Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

The questions every startup or small business CEO needs to ask now are: What’s my Burn Rate and Runway? Burn Rate and Runway. To answer the first question, take stock of your current gross burn rate i.e. how much cash are you spending each month. What does your new business model look like? How do you know?

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Let’s take your revenue line. If you’re a consumer destination the revenue and COGS lines should tell me about how big your funnel is, how you fill the top end of the pipe and what your conversion rates will be. How many people will you hire in the first 24 months and in which sequence. Here’s why.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business 6 months. If you don’t have a strong balance sheet and can’t hire more people that’s fine — but understand this may lead to slower growth.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

But like many companies over the past five years it hired aggressively and probably had some degree of straying off of a core strategy and some amount of excess jobs relative to its current revenue forecasts and opportunities. ” It goes like this: What is your net burn rate? What is your cash balance?

Burn Rate 150

Burn Rate San Francisco Private Equity LP 150

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 1, 2010

If they *all* turn you down, then I strongly advocate that you either try to get revenues to prove them wrong, bootstrap user traction, spend your own cash, go with friends/family, or maybe, just maybe, take another look at your model. That being said, is low burn rate really what you should be optimizing for?

New York City 113

New York City New York Startup Burn Rate 113

Hippoland

DECEMBER 18, 2016

Raised $500k-$1.5M : In this range, you probably have a slightly bigger team – say 4-8 people, and some of these later hires are going to be commanding closer to market-rate salaries. On the flip side, you may be generating some revenues to offset costs. You are likely paying yourself $75k-$125k at this point.

Las Vegas 48

Las Vegas Salary Burn Rate San Francisco 48

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). The key is to be able to refute as many major hypotheses as you can.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117