to gauge word-of-mouth potential.

Apply the five-step trust but verify process to determine verified demand. Review Google Analytics and exponential growth, interview paying customers, verify QuickBooks and tax returns, and observe interactions.

Analyze whether startups achieve sustainable monthly recurring revenue growth, focusing on first-year linear growth of 5–10% or higher, or exponential growth, and distinguish pre-revenue user growth from revenue growth.

Evaluate the total addressable market as the revenue opportunity, and apply the five and five rule: target a $5B TAM with 5% share to reach a $1B company.

Identify the open sharing phenomenon (OSP) by seeing if users freely share logins and access. Validate a hot product like Netflix or Facebook through neighbors and invitation codes.

Evaluate significant repeat business by tracking at least 80 percent unique customers returning within a year, monitor churn, LTV, CAC, and net profit to assess subscription models like SAS.

The lecture applies the Blankenship valuation method to Apple’s trajectory, assessing elevator pitch, excitement, brand potential, evangelical products, verified demand, and repeat customers, showing startups can score highly despite imperfection.

Explore how the Blankenship valuation method scores startup products, using Facebook's 2004 launch as a case study to weigh eight metrics like MVP, TAM, open sharing, and brand potential.

Explore how to apply the Blankenship valuation method to startups like Facebook, using eight objective metrics to compare ventures and assess startup investment risk.

Apply the Blankenship startup valuation method to Virgin brands, showing six of eight metrics justify investment despite imperfect scores, and highlighting brand potential, net growth, and market reach.

See how J.K. Rowling built a $20 billion empire from a simple idea to empower kids, overcoming rejection and turning vision into a lasting phenomenon for startups.

Analyze how Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling built a twenty billion dollar empire through a highly engaging product with strong brand potential that resonates with both children and adults.

Apply Blankenship's valuation method to assess a startup's process and traction using Rosss scale. Score 90+ for seed rounds to $20 million and 95+ for Series A to $50 million.

Define and connect process and traction to deliver products seamlessly, scale from hand delivery to scalable operations, and build brand names that become billion-dollar companies through new customers.

Align your startup with a clear process to drive amazing traction, delivering products efficiently to both B2B and B2C customers and creating a seamless delivery system.

Learn to establish clear roles for process within the founding team—designate who leads R&D, sales, and growth, so investors trust traction and invest confidently.

Identify three essential founding roles - hacker, hustler, and growth hacker - who build an in-house MVP in 30 days, sell before launching, and grow with leadership and social media.

enter year two with clear specialist roles and focused core functions, hire like a boss, and assign founding teammates to sales, maintenance, inventory, and code.

Identify how clear founding roles drive unicorn potential, as shown by Buffer and Narrow, and learn to assess startup teams for growth and investment from day one.

Identify startups with clear roles for founders by evaluating five building issues: building in a vacuum, unwillingness to share tasks, inability to delegate minor tasks, outsourcing, and unclear leadership.

Outline clear founding team roles and acknowledge manual processes are okay in the first year, while automating the delivery process to scale and make money while you sleep.

The case study shows how three founders built a manual, craigslist-driven lodging service into a scalable Airbnb marketplace by rebranding in 2009 and automating listings after joining Y Combinator.

Explore how Facebook emerged in 2004 from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm, built by hand from the Harvard directory, while earlier projects like Face Mash preceded it.

Explore how Zuckerberg and co-founders used early growth hacking, combining partially automated data from campus housing systems with a PHP platform, evolving Facebook to fully automated.

Ask core process questions to identify clear leadership and a plan to scale and automate the product, ensuring investability for billion-dollar startups.

Assess whether the product creates an actual need or a perceived need. Consider Airbnb and Facebook as examples to illustrate how creating dependence can become a need for users.

Examine how brands like De Beers and Procter & Gamble created artificial demand for diamond jewelry and odor-neutralizing products through bold marketing campaigns, illustrating how markets are shaped.

Explore three Ross rules about product needs: verify a need within the first year with a viable product, and distinguish wants from needs to build believers and dependency.

Explore how startups create perceived needs and empower both consumers and renters, turning wants into needs through platforms such as Airbnb, Facebook, and Buffer, and driving traffic and revenue.

Learn to talk to the community and establish thought leadership to show investors the startup as a leader in its niche, using growth hacking and content publishing.

Discover how Joel of Buffer and Jesca Ma showcase thought leadership with open source information, transparency, and content creation to guide startup investors.

Understand your customers and competitors to adapt to evolving interests and needs. Use feedback to build an adaptable product pipeline that can respond to future demands.

Learn how startups respond to customers with a 60-minute response, test responsiveness as an investor, and balance making things right with profitability and strategic boundaries.

Prioritize energy savings, because startups win when they talk to customers, sell what people want, and investors reward leaders who create conferences rather than just attend them.

Use capturer score and process and traction score to reach 40 points, evaluating customer understanding (b2b or b2c), community feedback, and focus with blink of starters method and valuation methods.

Explore startup economics, term sheets and convertible notes, equity splits, and fundraising from seed to series a, helping founders and investors understand valuation and control.

Learn how founders and investors navigate raising and allocating smart capital, including who, what, where, when, why, and how to negotiate term sheets for private startup investments.

Discover how to evaluate startups by assessing founders, economics, and control, learn about term sheets and valuations, and know where to invest capital for smart, profitable outcomes.

Explore how to evaluate startup economics and control, determine timing, and negotiate the best angel deal using metrics, terms, and a 90+ investment threshold.

Structure your startup before fundraising by forming a Delaware C corp, securing core corporate documents, and mapping an equitable equity plan with vesting.

Assess startup value with a 90-point seed-round framework toward a 20 million valuation, using Bourke's method, the comp method, risk factor summation, discounted cash flow, and asset base.

Apply Blankenship's formula: people, product, process, traction, financials, to assess a startup's valuation, and conduct competitive market analysis and accurate growth forecasts to determine reasonable investment targets.

Discover how corporate bylaws define a company's structure and control, outlining board roles, officers, committees, quorum, meeting rules, voting and proxy rights, removal of officers, and amendments.

Define a founder-friendly term sheet that standardizes terms across deal flow, clarifies valuation, price of securities, and concurring rights, and avoids option pools, legal fees, expiration, and confidentiality.

Learn five rules to secure the best deal for startups and investors. Include 30-day due diligence and mutual value, signing a deal, and focusing on next steps with updates.

Learn the difference between pre-money and post-money valuations and how to calculate them: pre-money equals post-money minus investment; post-money equals investment divided by equity percentage.

Compare common stock and preferred stock to understand investor expectations and equity form. Identify liquidation preferences, voting rights, and dividends that affect payouts in liquidity events.

Learn how conversion rights on a term sheet convert preferred stock to common stock, including optional and mandatory conversion, one-to-one rates, and liquidity event implications.

Convertible notes convert at the next round’s price using a discount (often 20%). A valuation cap sets the maximum conversion price and avoids uncapped notes, ensuring predictable equity.

Compare capped versus uncapped notes in startup fundraising. Valuation caps fix future equity, while uncapped convertible notes create uncertainty and dilution risk for investors and founders.

Understand the safe, a simple agreement for future equity invented by Y Combinator, granting equity rights in future rounds with a valuation cap and discount, not debt.

Explore how a safe agreement accelerates startup funding with a simple, flexible future-equity instrument centered on the valuation cap, enabling high-resolution fundraising and fast closes, while warning inexperienced investors.

Unpack the subscription agreement as the binding investment purchase document, covering purchase price, representations and warranties, board governance, investor rights, covenants, transfer restrictions, and dispute resolution.

Analyze dividends on the term sheet; startups rarely pay cash distributions, dividends may arise on preferred stock or conversion, and understand non cumulative versus cumulative rights to beat the S&P.

Explain liquidation preference on the term sheet, how it determines who gets what in a sale, merger, or dissolution, and why 1x to 3x with participation matters.

Discover how protective provisions give investors veto power on key actions, and why standard provisions covering ownership changes, bylaws, dividends, and directors avoid micromanagement while protecting economics.

Master pro rata rights, the option to invest in follow-on rounds to maintain ownership as startups grow from seed to initial public offering, while benefiting from participation rights.

Understand drag along rights, which force founders and shareholders to vote for a liquidity event such as a merger or listing. Negotiation focuses on thresholds like 67 percent and removal.

Learn how pay-to-play provisions require existing investors to invest pro rata to maintain their preferred rights, why pro rata and preemptive rights matter, and that these terms are optional.

Explain employee options pools and four-year vesting with a one-year cliff, aligning founders, employees, and investors while preserving incentives through equity.

Seven pre-seed steps: form a C corp, craft a one sentence pitch, prove traction, outline realistic growth, plan for what-ifs, seek friends and family feedback, craft a seed deck.

Compare Y Combinator, 500 Startups, and Techstars as incubators; each offers similar funding (120k for 7%, 125k for 5%, 100k for 6%) and different term sheets (safe for YC).

Explore bonus resources for startups and investors, covering the five pillars of billion-dollar companies—people, process, product, traction, and financials—with practical tips on hiring, product validation, sales, testing, and financial statements.

Investors and founders learn four must-know languages - Ruby, Python, JavaScript, and PHP - to build websites and MVPs quickly, using starter resources like One Month, Code Mentor, and Code Academy.

Learn five guaranteed tips to sell your product and boost startup profitability, including time and money investment, warm introductions, questions, what-if pitches, and easy signup.

Find what people want to buy with five top websites, including Google Trends, product line, and our YouTube channel, Angel Kings, plus eBay and Amazon for last-sold data and reviews.

Uncover five lessons from good to great by Jim Collins: good is enemy of great, mergers don't create greatness, focus on what you do well, and greatness is industry agnostic.

Discover five bold lessons from zero to one: be original, build a monopoly within rules, profit from niches, own secrets and proprietary tech, and assemble a trusted founding team.

Learn to read a balance sheet by parsing assets, liabilities, and capital, including current and fixed assets and equity, where assets equal liabilities plus equity, net difference zero.

Learn to read a cash flow statement, focusing on net operating cash flow and the three categories—operating, investing, and financing—to assess startup health and guide investment decisions.