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. So if your costs are $500,000 per month and you have $350,000 per month in revenue then your net burn (500-350) is equal to $150,000.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2019

We slept under the tables, and pulled all-nighters to get to first customer ship, man the booths at trade shows or ship products to make quarterly revenue – all because it was “our” company. In the 20 th century, the best companies IPO’d in 6-8 years from startup (and in the Dot-Com bubble of 1996-1999 that could be as short as 2-3 years.)

Stock Options 334

Stock Options Stock Vesting Common Stock 334

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). But in our first year of sales (and those were really shitty years to be selling software) we sold $2.1 and we ultimately sold when we hit $14 million and had more than $30 million in backlog revenue.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Hiring Software Review Stock Options 285

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. But we weren’t optimizing for dilution – we were building a $1 billion+ company and we wanted the runway to succeed.

Technical Review 301

Technical Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Venture Capital 301

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 20, 2016

A high performing, high-growth SAAS company that may have been worth 10 or more times revenue was suddenly worth 4-7 times revenue. In 1999, record valuations coexisted with record IPOs and shareholder liquidity. If 1999 was a wet (read liquid) bubble, 2015 was a particularly dry one. 2015 was the exact opposite.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40

Ben's Blog

MAY 24, 2021

Small” IPOs — companies with less than $50m in annual revenue at the time of IPO – have declined from more than 50% of all IPOs in the 1980-2000 timeframe to about 25% of IPOs from 2001-2016; Companies are staying private much longer — the median time to IPO from founding hovered around 6.5 1999-2000 51.6% 1999-2000 37.5%

SEC 36

SEC Accredited Investor IPO Technical Review 36