This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

In 2010, Antonio Garcia Martinez, the founder of AdGrok, wrote, “New York will always be a tech backwater, I don’t care what Chris Dixon or Ron Conway or Paul Graham say.” Top founders want to live in a place where employees are serious about working hard. Startup founders always need help.

Community 172

Community Miami Portland Startup 172

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 15, 2018

My co-founders and I wanted a name that would reflect the incredible ambition of our mission: “to build the most meaningful, collaborative, and abundant data resource in the world”. only around three retailers had customer reviews on their websites in 2005. As CEO, I stuck to my guns and, as co-founder, Brant did too.

Naming 48

Naming Cofounder CTO Hire Vertical 48

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 Was about a billion dollars on the IPO” and “was one of the first web analytics companies. and one of the founders of Oblong, John Underkoffler, was an MIT Medialab PHd., was starting.

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

Austin Startup

APRIL 27, 2019

Bob Fabbio was the founder and CEO of eRelevance and he was the man in the arena here?—?and For all of us Austin fans, I’m talking about Cotter Cunningham, the founder and CEO of RetailMeNot. HomeAway is another one of our five tech IPOs in the last five years. But I digress?—?this and I bet he’ll be back. It is worth $3.4

B2C 51

B2C Austin Cofounder IPO 51

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 25, 2018

Although bootstrapping is still an approach in Austin, a lot has changed since I wrote my original challenge to the Bootstrap Austin group back in 2005. Groups list on March 15, 2005. Still in business today and run by my co-founder. to date from some of the best, including most recently Workday and others.

Bootstrapping 48

Bootstrapping Austin Cofounder Equity 48

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). Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). Yes… he was a very successful PayPal exec and previously co-founder & VP Product of SocialNet.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Austin Startup

AUGUST 24, 2019

Brant Barton, my co-founder, and I had left Coremetrics to start it together. Believe it or not, there were only three retailers in 2005 that offered customer reviews, the most popular of them being Amazon. this was 2005. The journey for Bazaarvoice was similar?—?it it was completely irrelevant at the beginning.

Software Review 48

Software Review Cofounder eCommerce Austin 48

Seeing Both Sides

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

The CEOs on the panel were (from left to right): Michael Simon, CEO/founder of LogMeIn (2009 IPO) . Scott Griffith, CEO ZipCar (2010 IPO). Gail Goodman, CEO Constant Contact (2007 IPO). Colin Angle, CEO/cofounder of iRobot (2005 IPO). Niraj Shah, CEO/cofounder of Wayfair ($500m revenue).

Technical Cofounder 45

Technical Cofounder Cofounder IPO Boston 45

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

Google reportedly turned down buyout offers from Microsoft shortly before the 2004 IPO. Google’s value has grown from $23 billion at the time of the IPO to over $200 billion today. The founders sold the two year old company to eBay in 2005 for $2.6 Large market share, limited competition and high barrier to entry.

IPO 162

IPO Exit Strategy San Francisco Startup 162

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

For starters let me use “CEO” as a proxy to include her “inner circle” which might mean co-founders or might just mean senior execs of the business. The Mind of the Founder. We funded one in 2005 and lost a lot of money. The mind of a founder is wired differently than most people. Sorry, brah.”

Startup 417

Startup Dilution San Diego Stock Options 417

The Next Web

MARCH 8, 2014

From the standpoint of a founder, the life of a venture capitalist can seem very, very different. But at the end of the day, I’ve learned that being a partner at a successful early-stage VC firm is not quite as different from being a founder as you might think. It certainly did to me when I was an entrepreneur. Waiting game.

Partner 138

Partner Burn Rate Early Stage IPO 138

Austin Startup

JANUARY 27, 2019

As I wrote about in this Lucky7 post , Bazaarvoice was one of the most capital efficient companies leading up to the IPO as compared to many companies that reach this milestone. From: Brett Hurt Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 10:52 AM To: All Bazaarvoice?—?Internal Hurt Founder and CEO Bazaarvoice, Inc. Thanks, Brett A.

Conversion 48

Conversion Email Cofounder Mobile 48

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. He’s been at it since 2005. At some point, this breaks if their isn’t an exit or IPO.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2011

I hope that you can join us Monday night, April 4, midtown NYC, at a panel on “Innovation in Private Company Liquidity-Online Merger Markets, Social Media, Secondary Markets, Non-US Markets, Private Equity, and the Disappearing IPO” The program is sponsored by the HBS Club of New York and the HBS Angels of NY.

Private Equity 68

Private Equity Merger IPO Social Media 68

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

In this case, BigDoor gains access to a team of incredibly talented entrepreneurs (led OneTrueFan co-founders Eric Marcoullier and Todd Samson ), thousands of publishers, and tech that fits perfectly into BigDoor’s gamified loyalty platform. When there is a great fit, I love seeing our portfolio companies make acquisitions.

San Francisco 115

San Francisco Acquisition Cofounder IPO 115

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

IPOs and M&A have returned – and with them the investment bankers have staged a rebound. There have been a number of high profile tech IPO s in the recent months including companies such as OpenTable and more recently LogMeIn. – IPO-able in any normal market. but I’ll save that for post 3/3).

IPO 255

IPO Investment Bankers Venture Capital Marketing 255

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

Mega VC has focused on the challenges of the post-SarbOx IPO market in the US, and has discovered opportunity in offering larger amounts of growth capital ($10-100M+) to private companies with reduced access to public markets. A few years before all this scandalous VC behavior occurred, in 2005 Paul Graham ) started Y Combinator.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Up and Running

DECEMBER 1, 2015

In 2005, David Choe was invited to paint a number of murals at Facebook’s HQ in Palo Alto. This type of stock is typically given to founders and early employees with the stock value is near zero. It’s called restricted stock because it often comes with restrictions, such as vesting. Finding good employees is critical.

Equity 60

Equity Employee Stock Options Vesting 60

Altgate

DECEMBER 16, 2010

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Pre-Money Valuation vs Number of Founders Where Do Tech VCs Invest? But this last chart gives some insight into how unfavorable to founders (Common actually) these preferences can be. Bookmark the permalink.

Liquidation Preference 39

Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet Valuation 39

Campus Entrepreneurship

DECEMBER 23, 2010

Booth has announced a course called Building Interet Strartups: Risk, Reward, and Failure and it is being taught by two of Groupon’s co-founders. In 2005, he and Keywell started Echo Global Logistics, a business-to-business online logistics and trucking firm that they took public in 2008.

Cofounder 61

Cofounder Chicago Founder IPO 61

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Chris Dixon made the point that he thinks investors should look for the founders to have the domain knowledge rather than them having domain knowledge themselves. But I prefer a certain naive optimism in founders but I can’t see that this extends to angel investors. Let’s call these cards 1996-99 and 2005-08.

Angel Investor 152

Angel Investor Cap Table Early Stage Deal Flow 152

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

Chris Dixon made the point that he thinks investors should look for the founders to have the domain knowledge rather than them having domain knowledge themselves. But while I prefer a certain naive optimism in founders I can’t see the logic that this extends to angel investors. Obviously I agree.

Angel Investor 284

Angel Investor Cap Table Early Stage Deal Flow 284

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Never missing an opportunity for a good war story, I’d like to revisit one high-profile transaction, the $650 million acquisition of MySpace by Fox Interactive Media in 2005, on which I spent many sleepless nights along with the rest of the deal team. The spin-out took a few months to negotiate and didn’t actually close until February 2005.

Valuation 98

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Merger Vesting 98

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 20, 2013

20 years ago, the classic startup model was to have young founders start a breakthrough company, then bring in “grey hair” in the form of experienced executives once it was time to scale the business. In other words, Ben asserts that bringing in a professional CEO should be a last resort for a founder. During the dot com era, Yahoo!’s

Founder 78

Founder Hiring Cofounder Hawaii 78

Professor VC

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

When I pulled out the May 30, 2005 issue with Real Estate Gold Rush on the cover and posting the question "Inside the hot-money work of housing speculators, condo-flippers, and get-rich-quick schemers. With companies remaining private much longer today, most of the value appreciation is pre-IPO. Is it too late to get in?"

Las Vegas 28

Las Vegas IPO Pre-Money Valuation Valuation 28

Up and Running

JUNE 9, 2010

Tony Hsieh, well-known founder of Zappos and driving-force entrepreneurial success story, wrote his own story for Inc. He says: Our sales had grown steadily since 2005; by 2008 we were doing more than $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually — two years ahead of our original plan.

Silicon Valley 79

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Finance IPO 79

Professor VC

APRIL 11, 2008

I started working with the founders of iControl at the concept stage, prior to the first $100K of angel financing. In fact, for a good laugh, I just went back and checked our accounting system, and at the end of one quarter in 2005, we were down to $143 cash on the balance sheet.

San Jose 28

San Jose Angel Investor Venture Capital Balance Sheet 28

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 26, 2011

It feels a lot like NYC as a whole did back in 2005--a handful of relatively disconnected folks, a few marquee companies and a whole lot of pent up interest in doing something impactful in the local community. Android Backlash.

Technology 116

Technology Valuation Community Restful 116

David Teten

JANUARY 10, 2012

Howard Lindzon is Co-Founder and CEO of StockTwits, a social network for traders and investors to share real-time ideas and information. Michael was the lead research analyst for the IPOs of Internet companies like UUNET, Yahoo!, Christopher Ahlberg is the CEO and Co-founder of Recorded Future. He joined Goldman Sachs & Co.

Technical Review 128

Technical Review Technology North Carolina Maryland 128

Altgate

MAY 1, 2009

The bottom line take away (for me) is that VC is capacity limited by the value of exits (M&A plus IPOs). Share and Enjoy: This entry was posted in Entrepreneurship , Startups , Venture Capital and tagged entrepreneur , exits , IPO , limited partners , M&A , private equity , startup , venture capital. Bookmark the permalink.

Sweat Equity 28

Sweat Equity IPO Private Equity Venture Capital 28

Austin Startup

APRIL 26, 2020

In honor of Netflix’s big beat today in the very unfortunate age of COVID-19, I decided to revisit my four-part Bazaarblog series while I was CEO of Bazaarvoice (from our inception in 2005 to our IPO in 2012). Blockbuster introduced their “End of Late Fees” program on January 1, 2005. The name of the last part?

Technical Review 62

Technical Review Campaign Video Social Network 62

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 5, 2012

"A lot of the noise in the market right now is about bringing back irresponsible IPOs. Our objective is to bring back quality IPOs, the kind that we had in the late '80s and the early '90s.". We had institutional public IPO buyers on the task force, they got two votes. (I It was a diverse group.".

IPO 118

IPO SEC Silicon Valley Startup 118

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

November 2005 Venture funding works like gears. I think it would help founders to understand funding better—notjust the mechanics of it, but what investors are thinking. And if trouble withinvestors is one of the biggest threats to a startup, managing themis one of the most important skills founders need to learn.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

BeyondVC

APRIL 26, 2004

There have been a number of IPO fillings recently, but the one that intrigues me most is the filing by Lindows. As many of you have read, Lindows/Linspire just filed an S-1 to raise $57 million in an IPO. The loan bears interest at the rate of 10% simple interest per year and matures on June 30, 2005. Michael did pay $4.5

IPO 60

IPO .Net Revenue Operations 60

Professor VC

JUNE 20, 2011

Since the iControl system chronicles all meetings, I was able to find the automatic picture snapped from my first meeting with the founders, Reza Raji and Chris Stevens on April 22, 2004. In looking back at the old financials, at the end of Q2 2005, our cash balance was a whopping $546.

San Jose 28

San Jose Angel Investor Term Sheet Venture Capital 28

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard ComputerSociety.) And since a startup thatsucceeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies gettingrich is doable too. Ideally you want between two and four founders. But you dont want so many founders that the company starts to looklike a group photo.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

You can find the 2005 version here. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you?

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107