ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

They do more of the same with less, often lowering quality and customer satisfaction. Companies in this category add features when customers desire greater value. As the authors conclude, “Progressive companies stay closely connected to customer needs—a powerful filter through which to make investment decisions.”. Promotion.

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup. So how did Customer Development fail us? It’s your vision damn it!

Customer Development 230

Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 29, 2017

Not only do document management systems simplify auditing for regulators, they create the efficiency businesses need to increase output for customers and better tend to their needs — an imperative given the era in which we live—one in which the customer is “always right,” and demands more than ever. Founded in 2001, eFileCabinet, Inc.

Management 100

Management Technical Review Albuquerque Security 100

Up and Running

JULY 21, 2016

If you want to own your own gym or fitness center, you’re probably trying to figure out how you’re going to bring in customers, and keep them. Luckily for you, there are multiple things you can do to win over your customers. Focus on providing epic customer service. If so, you’re on the right track. The same is true vice versa.

Revenue 60

Revenue Retention Advertising Differentiation 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

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). People buy companies for 3 primary reasons: 1) they want the management team / talent 2) they want the technology or 3) they want the market traction (revenue, customer base, profits, etc).

Venture Capital 282

Venture Capital Term Sheet Valuation Stock Options 282

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

Just ask anybody who was trying to close funding the fateful week of September 11, 2001 or even March 2000. Huge downturns have a real impact on the revenue line of start-ups and therefore the pressure on valuations. But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary.

Burn Rate 263

Burn Rate Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Private Equity 263

Ben's Blog

APRIL 27, 2011

When Alfred presented the acquisition to BEA’s board of directors, one prominent board member said: “if you think that this company is going to pay $150M for a company with $150K in revenue, you are out of your f&%!$n’ In recognition of his phenomenal vision and execution, BEA named Alfred its new Chief Executive Officer in October 2001.

Acquisition 78

Acquisition Cloud Architecture Revenue 78

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Once again, we led each of these rounds at slide deck stage and helped land the first handful of customers to accelerate path to product market fit and their Series A rounds. This means more collaboration with the Fortune 500 and more go-to-market experience as our portfolio companies navigate their path to first customers.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Ben's Blog

JUNE 18, 2011

If we are in a bubble, that is a bit of an odd commentary for a company that grew revenues 83% year-over-year and grew earnings 93% year-over-year. In 2000, I was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, where the price for a customer running a redundant version of a basic internet application was approximately $150,000 per month.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Software Review Valuation Internet 76

Up and Running

DECEMBER 14, 2016

See Also: How and Why to Collect Customer Email Addresses. MailChimp is ideal for the startup and small business customer that needs to grow an email list with industry-leading tools and best practices. See Also: 13 Ways to Make Customers Desperately Want to Open Your Emails. Your customers are not one size fits all.

Email 60

Email Small Business Marketing Campaign 60

Babbling VC

AUGUST 10, 2011

I am seriously babbling like everyone else did in 2001, 2008 and now again in 2011. Make your customers happy, especially the ones generating the majority of your revenues. No matter what, stay focussed on generating revenues. . Nevertheless, I will stop right there. This is nothing new. But better they will be! .

Germany 76

Germany Stock IPO Valuation 76

Scalable Startup

AUGUST 26, 2014

Drupal was launched in 2001, and Acquia started in 2007. Acuia provides premium, high security, supported hosting to it’s customers, which all runs on top of Amazon AWS. Acquia, Inc. is the for-profit company founded by Dries Buytaert, the inventor of Drupal, to support his open source project. Because they are open source.

Founder 42

Founder Los Angeles PHP Open Source 42

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

Ah, but today’s Internet companies have real revenue! An obvious example is Google who may have gotten less market attention if there would have been 8 well-financed competitors during the 2001-2005 timeframe. customers who paid for services often get burned. I said that at the Founder Showcase, too. and profits!

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. Startups needed millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product out the door to customers.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 26, 2022

So first, we were much more sort of with a high growth rate, and we did not even care about how we got the revenue when we got it. And now we are much more careful about revenue quality revenues. You’re going out to acquire customers. The vast majority of their customer acquisition is word of mouth.

Partner 132

Partner Cofounder Retention Acquisition 132

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

When a product is truly unique and demanded a retailer willingly promotes and sells it en masse in part because it does get margin on the good but also because it brings customers in the door who spend on other products. Ariel understood her customer?—?the So Why Does This Matter? the modern buyer of home products?—?better

Curation 296

Curation Los Angeles Differentiation Channel 296

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

But like many companies over the past five years it hired aggressively and probably had some degree of straying off of a core strategy and some amount of excess jobs relative to its current revenue forecasts and opportunities. What is your revenue growth rate and what does this imply about your number of months of capital remaining?

Burn Rate 150

Burn Rate San Francisco Private Equity LP 150

Mucker Lab

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Most brilliant “Internet of Things” ideas are quicksand for capital unless you have the branding, vertical integration and customer lock-in that Apple achieved. Low switching costs and built-in product “half-life” demolish customer loyalty. Apple had the foresight to launch the iPod, iTunes and the Apple Store all in 2001.

Vertical 60

Vertical Widget Distribution China 60

YoungUpstarts

JULY 15, 2018

Knowing how to take ownership of your data is the first step to properly leveraging it to grow revenue and build your brand. Some platforms throttle the amount of bandwidth they’ll allow to customers that may want to leave their service, forcing a slow, painful migration that can run on for weeks or months.

Metadata 100

Metadata Management Bandwidth Software 100

Lightspeed Venture Partners

JULY 15, 2013

It was at that time that I reconnected with Raj De Datta, a fantastically talented repeat entrepreneur with whom I had gone to Harvard Business School from 2001-2003. I’ll also never forget all of the potential technical co-founders that we talked to who never seemed to be a perfect fit. 2013 big data startups Bloomreach founders SEO'

Mobile 135

Mobile SEO Cofounder Boston 135

K9 Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

Kumar was the Founder, President and CEO of SneakerLabs, a company which developed software and services for web-based customer interaction. Direct Revenue, meaning no three-way business models and no advertising, media, or content. Manu Kumar is Founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures. Frighteningly Early.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Early Stage Portfolio Software Engineering 48

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 25, 2015

Imagine being an investor and being approached by a business SaaS company that has raised $5 million, has $100k / month of revenue, has been growing at about 5% per month, and is doing a $10 million round. Your revenue growth flattens out for a few quarters but you didn’t get ahead of the cost dynamic.

Finance 70

Finance Bootstrapping Acquisition Revenue 70

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

We were depending on investor funding, but with $60,000 in revenue no one would fund it. . I went to a customer’s office and I watched him use my software. Especially difficult were the days after the Internet bubble burst: 2001 was a staggering blow to technology. I was really fricking scared. No one was interested.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

Most of what I learned about operating startups I learned from the really tough years at my first company from 2001-2003. That is when no customers wanted to work with Internet startups because we as an industry had burned so many customers. I learned how to integrate customers into our product development process.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Hiring Software Review Stock Options 285

BeyondVC

AUGUST 9, 2006

This is quite similar to a lot of SAAS oriented businesses that may sign up customers for one year contracts and collect the cash today but recognize the revenue over the life of the contract. When these types of companies grow quickly GAAP numbers may not tell the full story. We’ll manage just fine without the IPO money — thank you.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review IPO SEC Stock 60

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Within a year, by late 2000 / early 2001 consulting firms were firing people en masse. On July 27th, 2001 Accenture IPO’s and many of the partners grew fabulously wealthy. Since that date the S&P 500 is up 2.45% while Accenture stock is up 206% with revenue of $23 billion and a market cap of $32 billion.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

Its chaos and insanity melds into a working city that was predicted by the architect Rem Koolhaas (with the Harvard Project on the City) in the 2001 book Mutations when he said that Lagos was a city of the future and one that Western cities would eventually base themselves on. But somehow Lagos works. Slowly overcoming its reputation.

Nigeria 148

Nigeria Africa Reputation Email 148

37signals.com

DECEMBER 5, 2011

One thing we learned early on talking to Basecamp customers: Many of them didn’t even know that the app was called Basecamp. I would not recommend you if you were “Customer Relationship Management, Platinum Edition 2010” :—). ”), but the original 2001 iPod itself had nothing to do with the internet.

Product Name 44

Product Name Naming Product Software Review 44

Ben's Blog

JUNE 15, 2012

Together you will build a beautiful product that delights customers and makes the world just a little bit better. You lose a loyal customer. How about taking your company public with $2M in trailing revenue and 340 employees, with a plan to do $75M in revenue the next year? It’s going to be absolutely awesome.

Employee 78

Employee Revenue Technology Hiring 78

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

The founders eventually created custom cereal boxes to raise funds so they could continue to operate. billion in annual revenue. In 1999, Alibaba had to face many failures; for the first three years, the company made zero revenue. . #3- Airbnb. Photo Credit: Donny Gamble. Airbnb now makes $2.5 Photo Credit: Deborah Sweeney.

Entrepreneur 102

Entrepreneur China Incubator Philippines 102

Campus Entrepreneurship

DECEMBER 23, 2010

When I attended between 1998-2001, there were a few course on entrepreneurship (entrepreneurial finance, entrepreneurial strategy, etc.), My alma mater, and the #1 ranked business school — according to BusinessWeek — continues to strengthen its entrepreneurship offerings. but I don’t recall courses on internet strategy.

Cofounder 61

Cofounder Chicago Founder IPO 61

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

We should end the year with a few million in fully recurring revenue and we’re projected to double next year. But more spend = more viral opps = more revenue down the road. >50% of our revenue in now viral. In my first company I had to raise money in April 2001 or die. Probably revenue based.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329

Duct Tape Marketing

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

That was a huge revenue. Rita McGrath: The opportunity for getting close to customers revived again after Apple introduced the first iPod. We forget, we think this is ancient history, it was 2001, I mean it wasn’t that long ago. Well today you can be an Adobe customer for $7.99 Rita McGrath: Right.

eCommerce 58

eCommerce Norway Internet Advertising 58

Gust

OCTOBER 20, 2011

In 2011, the valuation of pre-revenue, start-up companies is typically in the range of $1.5–$2.5 Such comparisons can only be made for companies at the same stage of development, in this case, for pre-revenue startup ventures. As can be seen the average (mean) pre-money valuation for recent pre-revenue deals is $2.1

Valuation 146

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Intellectual Property Technical Review 146

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 26, 2018

I dropped out of college in 2001, so this would be 17 years in. That being said, I think probably one of the most common ones I get, no surprise because of my background in web marketing, is, “Where should I start my web marketing efforts, and how should I attract my first customers?” I don’t get it.

Silicon Valley 33

Silicon Valley SEO Startup Technical Review 33

BeyondVC

NOVEMBER 17, 2006

From April 2001 through June 30, 2006, we achieved 21 consecutive quarters of revenue growth. In fact, during the last 3 fiscal years for the company, it did $6.4mm, $10mm, and then $15mm in revenue. The trailing twelve month number is closer to $20mm in revenue. million, $0.9 million and $1.8

IPO 60

IPO Investment Bankers Demand Revenue 60