Cracking the Code

JUNE 5, 2019

In this second extract from our roundtable, John and Joe share their playbooks for managing acquisitions as you scale and handling crises. What is your advice on when and how to make acquisitions? He has a very clear strategy and never makes an acquisition that doesn’t fit with it. Any acquisition creates uncertainty.

Acquisition 48

Acquisition Management Merger Social Media 48

Haystack

JUNE 5, 2018

3/ “Value Is In The Eye Of The Network” Bean-counters may scoff at acquisitions like GitHub as poorly run businesses that aren’t (yet) profitable, but in the world of 10-figure M&A, the exits seem to be largely a function of network defensibility and uniqueness. They’re probably not far off from the truth. 5/ “Decentralized Everything?”

Acquisition 71

Acquisition Azure Open Source Seattle 71

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

Class 2: Some of the pre-class reading included watching the Secret History of Silicon Valley and reading selected chapters of Max Boot’s book, War Made New. and 2) there was no prior learning of how to coordinate the use tanks on the battlefield (they lacked a doctrine.). If you can’t see the slides click here. Slides 10-13).

Technology 335

Technology North Korea Silicon Valley Artificial Inteligence 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 8, 2021

We’ve summarized them in part 2 that follows this post. In our opening lesson , Ex-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter shared insights and experiences from his extensive and impactful career in DoD that included tours as Undersecretary for Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics, Deputy Secretary, and Defense Secretary. Midterms and Finals.

Technology 385

Technology Artificial Inteligence North Korea Russia 385

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

This is part 2 of Ricardo’s “post mortem” of the life and death of Qualcomm’s corporate entrepreneurship program. Doing so meant they would have to take risks for IP acquisition and customer/market risks outside their experience or comfort zone. Part 1 outlining the program is here. Read it first.

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 4, 2020

Step 2: Profile. We decided to delay the marketing and support consents (Step 2 in the old process) until the very end—when the user lands on the app dashboard. Step 2 in the updated sign-up flow. The post SaaS Acquisition: The Hidden Risks of a “Frictionless” Sign-Up Flow appeared first on CXL. Step 3: Project.

Acquisition 67

Acquisition Software Review Technical Review Mobile 67

Haystack

FEBRUARY 1, 2019

2/ Big Consumer Tech Cares About Audio. A company like Spotify has a broader vision to capture more listening engagement, and they’ve already begun offering podcasts (which are free) inside the app to capture more engagement minutes. Artists will launch new songs on YouTube, or Instagram, or Snap, or SoundCloud.

Acquisition 134

Acquisition Media Audio Technical Review 134

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

What You Can Learn From Public Markets It doesn’t really take a genius to realize that what happens in the public markets will filter back to the private markets because the ultimate exit of these companies is either an IPO or an acquisition (often by a public company whose valuation is fixed daily by the market). What is a VC To Do?

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Transformify

AUGUST 7, 2022

So, what does this mean for Talent Acquisition Managers? As technology advances, the methods by which HR professionals manage their workforce need to advance too. According to a recent study by Gartner, 85% of organizations will be using some form of artificial intelligence by 2025. Automation of Employee Job Rotation.

Artificial Inteligence 52

Artificial Inteligence Acquisition Software Review Software 52

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

Generally speaking, there are two ways (and only two ways) to scale a business to hit that $100 million threshold: Your business has a high Life Time Value (LTV) per user, giving you the freedom to spend a significant amount of money in customer acquisition. High LTV can usually be found in transactional or subscription businesses.

Churn Rate 168

Churn Rate Viral Acquisition Cofounder 168

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

Golden rule of branding for me: 1) name your company or product your URL and 2) don’t paint yourself into a corner. &# Tweet&# = corner. I think everybody heard about this acquisition. On the founder’s side it’s about taking money off of the table and / or having strategic reserves for big acquisitions.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Software By Rob

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

This is part 2 in a series covering my acquisition of HitTail ; part 1 went to the top of Hacker News last week and I have a slew of questions from that discussion that I will answer next week. Reason #2: It Has “Good Bones” There’s something to be said for acquiring an app that’s already worked out the v1.0

Acquisition 53

Acquisition Software Review Technical Review Due Diligence 53

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

In class 2 the class focused on China, the U.S.’s Catch up with the class by reading our intro to the class , and summaries of Classes 1 , 2 and 3. Yan Nee Lee, “ 2 Charts Show how Much the World Depends on Taiwan for Semiconductors ” CNBC , Mar. TSMC will build a fab in Arizona , but it will represent only 2% of its capacity.

Technical Review 366

Technical Review Taiwan Technology Artificial Inteligence 366

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

A company with $100m/yr in revenue growing 30% annually won’t go through the effort, risk, and distraction of buying a company with $1m/yr in revenue growing 100% annually, because that’s only a piddly 1% or maybe as much as 2% of additional growth. ” “How can we become #1 or #2 in a new market?”

Balance Sheet 242

Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2010

Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. Great stuff.

Acquisition 150

Acquisition Cofounder Technical Cofounder Cost 150

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 12, 2020

Consider Acquisition as a Means of Growth. Another strategy that a smaller business can use during boom periods of business is acquisition. There are many pros to acquisition when used judiciously, so definitely make sure it’s on your list of possible strategies before going into business. Consider a Production-Ready SOM.

SCRUM 147

SCRUM Software Review Technical Review Differentiation 147

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

We just closed a $2 million dollar investment from a group of investors we couldn’t be more excited to be working with and I thought it might be helpful to share our process for how we created our investor presentation. Customer Acquisition?—?How Where are you going to be five years from now? How does your product work? Is it growing?

Africa 157

Africa Cofounder Software Review Conversion 157

Steve Blank

JANUARY 5, 2023

Students formed small teams and embarked on a quarter-long project that got them out of the classroom to 1) identify a priority national security challenge, and then to 2) validate the problem and propose a detailed solution tested against actual stakeholders in the technology and national security ecosystem. ” Team 2: Networks.

Technical Review 353

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Technology China 353

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 12, 2022

The same goes for business deals that fail during acquisitions or when it is time for you to retire. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 2/25/2022. In my experience as an angel investor to startups, goodwill disagreements are perhaps the most common reason that you will fail to close interested investors as an entrepreneur.

Valuation 368

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Angel Investor 368

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

SolidWorks 2: The best VAR management program in the world? In pure web businesses where the headcount doesn’t need to grow as customer acquisition scales, it is also very useful to look customer acquisition costs without the headcount costs.) SolidWorks 3: The best VAR management program in the world?

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

Hunter Walker

JULY 18, 2021

All in all it worked out fine, driven primary by some fortunate acquisitions to companies like Microsoft, Pinterest and Facebook, the latter two in pre-IPO equity which grew substantially prior to their public listings. Here’s 2 (and a half) mistakes I made that you should avoid.

Cap Table 140

Cap Table IRR Angel Investor IPO 140

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Good and great net revenue retention ( source ) Another factor to consider when it comes to achieving these metrics is the cost of acquisition, or CAC. I decided not to include them because they can be highly subjective depending on the market and business model and it would create unnecessary confusion. Hope you find this helpful.

Retention 109

Retention Conversion Churn Rate B2C 109

View from Seed

JUNE 13, 2019

I know some of the investors in Chewy prior to the PetSmart acquisition, but I am not a shareholder nor do I intend to purchase shares in the IPO. 2) Impressive cohort growth & stability. If you look at Chewy’s financials you’ll see a line item for Net Sales and a line item for COGS which includes #2, 3, and 4 above.

Leadership 214

Leadership .Net Revenue Acquisition 214

Early Growth Financial Services

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

User acquisition: everyone talks about it, but no one really knows how to do it. outlined some strategies for driving user growth that deliver the most bang for your buck and that can be tailored to cash-strapped startup budgets on our User Acquisition Bootcamp For Startups webinar. Peter Mansfield of CMO.LA Peter Mansfield of CMO.LA

Acquisition 28

Acquisition Audience Naming Developer 28

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

In April 2022, the company announced it has raised $2 billion (at $31.5 billion acquisition of Weta Digital, Peter Jackson’s VFX company, gives Unity capabilities in creating hyper realistic virtual environments using RT3D (real-time 3D) technology. Tim Sweeney, Epic Games’ founder and CEO. Unity’s recent $4.4

IP 206

IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

YoungUpstarts

MAY 14, 2018

Of course, these are important ingredients to growth, but the – perhaps unconventional – truth is that this kind of growth can be riskier and less compelling to investors than growth through acquisition. Set clear financial objectives for an acquisition and create benchmarks to gauge attractiveness of potential target companies.

Acquisition 124

Acquisition Finance Raleigh Mezzanine 124

Argona

DECEMBER 12, 2023

Growth Tip #2 Curious to know more about Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)? Simply put, CRO is the process of consistently producing a desired action within your customer acquisition funnel. In this newsletter, we'll share actionable strategies to fuel your business growth, enhance scalability, and elevate your growth readiness.

Conversion 52

Conversion Curation Acquisition Design 52

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 11, 2019

Acquisition entrepreneurship is a model in the same vein. With acquisition entrepreneurship, you focus on establishing revenue and earnings first, and then you provide a platform for a lifestyle business or major innovation from there. ” The Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series by adopting the same strategy.

Acquisition 113

Acquisition Oakland Small Business Administration SEC 113

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

For the final Lessons Learned presentation many of the eight teams presented a 2-minute video to provide context about their problem. If you can’t see the Fleetwise 2-minute video, click here. If you can’t see the Project Agrippa 2-minute video, click here. If you can’t see the Silknet 2-minute video, click here.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2014

With a ~$2 billion endowment the Kauffman Foundation is the largest non-profit focused on entrepreneurship in the world. Now you can watch Part 2 “ The Lean Approach “ This group of six videos provides an overview of how to successfully do Customer Discovery. Introduction, for Part 2 is here.

Intellectual Property 328

Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development Acquisition 328

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2018

And his company has 2 million employees. This document, combined with the split of Acquisition and Logistics, (the office responsible for buying equipment for the military), f rom Research and Engineering will enable the DoD to better connect with private industry to get technology integrated into the defense department.

Employee 322

Employee Agile Artificial Inteligence China 322

VC Cafe

JULY 21, 2022

billion is attributed to the pending Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard Besides Activision Blizzard, the big deals included Take-Two’s purchase of Zynga, Sony’s acquisition of Bungie, and the ESL and FaceIt acquisition by Savvy Games Group Mobile was the most active segment with 47 deals. Over 3 billion.

Forecast 190

Forecast IP Mobile Acquisition 190

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

Class 2: Some of the pre-class reading included watching the Secret History of Silicon Valley and reading selected chapters of Max Boot’s book, War Made New. and 2) there was no prior learning of how to coordinate the use tanks on the battlefield (they lacked a doctrine.). If you can’t see the slides click here. Slides 10-13).

Technology 122

Technology North Korea Silicon Valley Artificial Inteligence 122

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Acquisition. For each potential channel, look at: Customer acquisition cost How many customers you can reach Whether the channel reaches the right audience. In the acquisition phase, measure these performance metrics: Customer acquisition cost Conversion rate Website traffic Click-through rate Bounce rate Quality of leads.

Retention 113

Retention Marketing Acquisition Channel 113

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Acquisitions can quickly increase your market share and bring in new customers. Acquisitions. Some of those channels might include: Acquisition. Tailoring your customer experience according to their wants and needs can increase customer loyalty and advocacy. Acquiring a competitor. Market development. Partnerships. Image source.

Marketing 115

Marketing Framework Metrics Channel 115

Software By Rob

JANUARY 25, 2012

This acquisition is a long story, but if you have a few minutes let me tell you the best parts. If you’re interested you can read about one of my acquisitions from a few years back in a post titled The Inside Story of a Small Software Acquisition. Step 2: The Funnel. My Background. Check out episode 165.

Acquisition 63

Acquisition Software Review Fresno Algorithm 63

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

Focusing on the entire customer journey—not just acquisition—and improving each step along the way ensures that customers continue to buy from you, now and in the future. Meaning: C = Customers (traffic x conversion rate) CLV = Customer revenue – (CAC + cost of serving that customer) CAC = Customer Acquisition Cost G = Growth.

Customer 132

Customer SMS Retention Acquisition 132