Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. The world of building profitable startups as the primary goal of Venture Capital would end in 1995.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 24, 2022

It remains to be seen what the outcomes will be in 2022 as the exit markets are less active and the IPO window is closed, but assuming the merger gets approved, we’ve already seen Activision’s $70 billion acquisition by Microsoft and Twitter’s potential $40 billion takeover by Elon Musk.

B2C 104

B2C IPO B2B 104

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Pierre Omidyar founded AuctionWeb in September of 1995, and its rise to fame is legendary. In November of this year, the company announced that it had achieved “substantially” more than $1B in revenue in the third quarter. Benchmark is an investor in Rover through a merger with DogVacay in 2017). Exchange of Goods Marketplaces.

Internet 88

Internet Matching Vertical Hosting 88

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The Golden Age (1970 – 1995): Build a growing business with a consistently profitable track record (after at least 5 quarters,) and go public when it’s time. Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability. (If

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

Until 1995 startups going public typically had a track record of revenue and profits. Netscape’s 1995 IPO changed the rules. Suddenly there was a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. One of the ways most predictable ways for an investor to sell these shares was to take a company “ public.”

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 299

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 2, 2012

That cap will now specifically apply to a broader group of small companies: those with annual gross revenues of $1 billion or less (adjusted for inflation), within a five-year interval from the sale of its first security. Over 85% of CEOs said that going public was not as attractive of an option as it was in 1995.

IPO 121

IPO Startup Florida Seed Capital 121

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

Google realized that being the way to find the world’s information was a blitzscalable market, thanks to the network effects in its AdWords revenue engine. If O’Reilly had that same insight in 1995, it could have been an amazing blitzscaling opportunity. But unless Airbnb agreed to a merger, it had only two options.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28