🎉 Welcome Cohort 11 Crazy how fast time flies! We’re beyond excited to introduce our 11th cohort joining us this Summer. Discover more about these amazing students and our alumni all available here ! 🛠 Top Tech Tools Your Startup Should Know The startup ecosystem is ever-evolving and it’s changing fast. Every day new tools are being created, others are becoming obsolete, and even more, are being adopted by startups at an exponential rate. To stay competitive and keep pace, startups need to understand the latest trends and best practices in order to succeed. We’ve curated a list of simple and powerful startup tech tools you should know about. We’ll provide an overview of each tool, share its pros and cons, and suggest when and how you can start using them today. Hosting: Firebase or Supabase Authentication: Auth0 (or hosting/micro) Microservices & Backends: Buildable Web (& Mobile) Frameworks: Vue.js (or React) Design: Figma + Tailwind CSS (or Material/Bootstrap Library) Marketing & CRM: Mailchimp and HubSpot Analytics: Google Analytics or Mixpanel Project Management: ZenHub Customer Onboarding: Onboard.io As the startup ecosystem evolves, so does the technology that drives it. This is by no means an exhaustive list. New tools are being created, others are becoming obsolete, and even more, are being adopted by startups at an exponential rate. If you’re building a tool to support startup development, we would love to hear from you. Get in touch with us here . Interested to learn about specific insights of each of the tools listed above? Keep reading here . 📄 Term Sheets When it comes to a VC investment, you may have heard about the necessity of a term sheet. But why is there so much importance placed on this document? It is simply a contract that outlines the key terms of a deal between the startup and a VC and does not represent a legal promise to invest. The “Five Documents” that follow a term sheet – stock purchase agreement, investors rights agreement, certificate of incorporation, ROFR, and voting agreement. Terms Valuation - What is the value of the business today? ESOP - Usually, 7-15% of the option pool is created in aggregate before new money comes in Board Seats - Formal addition of investor(s) and independent board members Vesting - Allocates a % of the founders’ shares back to the company, and gives them back over time No-Shop - Cannot bring deal terms to other investors to drive up valuation / get more favourable terms General Terms Liquidation Preference - Upon liquidation, returns money to preferred shareholders before common shareholders (usually 1x) Participation - Upon liquidation, investors get liquidation preference returned and the remaining distributions as well, based on ownership Pro-Rata Rights - Allows investors to participate in the future financing rounds to maintain their current position in the company ROFR - The right to enter into a transaction with a person or company before anyone else can (i.e. sale of shares/entire company) Drag Along - Enables a majority shareholder to force a minority shareholder to join in the deal (i.e. get acquired by a larger company) The lesson doesn’t stop here, there’s much more to cover! Take a peek into our course accessible to anyone: RippleX Fellowship 💡 Fellow Spotlight Maggie Thai - Co-founder and CMO of JAMH Navigating sustainability and climate change can be a difficult task, let alone making impactful decisions that adhere to the Environmental Social Governance (ESG) criteria. Introducing Maggie Thai, Co-founder and CMO of JAMH from cohort #9 who is developing a suite of information management tools for Environmental Social Governance (ESG) and Carbon Markets information that empower decision-makers to build an informed and sustainable world. By simply democratizing the availability of valid and accurate information, their team has been able to impact Fortune 500 companies such as TC Energy, Brookfield Renewable and Enbridge while simultaneously increasing their budget to nearly $100,000 within the first year and a half of their operation. Their most recent and very interesting product, Carbonlytics, is an international carbon policy database, hoping to use it as a stepping stone to creating a fully automated carbon project developer. Their achievements span across Canada with participation and awards in multiple ecosystems including Platform Calgary’s Summer Incubator Program, Toronto Metropolitan University’s DMZ Basecamp, League of Innovators LABS Program and The Accelerator. JAMH has also received pre-acceptance into the Fuel Accelatorer, an Arkansas-based innovation program later this Summer. You can learn more about Maggie on the Calgary Citizen where she was recognized as a Top 10 Entrepreneur and Innovator under 30 to keep your eye on. Sponsored by Jeeves . Interested in being featured? Looking to share exciting news? Please reach out to Turja at turja@rippleventures.com. Authored by Turja Chowdhury (Cohort #9).