Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2022

For additional growth, most companies expand the product portfolio to cater to more customers, and sell more to existing customers. The challenge during this phase is to stay innovative and agile. This is the end game for an industry, and many companies, characterized by mergers and acquisitions to a few dominant players.

Dilution 355

Dilution Startup Merger Flash 355

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.) So what’s wrong the product development model? Where Are the Customers?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Lightspeed Venture Partners

DECEMBER 10, 2014

We had seen Lightspeed portfolio company Nicira disrupt networking layers 2-3 with an architecture that consisted of highly distributed scale out software elements coupled with centralized control, culminating in an acquisition by VMWare for $1.25B in the summer of 2012.

Architecture 113

Architecture Stealth Agile Distribution 113

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

VC’s invested their limited partners’ “risk capital” in a portfolio of startups in exchange for illiquid stock. The size of the red bars (IPO’s) versus blue (mergers and acquisitions) illustrates that while venture-backed startups did get acquired, the IPO market was booming. Software startups are most likely to exit as an acquisition.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2019

For additional growth, most companies expand the product portfolio to cater to more customers, and sell more to existing customers. The challenge during this phase is to stay innovative and agile. This is the end game for an industry, and many companies, characterized by mergers and acquisitions to a few dominant players.

Dilution 224

Dilution Merger Flash Global 224

Austin Startup

JUNE 15, 2010

Coremetrics’ offerings are a new addition to IBM’s business analytics portfolio. In addition, Coremetrics software complements IBM’s existing software and services portfolio of offerings from WebSphere, information management and business analytics and optimization.

Analytics 69

Analytics Portfolio Agile eCommerce 69

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 2, 2017

For additional growth, most companies expand the product portfolio to cater to more customers, and sell more to existing customers. The challenge during this phase is to stay innovative and agile. This is the end game for an industry, and many companies, characterized by mergers and acquisitions to a few dominant players.

Dilution 134

Dilution Merger Flash Global 134

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

Our portfolio has grown to 15 companies today, the bulk of which is on the US East Coast and roughly half the companies have already progressed from the seed stage to completing Series A rounds. Just under half our portfolio is B2B in nature, slightly more than half is consumer-facing in some way.

LP 100

LP Seed Stage Silicon Valley Limited Partner 100

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 14, 2013

For additional growth, most companies expand the product portfolio to cater to more customers, and sell more to existing customers. The challenge during this phase is to stay innovative and agile. This is the end game for an industry, and many companies, characterized by mergers and acquisitions to a few dominant players.

Dilution 187

Dilution Merger Flash Global 187

Rob Go

JULY 22, 2014

Very large scale acquisitions are happening for companies with little or no revenue for strategic reasons. These things didn’t happen to companies in our portfolio that day. Maintain agility. For example: We are seeing extremely healthy valuations for companies, some with very limited traction or semblance of a business.

Valuation 52

Valuation Agile Acquisition Equity 52

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 14, 2015

For additional growth, most companies expand the product portfolio to cater to more customers, and sell more to existing customers. The challenge during this phase is to stay innovative and agile. This is the end game for an industry, and many companies, characterized by mergers and acquisitions to a few dominant players.

Matching 120

Matching Marketing Dilution Startup 120

Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

Smart Marketers work hard to ensure that their digital marketing and advertising efforts are focused on the most impactful portfolio of channels. The company truly has a portfolio strategy when it comes to marketing. Are controlled experiments a part of your marketing and analytics portfolio? Maybe TV and Twitter and Newspapers.

.Net 119

.Net Campaign Analytics Channel 119

Agile VC

MAY 16, 2012

And we invest in US-based startups, primarily on the US east coast though we’ll consider other parts of country on a selective basis (roughly 15-20% of our portfolio is in the SF Bay area). We also invest only in software & internet enabled businesses.

Seed Stage 124

Seed Stage Silicon Valley B2B Syndicate 124

Up and Running

AUGUST 19, 2014

For example, one of the angels I pitched to cared deeply about our competitive landscape, whereas another wasn’t too concerned about the competitive landscape, he was more interested in our financial assumptions and my team’s ability to implement in an agile fashion. Angels vs. venture capitalists. Tweet This Tip.

Angel Investor 161

Angel Investor Technical Review Due Diligence Startup 161

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

And so this very agile, iterative process of bringing new technologies and prototyping systems. We’ve started to adjust our acquisition approach. And the departments have put out some very useful new guidance on how to approach software acquisition in a very different way than hardware acquisition.

Technology 300

Technology China United States Government 300

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

Today, the DOD requirements and acquisition systems are driven by a sixty-year-old model predicated on 1) predicting the future (both threats and technology), 2) delivering solutions decades out optimized for lifecycle costs and 3) assuming that government labs and incumbent prime contractors drive technological innovation.

Technology 269

Technology China Government Artificial Inteligence 269

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Occam's Razor

JULY 22, 2013

Then there is Agile for engineering. If you want to grow your business, you are going to need content/engagement points for the See stage (the widest possible addressable audience) and for the Think stage (fill up your funnel at the very top, convince people early, build relationships, convert higher at a cheaper acquisition cost).

Framework 163

Framework Marketing Metrics Audience 163

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

At Risk – Usually starts with a firm beginning to see challenges in large portions of its portfolio, or in keeping the partnership together, or in the viability of the firm’s core strategy as broader markets start to shift (e.g. Well first it’s worth understanding the distinct phases of exactly how a VC firm dies.

LP 154

LP Portfolio Venture Capital IRR 154

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 27, 2011

Flip startups are agile startups that aim to exit quickly. The idea is to build a hit that would make the founder(s) an appealing and quick talent acquisition (sometimes referred to as an acq-hire). The development part is similar to a lean startup: you want to be agile. Instead, their goal is to create a promising product.

Lean 144

Lean Startup Agile Coder 144

Agile VC

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Unlike a startup that might raise equity financing across several rounds all combined in a single balance sheet, VC’s do not simply commingle these funds into a single bucket to be allocated across all the companies in that firm’s portfolio. Why is this?

LP 178

LP Balance Sheet Differentiation Limited Partner 178

Agile VC

AUGUST 12, 2011

At NextView, we spend a substantial portion of our time trying to help our portfolio companies prepare for growth as “venture scale” businesses. Whether it’s customers, revenue, user acquisition, investors are more likely to be convinced when your startup has a good near past (last 3-4mo) trajectory.

Seed Stage 113

Seed Stage Silicon Valley B2B Acquisition 113

Occam's Razor

MARCH 23, 2010

This allows you to do strategic analysis of you web acquisitions in context of retail, call center, etc. If I could summarize the philosophy I have formed from a lifetime of bruised it would be this… The only way to succeed in Web Analytics is to: Be agile. Not page level analysis type (that's tactical!) Be flexible.

Analytics 118

Analytics Web Metrics Campaign 118

Occam's Razor

APRIL 23, 2012

Choose the right metric and they'll create the most glorious digital experience in the universe, the perfect acquisition campaign, the most amazing customer service channel. But if you want to be an agile, nimble competitor, it is a discussion you have to have. And they will shock you with the profits they deliver.

Metrics 152

Metrics Analytics Search Conversion 152

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 7, 2014

An example is: "We should add these 80 keywords to our PPC portfolio with a max bid of $14." When you review the portfolio of segments being used by your Squirrels, ensure that they have Acquisition, Behavior AND Outcome segments. The primary manifestation of this is expressed in English (or native country language).

Analytics 140

Analytics Web Metrics DC 140

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