Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Agile VC

MARCH 13, 2012

And at PayPal we were hit with a couple patent disputes while in the midst of our IPO process. Patents and the threat of patent infringement lawsuits provide maximum leverage against a competitor when they’re in the middle of a strategic inflection point… a major financing, acquisition, or large product launch.

IP 100

IP IPO Social Network Silicon Valley 100

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). Online social networking is a concept still being evangelized even in Silicon Valley… Friendster is in private beta (wasn’t until Oct 2003 they received Google acquisition offer which they turned down for Kleiner/Benchmark round). A lot has changed. link] leehower.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process. 3) Groupon’s Business is Like An ATM: Groupon is currently unprofitable on a GAAP basis thanks to acquisition related expenses in 2010 as well as ongoing marketing spend to acquire customers. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Its the same with acquisitions. ► 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. No one wants to buy you till someone else wants to buy you, and then everyone wants to buy you.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. In 1980 Genentech became the first IPO of a venture funded biotech company. It’s because the startups are doing something very new that make them “Lean&# : These startups embrace customer and agile development that Eric Ries has been evangelizing.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

— Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm. In the 20th century tech companies and their investors made money through an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

In a subscription business, maybe your attrition starts matching your acquisition, balancing like magic. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. Nothing seems to matter. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Go on an agile diet quickly. With a product development team that is not shipping, any agile methodology will surface major problems quickly. Labels: agile , customer development 15comments: Scott Shapiro said. If you find yourself in this kind of situation, what can you do? Great post! You do a great job articulating.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Agile VC

AUGUST 9, 2012

The company’s lost nearly 80% of its value from the peak earlier this year, in the run up to Facebook’s IPO, and currently trades below $3/share… a fraction of it’s IPO price of $10. That being said, unlike a company that has essentially zero user acquisition costs (e.g. That much we all know.

Stock 160

Stock LBO .Net Valuation 160

Agile VC

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. Much of the press on the company’s IPO highlights this fact, which is easy to discern from a casual read of the S-1. What Are Chewy’s Prospects for Profitability?

Leadership 100

Leadership .Net Revenue Acquisition 100

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

To see proof of this, simply observe the results of the large majorities of corporate acquisitions of startups. Fundamentally, the lean startup is a methodology for coping with uncertainty and unknowns with agility, poise, and ruthless efficiency. A startup is greater than the sum of its parts; it is an acutely human enterprise.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. I think its helpful to think about two kinds of competition for distribution: acquisition competition and retention competition. If your app has incredibly strong retention, you will probably do very well with the current PR/new app system of acquisition. So what can you do?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Why, we just unified acquisition and engagement! I do think the concept allows us to unify acquisition and engagement, and is important for that reason. helping you balance engagement vs acquisition. Combining agile development with customer developm. March 25, 2009 9:16 AM Jesse Farmer said. Expo SF (May.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

If you haven’t figured out the ecosystem, growth is useless – whether it is a acquisition-only viral loop, like Tagged, or an advertising blitz like countless dot-bombs. They get focused solely on growth. This isn’t helpful either, as countless companies have shown. They get focused solely on growth. Expo SF (May.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Steve Blank

JULY 6, 2010

When we were looking for funding for IMVU (the company where Eric Ries first implemented Customer and Agile Development and where the Lean Startup was born,) I thought of Shawn. Instead, he realized that most VC-backed startups would exit through a merger or acquisition- at a sale price of $20 to $100 million.

Venture Capital 175

Venture Capital Agile Customer Development 175

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

The IPO market remained closed to IT startups, but there were big acquisitions like Google buying YouTube for $1.65B (Fall 2006) and late stage financing rounds for companies like Facebook (Microsoft round at $15B valuation in Fall 2007).

LP 154

LP Portfolio Venture Capital IRR 154

Agile VC

APRIL 13, 2012

And going even further back there have been a few random ones have been built before like Salesforce.com and e-tailer RedEnvelope (IPO’d in 2003 though now defunct as a company). If my memory serves me, <10% of our pre-IPO employees at PayPal lived in SF and literally 1 of the first 40-50 folks at LinkedIn were city-dwellers.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Startup 185

Agile VC

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Suppose Acme IV invests in the Series D and 6 months later there’s an acquisition offer for Startup X that’s 50% higher than the Series D post-money valuation. As you can imagine, it would put Acme in a tenuous position of being supportive of the transaction with one fund and potentially opposing it with another.

LP 178

LP Balance Sheet Differentiation Limited Partner 178

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

We were trying to broaden the conversation beyond just viral customer acquisition. ► 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. Expo SF (May.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. As with many Silicon Valley failures, a flawless PR launch turned into a flawed customer acquisition strategy. Labels: agile , customer development 5comments: William Pietri said. Even a great architecture becomes inflexible. We can skip the chasm. Great post!

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

Square filed its S-1 several weeks ago and is now in the middle of its IPO road show process. A bunch of articles came out saying that Square had “priced” their IPO below last round and this was something terrible ranging from the bursting of a tech bubble to the coming of the apocalypse. Gross Margins / Net Revenue.

IPO 165

IPO .Net Revenue Acquisition 165

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

great web customer acquisition tutorials. Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration. Agile project management. agile product management. agile product management and Scrum tool. Agile project management tool collaborative product life-cycle. Automates Agile / Scrum development.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53