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Praying to the God of Valuation

Both Sides of the Table

2001–2007: THE BUILDING YEARS The dot com bubble had burst. We had nascent revenues, ridiculous cost structures and unrealistic valuations. Within 5 years I was on the board of real businesses with meaningful revenue, strong balance sheets, no debt and on the path to a few interesting exits. Until we weren’t.

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6 Stories of Successful New Entrepreneurs to Inspire Your Business

Up and Running

Seeing a 200-percent revenue growth in just the first year after securing that loan, TRISTAR took out an additional $500,000 SBA-backed loan to expand its physical presence into two more locations. It has grown from five employees generating $120,000 in annual revenue to 350 employees generating annual revenues of $16.5

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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. It helped that in the nuclear winter that followed the crash, 2001 – 2004, startups and VCs were extremely risk averse and amenable to new ideas that reduced risk.

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Why GE’s Jeff Immelt Lost His Job – Disruption and Activist Investors

Steve Blank

After the dot.com crash in 2001 and the financial crisis of 2008, traditional investors who previously held their shares for the long-term — public pension funds, institutional investors and money managers — are now more interested in short-term gains. Large public companies like Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, etc.

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Why Tim Cook is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

Steve Blank

If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter to quarter or even year to year revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. Between 2001 to 2008, Jobs reinvented the company three times. Large companies and their boards live in fear of losing what they spent years gaining (customers, market share, revenue, profits.)

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Why Tim Cook is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

Steve Blank

If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter to quarter or even year to year revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. Between 2001 to 2008, Jobs reinvented the company three times. Large companies and their boards live in fear of losing what they spent years gaining (customers, market share, revenue, profits.)

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Ecommerce: How to Survive its Troughs

ReadWriteStart

The rise of ecommerce started in 2001 – during the growth of the commercial availability of the internet in households. For most online vendors, this new revenue model was a significant change in the way brands set advertising campaigns. It’s the extent of this phenomenon that has resulted in soaring businesses across the world.

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