Will Little @wclittle Subscribe

Managing Director at Prota Ventures.
I'm a bioengineer-turned-software-developer and venture builder/investor. Learn more about me professionally on LinkedIn, personally here, and check out the podcast I host, Ventures.

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 Will Little

Sep 18, 2019
Startups Startup Fundraising Investor Decks

Investor pitch deck and communication strategies: pre-seed and seed

For better or worse, the practice of selling anything of significant value in the world of business involves pitch decks. This includes, of course, “selling” your next funding round to investors. While there is no lack of educational content out there recommending an ideal slide order for your deck (e.g. problem, solution, market size, traction, competitors, team, etc…), this article will guide you - an early stage startup CEO - through the nuances and differences of pre-seed and seed pitches, including tips for how to communicate with investors before and after the close. The more efficiently you can get in front of the appropriate angel investors and venture capitalists, the faster you can finish your round and get back to running your business.
Will Little

Aug 1, 2019
Startups Startup Fundraising Venture Capital

Raising your first outside round: How to navigate accelerators, angel investors, and venture capitalists

As 2020 approaches, the market for raising your first round outside of friends and family - traditionally called a “seed” round - has changed dramatically. There are now a wide variety of financial products to fit early stages of your company (i.e. there are no longer standard amounts for early rounds, and a maddeningly large number of accelerators and venture capitalists (VCs) are competing for your attention. In such an environment, the global noise of books, podcasts, videos, and blogs - i.e. marketing material - often steer founders in the wrong direction; i.e. away from local angel investors and micro-VCs who will most likely fill your round.
Will Little

Apr 30, 2019
Blockchains Proof-of-Stake Web3

How (and why) to evaluate validator participation in Proof-of-Stake blockchain communities

While the core promise of blockchain technology involves data security, decentralization, and transactional speed/reliability at scale, the main use cases we’ve seen thus far have been limited to long-term value storage (e.g. bitcoin) and programmatic transactions of digital tokens (e.g. ethereum). Understandably, to prove the initial usefulness of the technology, these early networks have optimized their protocols for decentralization and data integrity, rather than transaction speeds and fast finality.
Will Little

Jan 30, 2019
Blockchains Proof-of-Stake Livepeer Web3

Livepeer is a brilliantly designed crypto network for delivering scaled value (blockchain pioneers, take note)

Well, it’s official: the lofty promises made during the 2017 crypto frenzy have come up dramatically short. The mad rush of teams raising insane amounts of money that year have not (yet) produced mass-adoption of decentralized applications. As every experienced startup investor and founder knows (especially in hindsight), raising a ton of money without a product — let alone a proven market that wants that product — is a recipe for disappointment.
Will Little

Dec 13, 2018
Blockchains Cosmos Network Smart Contracts Web3

Smart Contracts vs. Application-Specific Blockchains

Besides the addition and subtraction of numbers on a distributed ledger (i.e. cryptocurrencies), blockchains hold the power to provide most — if not all — of the services that centralized computing can provide. Thus, as the community of builders continues to grow, we have seen the very beginning of not only decentralized money, but also decentralized file storage, computing services, financial services, real-life asset ownership records, supply-chain management, personal identity, energy distribution, health records, governance, and more.
Will Little

Oct 8, 2018
Startups Startup Fundraising

How to raise and spend "friends & family" money most efficiently for your startup

There is a reason why the earliest round of capital infusion into a startup is often called the Friends, Family, and Fools round: most founders at this stage usually take money from their own savings and/or inexperienced startup investors, burn through cash haphazardly, mess up their cap table by giving away too much equity (often to too many people), literally break the law by violating securities regulations, and/or fall victim to freelancers and agencies that are happy to work for money but don’t advocate for the best interest of the company.
Will Little

Sep 18, 2018
Blockchains Proof-of-Stake Web3

An introduction to Proof-of-Stake token yields: Assessing risks and rewards

Although the latest wave of blockchain hype has calmed down this year, the ferocity of teams working on the underlying technology continues to increase. The time is fast approaching when scalable, secure, and decentralized solutions for many core areas of technology (computing, file storage, payments, etc…) will be ready for application developers. When this collective tipping point occurs, there will likely be a rapid transition of user adoption from Web 2.0 apps (centralized) to Web 3.0 apps (decentralized).
Will Little

Jul 18, 2018
Blockchains Cosmos Network Web3

An introduction to the Cosmos Network: Why the Internet of Blockchains will help drive mass adoption of decentralized applications

While the scaling problem for blockchains is well understood and being addressed by many teams, what is often overlooked is the interoperability problem and why it matters for the future of crypto. Without protocols in place to enable automated communication between chains, our decentralized projects will continue to remain in silos and our overall ecosystem will remain fractured.
Will Little

May 14, 2018
Blockchains Proof-of-Stake About Will Web3

A primer on Proof-of-Stake and why it matters for the future of blockchains

There is a major, multi-faceted shift happening right now in the world of crypto. It’s difficult to see given how noisy, complex, disjointed, and interdisciplinary the information flow and topics are in the community; but new consensus protocols combined with a maturing regulatory landscape are setting the stage to unify four groups that are often in conflict within a blockchain project...
Will Little

Mar 31, 2018
Health Science

The link between acrylamide, coffee, and cancer: Here’s what scientists know (and don’t know)

A judge in California ruled this week that Starbucks, 7-Eleven, and many other businesses that sell coffee need to warn consumers via food labels about the ingestion of acrylamide. California’s Prop 65 states that businesses selling products that contain one or more of 65 chemicals shown by scientists to cause cancer and/or reproductive disease must give customers a “clear and reasonable” heads up.
Will Little

Dec 14, 2017
Health Science Keto

The Science of Healthy Fats

The world is waking up to the reality that sugar and refined carbohydrates are more to blame for the diseases of western civilization than salt or fats. Still, there remains confusion about the health implications of consuming fat. What does modern research have to say about the effects of saturated fat, omega-3s/6s/9s, and short/medium/long-chain triglycerides? What are nutritionists referring to when they use the term “healthy fats”, and what exactly makes fat healthy versus unhealthy?
Will Little

Dec 11, 2017
Blockchains Web3

How to buy bitcoin and trade cryptocurrencies: a step-by-step guide

While 2017 has been a massive year of growth for blockchains, obtaining cryptocurrencies and trading them is not for the faint of heart. In this article, my goal is to explain how to buy, store, and trade cryptocurrencies across multiple exchanges and a hardware wallet, including how to safely participate in token sales (aka Initial Coin Offerings, or ICOs).
Will Little

Nov 7, 2017
Startups Product Management

The five common mistakes founders make after a product launch

Congratulations, you’ve introduced your product to the world! You got media attention and a ton of new users and customers. Now what? Unfortunately, most founding teams become dazed and confused at this point and end up wasting important momentum.
Will Little

Oct 28, 2017
Health Science Keto

The science of salt and electrolytes (are we consuming enough?)

Modern science has revealed that we were wrong (and fooled) yet again. As it turns out, mineral deficiencies are likely more of a problem than we realize, as not consuming enough salt and electrolytes is both easy to do and dangerous for our health.
Will Little

Aug 27, 2017
Blockchains Web3

A Primer on Blockchains, Protocols, and Token Sales

Blockchains are changing the foundation of the global economy, and everyone is freaking out. Opinionated tribes are invoking civil wars and forking into new tribes. Multiple heated battles are happening simultaneously (mostly on social media) while only a few people on the outside understand what’s going on.