Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

It was Steve Blank – creator of the “customer development” process, founder of E.piphany (a high profile CRM company in the late 90’s that IPO’d in 1999), instructor at both Stanford and Berkeley and author of a well read blog. But there was one that stood out above the rest as the one that “brought the house down.”

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

by Michael Woolf that is worth any startup founder reading to get a sense of perspective on the reality warp that is startup world during a frothy market such as 1997-1999, 2005-2007 or 2012-2014. (it is also the title of a fabulous book from Internet 1.0

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

In 1999 I was in Japan doing a strategy project for the board of directors of Sony. It’s strange to me to think that customers with years of experience would ever listen to twenty-something smarties from great MBA’s who have never worked in your industry before – but that’s a different story. Numbers are important.

Investment Bankers 415

Investment Bankers Mobile Software Review Japan 415

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

I started my first company in 1999 in London at the height of the dot com craze. This is part of my ongoing series Startup Lessons Building companies is hard work. We also had facilities in Dublin, Ireland where our company was initially founded. We went through the euphoria of massive exposure at the time of our [.].

Ireland 332

Ireland Startup 332

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

When I was raising money in late 1999 I had an investment team in Germany (I was in the UK) suggest that they should get a lower valuation than others because they were ex McKinsey guys and had better access to industry.

Finance 286

Finance Term Sheet Technical Review Warrant 286

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

My first company launched in 1999 and we were offering a SaaS document management in the cloud (we were called ASPs back then). I’ll always point out when I am.). I learned the domain lesson myself.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until we needed to raise money in April 2001 and then we got completely screwed.

Valuation 405

Valuation Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 405

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

I kept pointing to the artificial gains in the Nasdaq in 1999 and said, “just because you bought in Feb ’99 and sold in Sept ’99 for a large gain doesn’t meant the asset was correctly priced.&# My message to everybody at the time, “Sell! At dinner parties I was wrong for several years but I stuck to my guns.

Florida 299

Florida Technical Review San Antonio Los Angeles 299

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 15, 2010

In 1999 I was working in the London offices of Andersen Consulting. They also knew that I was from NorCal, which in 1999 was a huge bonus to foreign companies thinking about Internet strategies. Both Tyler & I are Nihon -files. They asked me if I would stay 6 months and do the project with them.

San Francisco 379

San Francisco Europe Japan Switzerland 379

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

I saw it myself in 1999-2002 when it was hard to charge for my product because all of my competitors raised large rounds of capital and were giving away their products free fueled by large VC rounds. Fred echoes my view that fewer firms is good for the industry and good for the companies we fund.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Early Stage Software Review 269

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

One of the successful investments was a company called Nigenisis, which ended becoming a public company in 1999. “As a result I got to see some deals and get involved with some deals and I made some investments with my own money. So I was an Angel investor from 1994 to 1996.

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

The world has changed much since I started my first company in 1999. Turn Your Organization Inside Out. This is part of my ongoing posts on Startup Advice. As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2013

Like most startup entrepreneurs, when I began my first company in 1999 I had no formal sales experience. This article originally appeared on Inc.com. I did have the wherewithal to visit potential customers and try to understand the pain points that I thought could be solved with our solution.

Sales 393

Sales Startup Framework Search 393

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

And it’s still less than I was paid at Accenture in 1999. My starting salary when I joined a VC fund as a partner at the age of 39 (and after 2 exits)? That’s less than most startup CEOs who have raised a few rounds of VC are paid. Why did I join as a partner in a VC fund on that salary? I was investing in myself.

Founder 409

Founder Salary Startup Early Stage 409

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2011

When I first started as a startup CEO in 1999 there were no guides on raising venture capital. This article originally ran on TechCrunch. tl;dr version: If you’re an entrepreneur or VC or will be working in this industry - buy this. There were no explanations for all of the confusing details outlined in a term sheet. Drag along rights?

Liquidation Preference 304

Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Cap Table Participating Preferred 304

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. I am very grateful to my friend Zoli Erdos for finding this retro posting for me at web.archive.org. I had kept a personal blog for more than a year and was new at keeping a professional blog.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

By 1999 we had grown into the largest independent consulting firm in the world. By 1999 it seemed like everybody was growing, though. I left Andersen Consulting in 1999 at the height of the market. In other words, in a strong market even turkeys can fly. Ameet was right.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2009

Social networks - When I raised capital in 1999 it was hard to know who knew the VCs. I’m guessing it’s easier to get a meeting these days from Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures than from Evan Williams at Twitter. Now it is spelled out for you in black & white. Check LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Dividend 210

Dividend Venture Capital Social Network Portfolio 210

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

If you take a snapshot during an extraordinary surge in valuations, M&A activity, IPOs and thus wealth creation you’d echo John Doerr’s famous quote from 1999 that, “The Internet is the greatest legal creation of wealth in history.&# That’s how it felt then and a bit how it feels in May 2011.

IPO 391

IPO Finance Valuation Naming 391

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2019

It was 1999 and I had valuable Internet skills. It is better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission After 5 years in Europe I decided I really wanted to work in Japan. By now I knew the world worked on a pull model and that I had to ask. But I was struggling to find somebody to bring me to Japan.

Japan 253

Japan Chicago Europe South America 253

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is exactly what happened in the broader VC industry between 1999-2001 as many people without the requisite skills entered the industry. But with its growth and success it will encourage many people to enter the market who will lack 5 critical success criteria for earning positive returns.

Silicon Valley 306

Silicon Valley Deal Flow Angel Investor Cofounder 306

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 11, 2010

The CIC, founded in 1999, is located adjacent to MIT and has more than 100,000 sq ft of space for nearby startups that qualify to be housed there. I’m 100% certain this would benefit our community and not just the entrepreneurs that work there. VC’s and more experienced entrepreneurs would have a central hub in which to gather.

San Francisco 285

San Francisco Incubator Silicon Valley Startup 285

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

In 1999-2000 they weren’t doing enterprise-wide installations at Merrill Lynch, Dell and Cisco. What is “disruptive&# is that is also dramatically less expensive. And the providers take a much lower margin – they have nothing to lose, nothing to protect. Enter Salesforce.com. That would have been laughable.

Vesting 376

Vesting Framework Revenue Technology 376

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

When I built my first company starting in 1999 it cost $2.5 The trend of funding anything from the first $25k to funding $50 million at a billion+ valuation is unlikely to last as the skills and style to be effective at all stages are diverse enough to warrant focus. million in infrastructure just to get started and another $2.5

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software PHP Open Source 334

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

Founded in 1999 in Austin, Texas. Provides electronic book services for content publishers; services include digital scanning and conversion, distribution to leading e-book retailers, monetization and royalty management. Brought in new CEO, Russ Reeder in 2008. Competitors: SmashWords , Google Books.

Founder 214

Founder San Diego SMS Los Angeles 214

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 25, 2015

I take my hat off to people like Adam Miller , the CEO of LA-based Cornerstone on Demand, who started at the exact same time as I did (November 1999) and is still the CEO but now of a public company valued at around $2 billion. The skills required to get to the next level were different than the skills I had or my own desires.

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley IPO Demand Revenue 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2009

On some level we felt we did because being a SaaS company in 1999 was trailblazing. It soaked up all of our development resources and didn’t allow us to focus on what we felt our company strategy was. We started out with such big dreams about changing the world. See definition of a whore.

Startup 389

Startup Early Stage Demand Channel 389

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2009

It was 1999. When I was CEO of my first company (where I admittedly F’d up everything before I figured it all out) we initially calculated for people how much there options were going to be worth some day. Ventro was trading at $8 billion on sub $2 million of revenue. It was easy to do these calcs.

Stock Options 418

Stock Options Stock Liquidation Preference Option Pool 418

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 6, 2010

I freely admit this (along with nearly everything between 1999-2000) was a mistake. But I thought I should do a quick post on the topic. Options are gravy - I lived through the first dot com era where we used stock options as a recruiting tool.

Stock Options 294

Stock Options Stock Valuation Liquidation Preference 294

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

million … yes that was seed in 1999!) We had scrambled to get a product to market, built our first website, rapidly hired a technology team, raised our seed round of capital ($1.5 and were ready to take off the covers and tell the world.

South Africa 310

South Africa Europe Disintermediation Poland 310

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

When I was raising money for my first company we had closed a seed round in 1999 and were working on our A round. We had many term sheets (it was 1999 and we had a pulse) and we were deciding which one to take. It was December 1999. It was December 1999. Let me start with a story. They accepted my argument.

Technical Review 301

Technical Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Venture Capital 301

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 28, 2010

I guess not the most politic thing I’ve ever done, but you can ask anybody who was in the strategy practice of Accenture in London in 1999 and they’ll confirm I really did this. .&# Obviously I got many laughs and applause. Don’t be a grin fucker. Stop the corporate bullshit when it hits your desk.

Framework 378

Framework Reputation Global Employee 378

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 4, 2011

The funniest experience I ever had on July 4th (US Independence Day) was in 1999. That was the year I spent July 4th in Tokyo, where I was living for 6 months. I had been living in Europe since the start of 1995, most recently in London.

America 290

America South America Honduras Sacramento 290

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

M y company had raised a seed round of capital in late 1999 even before either of us were full time in the company (ominous side note: on the way to pitch our seed investor, Delta Partners, a man walking right in front of me died of a massive heart attack making me late to the meeting.

Founder 299

Founder Technical Review Startup Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

In 1998 it was 150 million, 1999 250 million and by 2000 it had crossed 350 million. In fact, the market conditions would argue for quite the opposite, which is what makes rear-view-mirror analysis so blurred. There are 20x more consumers online. Even at this staggering pace it still represented less than 6% of the world’s population.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

I was paid less in salary in 2004 than I was paid at the job I quit in 1999 (a job I had held 8+ years). My company had raised venture capital in April 2001 but we were told that there may never be any more coming. But in these years I learned how to sell software – necessity is the mother of all invention.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Hiring Software Review Stock Options 285

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

Coupled with my participating preferred from 1999 and 2000 I had more than $55 million of liquidation preferences. In my first company I had to raise money in April 2001 or die. I took money with a 3x participating preferred liquidation preference with 8% compounded interest annually.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329