ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

Jeff Clavier was the first tech investor I ever met; he was introduced to me years ago by some hip engineers in a bar as "one of the few cool VCs." Every company has a forecast for how it will get to an arbitrary $100 million in revenue and they all hit it on year five. The stages of funding.

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

Austin Startup

JUNE 26, 2019

We tried, and opted out of, potentials for pivots; we pitched for game-changing partners and acquisitions that did not ultimately convert. Even though most of this message was already drafted, we also had a Hail Mary of a final acquisition conversation that closed the following morning. Bootstrapping is AMAZING!

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup B2C Sweat Equity 54

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 21, 2010

At today's roundtable, we had some very interesting discussions on creative bootstrapping. Justin is looking for a more efficient customer acquisition model, and my suggestion to him was to look into using distributors, instead of trying to do all the development and then also all the distribution himself.

Bootstrapping 113

Bootstrapping IP India Silicon Valley 113

ConversionXL

MARCH 31, 2021

Cash flow is a matter of life or death when bootstrapped and pre-funding. The best content distribution approach is to reverse-engineer your client’s consumption habits. More importantly, it’s become an acquisition channel for the agencies they partnered with, allowing them to stand on the shoulders of a well-known brand.

Audience 127

Audience Non-Compete Distribution Channel 127

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

I have discussed at length why revenue sharing channel deals may serve as perfectly fine alternatives to raising equity (or even complements) because of their non-dilutive nature. It certainly will be a better way to bootstrap the company. million in revenue. SOCO Games. Brainscape. The answer to the question is neither.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Rob Go

DECEMBER 28, 2011

61M in Q3 revenue, up 28% YoY. Ebay’s third largest acquisition in the last 3 years. The company is expected to do around $500M in revenue in 2011 and has seen 50%+ growth YoY the past two years. The company also never raised any previous financing, and is one of the great bootstrapped success stories out there.

Technical Review 54

Technical Review Boston Software Review IPO 54

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

In other words, if I’m thinking about this just from a WP Engine perspective for a second as a potential customer, when you come up to me and say, “Meetings are awful because half of them don’t even have an agenda, and the ones that do, you don’t stick to it and they go long. Jason: Exactly. Jason: Yeah. Jason: Yeah.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Software By Rob

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

Where they don’t belong is with a bootstrapped founder trying to figure out how many customers she can expect to reach next month on her shoestring marketing budget. It then crunches those numbers together with an expected conversion rate and expected price to give you an idea of expected monthly revenue. Bad news for you.

Marketing 64

Marketing Software Review Matching Bootstrapping 64

ConversionXL

JANUARY 29, 2014

Customer loyalty expert Fred Reichheld also reports in his book “ The Ultimate Question ” that businesses saw an average of 2x revenue growth by simply increasing their overall brand advocacy by only 12%. If you notice in the examples above, the testimonials are given by directors of growth and customer acquisition. Getsatisfaction.

Software Review 126

Software Review Stock Video Advertising 126

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Diving in a bit more into some thoughts here: 1b) Ad-based revenue streams generally have terrible unit economics. This is obvious. Marketing first. Product second.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Diving in a bit more into some thoughts here: 1b) Ad-based revenue streams generally have terrible unit economics. This is obvious. Marketing first. Product second.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 28, 2010

I also advised Antonio to defer his investor road show and even customer acquisition programs until this basic positioning exercise is in place. Cristina currently has a couple of large customers in pilot mode, and is starting to show metrics on how much improvement IDES can deliver over existing analytics engines. IDES Technologies.

Partner 117

Partner Belgium Portugal Bootstrapping 117

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 16, 2010

The trends include Cloud computing, outsourcing, social Web, vertical and local Web, smartphones and tablets, online advertising, online video, online gaming, e-books, and bootstrapped entrepreneurship. Jimmy already has about 65 customers and about a million dollars in annual revenue. You can find details in the blog post on [link].

Senegal 117

Senegal Nevada Bootstrapping Silicon Valley 117

K9 Ventures

JULY 21, 2016

In fact, in college I used to joke that Electrical and Computer Engineers could write better code that Computer Scientists (not something I would argue about as voraciously now). Occipital — makers of the Structure Sensor for 3-D data acquisition. You make a change, compile, and voila you can see the effect of what you did.

Software Review 48

Software Review Forecast Portfolio Distribution 48

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

They should be built organically, bootstrapped, and get to sustainability. A sustainable business = (customer + revenue + profits). It would go a long way in validating his assumptions and possibly also bring in customer revenues if the value proposition really resonates. Investors are optional in this equation. CricketWeekly.

Incubator 116

Incubator Silicon Valley Idaho Entrepreneur 116

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

To replace them, employers spend $11,500 average per healthcare employee acquisition cost (20% of the annualized salary plus hiring incentives is considered customary for acquisition cost). A customer acquisition strategy that is pragmatic, and. Bureau of Labor and Statistics - 37.5%

India 115

India Silicon Valley Incubator Bootstrapping 115

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 3, 2011

Then Greg Snead, also from Tacoma, discussed Orbiter , an RFID venture that is moving along quite nicely, having clocked more than $700,000 in revenue last year. Orbiter expects to give its investors a 15 times return on investment based on their current pipeline and revenue forecast. Happy Grasshopper. Social Pulse.

San Jose 115

San Jose Entrepreneur United States Washington 115

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

This curriculum is based on the various questions entrepreneurs have asked me over these 64 sessions, spanning financing, positioning, customer acquisition, marketing, sales, channel, and various other early stage, startup-related issues. John already has a couple of customers, and needs about 50 customers to get to $1M in annual revenue.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Spencer Fry

JUNE 29, 2011

You may see a lot of signups by a certain type of user, but that cohort may bring in only half the revenue of another cohort that may provide fewer total signups. We're all familiar with the idea of viral user acquisition: Your current users invite other users to use your service. This kind of data is especially valuable.

Philippines 77

Philippines Viral Bootstrapping Europe 77

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The best composition is probably one engineer whose passion lies in the pixels on the screen and another engineer whose passion is making bits fly really fast through servers. is it really that the only people who can build great startups are engineers? Engineers don’t always have the best business ideas.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Tim Keane

OCTOBER 2, 2007

In my mind, a "business model" reveals the structure of the profit engine that underlies the venture. In reality, the ability to estimate growth based on revenue for a new venture is low. Are we planning for the lowest customer acquisition cost the industry has ever seen? Bootstrapping. October 2010. Categories.

Business Model 60

Business Model Wisconsin Angel Investor Bootstrapping 60

online.wsj.com

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

If failure is defined as failing to see the projected return on investment—say, a specific revenue growth rate or date to break even on cash flow—then more than 95% of start-ups fail, based on Mr. Ghoshs research. In early 2011 an acquisition by a Fortune 500 company fell apart. Engineering & Accounting Svcs.

Venture Capital 107

Venture Capital Software Review Rhode Island North Dakota 107

Life Beyond Code

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

One Million by One Million is a global initiative that aims to nurture a million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars each in annual revenue and beyond by 2020, thereby creating a trillion dollars in global GDP and ten million jobs. 1M/1M Program has a bold mission. This is where numerous ventures fail.

Programming 116

Programming Silicon Valley Bootstrapping Technical Review 116