Remove 1999 Remove Product Remove Technical Review Remove Valuation
article thumbnail

Praying to the God of Valuation

Both Sides of the Table

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. And then in the late 90’s money crept in, swept in to town by public markets, instant wealth and an absurd sky-rocketing of valuations based on no reasonable metrics.

Valuation 466
article thumbnail

The Decade in Tech

Start Up Blog

It’s pretty easy to forget how much a new technology changes our lives once it’s adopted. Sure, some new technologies are like shooting stars, but some change everything forever. The problem was this created a dangerous idolatry of any innovation big tech companies launched at us.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

What is the Right Burn Rate at a Startup Company?

Both Sides of the Table

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. We’re going to start aggressively spend money on marketing our product. (it is also the title of a fabulous book from Internet 1.0

Burn Rate 383
article thumbnail

Startup Founders Should Flip Burgers

Both Sides of the Table

This can often happen when there is a good product built but no real customer adoption yet. We hired a head of technology, a head of customer service, a head of marketing, a head of strategy (which no startup should ever hire) a CFO and, ugh, 33 developers. We built 4 products simultaneously with no market feedback.

Founder 299
article thumbnail

It’s Morning in Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us. Try charging customers for your product when you have 12 competitors giving the product away free finances by $20 million of VC.

article thumbnail

Revisiting Paul Graham’s “High Resolution” Financing

Both Sides of the Table

Paul Graham’s assertion that “any startup founder can tell you the most common question they hear from investors is not about the founders or the product, but “who else is investing?&# Either would be fine with startups, so long as they can easily change their valuation. When I’m in, I’m in. I chuckled.

Finance 286
article thumbnail

A Venture Capital History Perspective From Jack Tankersley

Feld Thoughts

The key reason for the explosion in capital flowing into the industry, and therefore the large increase in practitioners, had nothing to do with 1970’s performance, early stage investing, or technology. So contrary to the piece, it wasn’t VC were good at early stage technology, it was that they had newfound capital and a big exit window.