Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

I’m honored to be at a university noted for knowledge, and in a city with 2000 years of history – home of Gaudí one of the 20 th century’s greatest innovators. If they don’t, then the management team has simply become caretakers of the founders’ legacy. Thank you for the kind introduction. I’d like to start with a request.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Babbling VC

MAY 19, 2012

Without sounding all grim, I want to just reiterate what I told a ton of my portfolio companies back in 2000. They did not have a senior founder team of experienced players. There was a ton of founder fallout (see the movie). Nor should you make any major decisions based on what Facebook did.

Silicon Valley 81

Silicon Valley Technical Review IPO Social Network 81

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 16, 2014

Founders Can’t Scale: Fact or Fiction? How To Use Portfolio Theory At Your Startup | by Chris Yeh – crowdspring.co/1jkfmFu. Founders Can’t Scale: Fact or Fiction? 786,000 Americans bike to work, up 60% since 2000 – crowdspring.co/RvNk49. – crowdspring.co/1iGeQlb.

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

An investor called the founder, spoke for 30 minutes on the phone and committed to funding having never met the team. Great seed investors like Bryce Roberts / OATV (and other great ones like Floodgate , Founder Collective , Information Arbitrage or Rincon Ventures ) still get all the dealflow the need. Isolated incident? Hear, hear.

Southern California 267

Southern California Angel Investor Early Stage Silicon Valley 267

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

Dave Kerpen, founder and CEO of Likeable Local , just published an interview with me on Linkedin, which I’ve included below. To succeed in the space, angels must have a high risk tolerance, a large bank account to weather losses, and most important, a diverse enough portfolio to handle losing money on most of your investments.

Angel Investor 114

Angel Investor Technical Review Venture Capital Pre-Money Valuation 114

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

The A round was done in February 2000 (end of the bull market) and my B round was done in April 2001 (bear market). But most importantly I lectured founders that you can’t avoid the admin of setting up your ESOP. I explain in the video what happened in my first company (e.g. I eventually needed more money. Do it early.

Venture Capital 282

Venture Capital Term Sheet Valuation Stock Options 282

ConversionXL

JANUARY 18, 2022

Jeff Bezos’s private space technology company Blue Origin was founded back in 2000. At a startup, this can be as simple as defining why the founder started the company in the first place. It helps them audit existing content portfolios (blog posts, landing pages, etc.) In 2002, Elon Musk created Space X.

Marketing 109

Marketing Social Media Non-Compete Audience 109

Ben's Blog

JANUARY 31, 2012

That excitement took a sharp downhill turn when one of the top partners said to me, in front of my co-founders, “When are you going to get a real CEO?”. As we set out to design a venture capital firm that would enable founders to run their own companies, we began by asking: In what ways are professional CEOs superior to founder CEOs?

Venture Capital 78

Venture Capital Portfolio Cofounder Partner 78

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

While a flood of new VCs came into existence during the late 90’s internet boom, many had difficulty raising new funds after the crashes of 2000-2001 and 2008 , and as a result significantly fewer fund managers exist now compared to a decade ago. In the past ten years there have been several dramatic changes in venture capital.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

In our portfolio, we generally don’t have this problem because we aren’t big fans of either (a) overfunding companies or (b) escalating burn rates based on headcount. I learned this lesson 127 times between 2000 and 2005. I have two simple rules for founders in my head from this experience. It’s simply not true.

Cap Table 70

Cap Table Down Round Liquidation Preference Founder 70

Genuine VC

AUGUST 3, 2012

For us, the investment is certainly fresh and newest in our portfolio, but it also feels familiar. CEO Anne Raimondi and my partner Rob were colleagues together at eBay in the early 2000’s before she went on the lead product and/or marketing at many household internet names like Zazzle, InsiderPages, and SurveyMonkey.

Seed Stage 199

Seed Stage Cofounder Portfolio Curation 199

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

Mark pointed out that on the one hand 6 months ago one of Silicon Valley’s best known ibankers told him that SaaS public valuations were the most over-valued since the dot com bubble in 2000. Yet Mark also pointed out that the recent corrections in the public market valuations and the scrutiny new IPOs have undergone is a health sign.

Valuation 309

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Non-Compete Later Stage 309

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The two decades from 1979 when pension funds fueled the expansion of venture capital to 2000 when the dot-com bubble burst were the Golden Age for entrepreneurs and venture capital firms. VC’s invested their limited partners’ “risk capital” in a portfolio of startups in exchange for illiquid stock. Take a look at the chart below. (It

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

The Equity Kicker

JULY 8, 2019

From around 2000, and perhaps coinciding with the need to work harder to win deals as opportunities dried up after the internet bubble burst, individual partners at VC firms began adding ‘helping CEOs win’ to their job descriptions. . Building platforms. They called them ‘Platform Teams’ and the value they add varies between funds.

Portfolio 84

Portfolio LP Venture Capital Partner 84

View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2017

Google Ventures was one of our co-investors, and in addition to all the other typical support GV provides their portfolio, this startup gained some unique insights for their organic and paid search strategy which were impactful and couldn’t have been gleaned elsewhere. .

Strategic Investors 120

Strategic Investors Post-Money Valuation Seed Stage Cofounder 120

BeyondVC

JULY 7, 2010

This was the year 2000 and the idea was that Metapa would allow any company to send any media asset over any content delivery network and our service would automatically transform the asset for viewing anywhere. Frankly we did this to keep ourselves around long enough to figure out what to do next.

Portfolio 109

Portfolio Open Source Architecture Database 109

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

when you missed your targets, when your co-founder quit, when the competition chose your competitor or when the other investors around the table lost confidence? Make sure to call the companies in that VCs portfolio that didn’t succeed. My chips were down in late 2000 / early 2001. When the world was ending?

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Term Sheet Cofounder Partner 288

BeyondVC

JULY 7, 2010

This was the year 2000 and the idea was that Metapa would allow any company to send any media asset over any content delivery network and our service would automatically transform the asset for viewing anywhere. Frankly we did this to keep ourselves around long enough to figure out what to do next.

Portfolio 109

Portfolio Architecture Open Source Database 109

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 20, 2012

In 2000, venture capitalists poured a staggering $112.2 According to Dow Jones VentureSource Senior Manager of Corporate Communications Kim Gagliardi, 3,404 venture financing rounds were completed in 2011, down 47% from the 6,361 closed in 2000. That was up 29% over 2000 in just five years. It just doesn’t fit.

Venture Capital 127

Venture Capital San Francisco Deal Flow Atlanta 127

Mucker Lab

MARCH 8, 2016

In reality, we are scrappy founders, just like the entrepreneurs we serve. With a well-capitalized fund, great LPs, and a solid portfolio, we are privileged to continue serving exceptional entrepreneurs. And we aren’t afraid to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty alongside the founders in our portfolio.

Burn Rate 60

Burn Rate Limited Partner Portfolio Bootstrapping 60

Agile VC

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. Additionally, a lot of people today work in startups or want to work in startups or want to be founders, which overall is a great thing. So why should I or we collectively care?

Startup 188

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage Boston 188

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Today one of our portfolio companies BigDoor announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based OneTrueFan , a community and web check-in company. When there is a great fit, I love seeing our portfolio companies make acquisitions. Todd and Eric have been friends of mine for a long time.

San Francisco 115

San Francisco Cofounder Acquisition IPO 115

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 12, 2015

is a product of Return Path , where I’ve been on the board since 2000. One of our portfolio companies, WootMath , won a similar App Challenge back in 2013. In some ways, the judging criteria we’ll all be working from are basic questions any founder should ask themselves: Quality of Idea: Is the idea creative and original?

API 70

API Portfolio Channel Email 70

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. Across our portfolio and in my own entrepreneurial experience, I have seen three main sales models work successfully in scaling B2B sales: 1) Enterprise; 2) Telephone; and 3) Developer-driven. 3) Developer Driven Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

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. Additionally, a lot of people today work in startups or want to work in startups or want to be founders, which overall is a great thing. So why should I or we collectively care?

Startup 120

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage Boston 120

The Equity Kicker

AUGUST 25, 2015

I saw that in 2000 and then again in 2008. I remember this most clearly from 2000 when I was in a fund that was investing heavily pre and post crash and the VC adjustment took 8-9 months. But at same time market crashes changes things for startups. It takes time for the impact of crashes to be fully felt in the startup market though.

Valuation 60

Valuation Startup Stock Portfolio 60

ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

The HBR study contrasts Office Depot and Staples during the 2000 recession: Office Depot cut 6% of its workforce, but it couldn’t reduce operating costs significantly. Use that intelligence to inform product portfolio and investment choices.”. Image source ). Here are some things you can do. Learn from forced efficiency. “I

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 23, 2011

Being an entrepreneur isn’t exactly rocket science, but in the case BlogFrog ‘s co-founder Rustin Banks, he literally is one. With the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, risk-averse investors wanted to invest in more than just a business plan – they wanted to see real customers and real revenue before they stumped up the money.

Community 162

Community United States Colorado Social Media 162

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2011

The VC sense of accomplishment or failure is blunted by being slightly removed and by the portfolio effect. If you became a principal or a new partner in 2000/01 you had a good salary but as it turns out you were very unlikely to see a large upside “carry” return for quite some time. I think it looks something like the graph below.

Entrepreneur 384

Entrepreneur Startup Salary Egypt 384

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 5, 2019

After CB Insights’ investigation yielded such an alarming figure of failure, the company decided to compile more than 100 post mortem letters from different startup founders to discover the reason for the failures. Many times during the execution of a project, the founders and the team begin to doubt about the sacrifices they must make.

Venture Capital 77

Venture Capital Cofounder Finance Seed Capital 77

Agile VC

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. Additionally, a lot of people today work in startups or want to work in startups or want to be founders, which overall is a great thing. So why should I or we collectively care?

Startup 100

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 100

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

Founded in April/May 2010 by Diego Berdakin (Ex-Slingshot Labs) and Josh Berman (Ex-Slingshot Labs, MySpace Co-founder) in Santa Monica, CA. Founded in 2000 in New Brunswick, NJ. Will expand IBM’s business analytics capabilities and become part of IBM’s application and integration middleware portfolio. 406 Ventures.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Non-Compete Vertical Europe 225

Hunter Walker

APRIL 10, 2014

I’m not focused on making a log of noise but honestly it wasn’t too surprising to me when you consider: my [angel] portfolio is up 5x cash-on-cash. most of my peers from the early 2000 days of angel investing are now VC’s (Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Josh Kopelman, Jeff Clavier, Mike Maples, Dave Whorton, etc).

Syndicate 121

Syndicate Syndication Hiring Cofounder 121

Agile VC

JULY 19, 2012

Back in the 2000-2001 timeframe, a flood of LP capital was coming into the VC asset class given the strong returns of the mid-late 90s tech boom/bubble. For example FRC launched a founders equity exchange fund and various programmatic forms of knowledge sharing like list serves, CEO summits, conferences, etc.

Cofounder 193

Cofounder Limited Partner Early Stage LP 193

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 17, 2015

These days most startups need only a fraction of that to launch – our idea stage partners get to significant traction within a year on a £250k investment – which means there isn’t much money to hire a team and the founders have to cover a lot more of the bases themselves.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Venture Capital San Francisco Silicon Valley 60

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2021

It seems like every day there is a new headline about an exceptional startup founder, investor, or corporate headquarters moving to Texas. Today, startup founders focus on the fundamental challenges of our time with energy, life sciences and industrial technologies dominating Houston’s tech scene. Joe Lonsdale. Drew Houston.

Texas 90

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 90

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 12, 2012

The first amendment relies on the definition of « founder » and imposes a minimal ownership of 10% of the company and a holding period of two to five years to benefit from a lower tax rate. In our portfolio, we have companies with founding CEOs who own less than 10% of their companies for some of the reasons I just listed.

France 71

France Europe Capital Gains Dilution 71