Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Domain Experience – “Domain experience&# means that the founders have worked in the industry before. 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 be covering my PUCCKA sales methodology. I know this stuff cold now.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” They’re putting money into web services/business – most without early revenue. End of theory.&#

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

Jack Tankersley, a long time mentor of mine, co-founder of Centennial Funds, and co-founder of Meritage Funds, wrote me a very long response. JMB Realty: Real Estate Management company. For many years preceding 1999, the 1982 vintage was known as the industry’s worst vintage year. Michigan Cottage Cheese: Yoplait Yogurt.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

At the same time, the company contained its operating costs and came out of the recession stronger, bigger, and more profitable than it had been in 1999. Managers can defy old mind-sets and creatively search for superior solutions. Managing the means of production to fit the circumstances. Why brand matters more than ever.

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

Over a 25 year career, Baughman has gained experience in leading worldwide sales organizations, brings expertise in full life cycle product management, proven revenue creation and growth management including taking a start up from zero to $1.6B, and shepherding companies through all phases from start up launch to IPO to acquisition.

Naming 59

Naming Hiring Technical Review Virginia 59

YoungUpstarts

MAY 20, 2018

by David Johnson, founder and CEO of TempCFO. Here are five money management tips to keep in mind to endure the first few years of business and come out ahead: 1. Nowadays, startups are outsourcing their accounting to reduce costs and to get the best accountants and bookkeepers to manage their financials. Limit Your Spending.

Startup 140

Startup Salary CPA Small Business Administration 140

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Many assume it was a cakewalk, based on the success LinkedIn has enjoyed over time and the current stature of our founder/CEO Reid Hoffman (now Chairman). Yes… he was a very successful PayPal exec and previously co-founder & VP Product of SocialNet. This is my 2nd time trying this, first time was in 1999. Thanks Lee.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let the founders take money off of the table. The VCs basically have liquidity in management fees along the way, in the sense they get paid decently along the way.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 26, 2022

So, think of the typical two founders with a pitch book in a garage. Instead, that’s the sort of pre-series-A investment where companies or founders have visions of where they think there are underserved market needs, and they’re coming up with something super excited to try to solve that. . We’re a crossover fund.

Partner 132

Partner Cofounder Retention Acquisition 132

abovethecrowd.com

OCTOBER 17, 2013

The company, which the founder cleverly named “Stitch Fix,” had a remarkably unique offering compared to other women’s fashion experiences. I immediately reached out to the founder and CEO, Katrina Lake , who had previously worked for another Benchmark portfolio company in the fashion space, Polyvore.

eCommerce 62

eCommerce Technical Review North America San Francisco 62

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2019

In tech startups stock options were here almost from the beginning, first offered to the founders in 1957 at Fairchild Semiconductor , the first chip startup in Silicon Valley. The investors were giving away part of their ownership of the company — not just to the founders, but to all employees. Here’s why.

Stock Options 333

Stock Options Stock Vesting Common Stock 333

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2009

If you’re thinking about joining as the director of marketing, product management manager, senior architect, international business development lead, etc. Or you have to hit the lottery and be an early player middle management player at Google, Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. It was 1999. Best to be a founder.

Stock Options 418

Stock Options Stock Liquidation Preference Option Pool 418

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 7, 2016

Nowadays nearly every online shop utilizes some sort of product recommendation engine, which is no wonder, as these systems, if set up and configured properly can significantly boost revenues, CTRs, conversions, and other important metrics. This simply means revenues through recommendations / total revenues.

Conversion 48

Conversion Product Technical Review Widget 48

The Next Web

JUNE 20, 2013

When cloud services company Cornerstone OnDemand got its start in Los Angeles in 1999, the odds were against it. Improbably, founder and CEO Adam Miller and his partners soldiered on to eventually build a $2 billion+ cloud company. The company has managed 95 percent retention of clients.

Cloud 118

Cloud Southern California Los Angeles New York City 118

thebarefootvc

DECEMBER 16, 2011

Kiva co-founder Jessica Jackley’s latest venture Profounder is one platform that could power these transactions. Disruption in the Education Space: When I first started looking at education technology investments in 1999, very few VCs would go near the sector. The Indians have a term for this: jugaad.

Technical Review 110

Technical Review India Mobile Hockey Stick 110

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 28, 2012

Revenues have continued to increase every year and investors couldn’t be happier with what brave Mr. Drexler has done for J. Google is one of the largest companies in the world and its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are some of the richest entrepreneurs to date. Crew experienced a dramatic increase in sales, earning $3.8

Bankruptcy 195

Bankruptcy Texas Naming Venture Capital 195

View from Seed

JUNE 17, 2015

My first startup job was as an early employee at PayPal, where I took a job at the end of ‘1999 and started a few months later in 2000. I started off as a product manager and while I never actually slept over at the office, there were frequently late nights. When we started LinkedIn , it was a similar situation.

Startup 120

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 120

Mike Michalowicz

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

Ensure that you have a chef/kitchen manager whom you can trust, who can run a team which can prepare food in a timely manner, with consistent quality and presentation. The Profit First Cash Management system is the best at absolutely ensuring profitability from the very first deposit. They’ll manage. Invest in a Lead Host.

Boston 120

Boston New York Hosting Cost 120

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 1, 2016

I started out my career at the management consulting firm McKinsey which was a truly wonderful learning ground. We built some early ecommerce sites around 1999 and back office order processing systems using visual basic for applications (VBA). My co-founders and I started eVestment for two primary reasons. I was a developer.

Entrepreneur 48

Entrepreneur Non-Compete LLC Social Media 48

YoungUpstarts

MAY 21, 2012

Simply put, smart businesses tend to follow the money, and sometimes that means growing into a business the founders hadn’t ever imagined. In 1980, the company reached at point at which their revenue from money transfers exceeded that of their telegram service, and now no longer performs telegrams, focusing solely on financial services.

Mississippi 209

Mississippi San Francisco Minnesota Bankruptcy 209

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Here is a 60-second tour of IM Creator: IM Creator is bootstrapped with $250k from the founder Jonathan Saragossi, and a few unknown angel investors. billion back in 1999 ; Yahoo has since shutdown Geocities after failing to charge all its users to use the service. million, has revenues of over $2 million a year.

Coder 87

Coder Angel Investor Web Bootstrapping 87

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2011

I managed to find a job at the Miami International Airport loading racehorses onto cargo planes. Eighteen months after arriving in Thailand, I was managing a group of 15 electronics technicians. As time went on, I was a co-founder or member of the starting team for six high-tech startups…. You get to make your own luck.

Philadelphia 335

Philadelphia Miami Thailand Silicon Valley 335

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 3, 2012

With over $1 billion in revenue, 2000 employees and a market capitalization of over $6 billion, Akamai has become a role model for scalable start-ups. billion in revenue, over $1 billion in gross profit and $500 million in EBITDA. . . The first year of revenue (1999) was $4 million – a remarkable achievement.

Distribution 49

Distribution Lean Massachusetts Cofounder 49

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 7, 2017

I am the founder/coach of Never Settle Coaching, LLC a coaching business. At the same time it seemed that whenever I would have a conversation with a friend, family member, colleague, manager, executive–you name it!–about I need to confess, it wasn’t as easy as it looks to bystander, but we manage.

Entrepreneur 91

Entrepreneur LLC Cofounder Green 91

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

The founders eventually created custom cereal boxes to raise funds so they could continue to operate. billion in annual revenue. So they solved it by each department manager, the sales manager, and the owner running their own schedule and telling the junior employees what to do. 5- Jack Ma founder of Alibaba.

Entrepreneur 105

Entrepreneur China Incubator Philippines 105

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 30, 2015

Prior to crowdSPRING, I was producer and production manager in the film and television industry and Ross was an attorney in private practice specializing in intellectual property. In January of 1999, I co-founded a marketing agency with a former boss. Thanks to Mike Samson, crowdSPRING. #3 3 – I was Fired Twice.

Entrepreneur 48

Entrepreneur Australia Software Review LLC 48

Ben's Blog

JULY 16, 2013

Perhaps you are caught in the “Series A crunch” or perhaps you are a consumer company and expected that you would be valued on users rather than revenue like the last time. 3/31/1999: 49.7. Down rounds are bad and hit founders disproportionately hard, but they are not as bad as bankruptcy. But they most certainly are not.

Down Round 78

Down Round Marketing Preferred Stock Post-Money Valuation 78

SVPG

SEPTEMBER 30, 2016

When I first decided to start The Silicon Valley Product Group, I had just left eBay and had some very strong opinions about what makes great product teams, and great product cultures, and while there were more than a few important thinkers and leaders on these topics, one area that I felt was under-represented was the role of product management.

Product 60

Product Technical Review Software Review Engineer 60

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. So, where does this all come from and how can you apply it in practice? I was resolute.

Technical Review 301

Technical Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Venture Capital 301

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

In the summer of 1999, I started working on a startup from my college dorm. Id been on the internet since I was playing MUDs as a kid, but by 1999 I felt Id already missed the boat. You can even see the humiliating evidence of my smug incompetence in this absurd article from 1999.) I pretty much missed all the trends.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Ben's Blog

JULY 16, 2013

Perhaps you are caught in the “Series A crunch” or perhaps you are a consumer company and expected that you would be valued on users rather than revenue like the last time. 3/31/1999: 49.7 Down rounds are bad and hit founders disproportionately hard, but they are not as bad as bankruptcy. But they most certainly are not.

Marketing 46

Marketing Preferred Stock Post-Money Valuation Down Round 46

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 20, 2016

All Unicorn participants — founders, company employees, venture investors and their limited partners (LPs) — are seeing their fortunes put at risk from the very nature of the Unicorn phenomenon itself. A high performing, high-growth SAAS company that may have been worth 10 or more times revenue was suddenly worth 4-7 times revenue.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

In 1999, Jack Ma created Alibaba , a Chinese-based B2B marketplace for connecting small and medium enterprise with potential export opportunities. In November of this year, the company announced that it had achieved “substantially” more than $1B in revenue in the third quarter. billion of GSV (gross services revenue) across 2.0

Internet 88

Internet Matching Vertical Hosting 88

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Why Product Managers Wear Sneakers - Steve Blank , September 2, 2010 I gave a talk last night to the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. It’s a San Francisco Bay Area forum for networking, jobs and education for over 500 Product Management professionals. Except they won’t be called Product Managers.

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

And like the LITERATI, professionals we work with are educated on how to market their business in order to increase revenue opportunities. The original company name was Scene on TV (going back to 1999), and I expanded into movies, and the name was also confusing to people (Scene instead of Seen). Photo Credit: Nigel Whiteoak.

Naming 95

Naming Entrepreneur Green LLC 95

OnlyOnce

MAY 1, 2019

Today is a special day in my entrepreneurial journey and in the life of the company that I started back in 1999 (last century!), I’m not sure how many Internet companies started in 1999 are still private, backed and led by the same team the whole time, and generally in the same business they started in. Press release is here.

Syndicate 48

Syndicate Syndication Affiliate Cofounder 48

OnlyOnce

MAY 1, 2019

Today is a special day in my entrepreneurial journey and in the life of the company that I started back in 1999 (last century!), I’m not sure how many Internet companies started in 1999 are still private, backed and led by the same team the whole time, and generally in the same business they started in. Press release is here.

Syndicate 48

Syndicate Syndication Affiliate Cofounder 48