Rob Go

JULY 11, 2013

We tend to favor companies that have a “distribution advantage”. This isn’t true for every single one of our portfolio companies, but in at least half, we had a thesis about why this company had some sort of unfair advantage or head-start when it comes to getting their product out into the market.

Distribution 66

Distribution Vertical Viral B2B 66

ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

Years later Clavier's name now comes up all the time when one of his portfolio companies finds success; his exits include Mint, Tapulous, and UserPlane, other investments include Mashery (a ReadWriteWeb sponsor), Rapleaf, Fitbit, bitly, GroupOn, Twitter and many more. How to Hack the Investment World. You can also follow Kedrosky on Twitter.

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

Reid Hoffman

OCTOBER 21, 2019

Disclosure: * denotes a current or former Greylock portfolio company.). In any industry, you live and die by the numbers— user acquisition, margins, growth rate, and so on. Distribution. A good product with great distribution is more likely to win a Glengarry Glen Ross market than a great product with poor distribution.

Silicon Valley 53

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review United Kingdom 53

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

dominated by a few very large incumbents who control much of the distribution or are you going into a market that is “fragmented” where nobody controls the industry. That marketing can be PR or SEO or influencer distribution or other forms of “unpaid” marketing. Competition.

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Meanwhile my partner was in heaven working with his newly hired group of game designers directing and producing our first games. Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners. Stop annoying our game designers and start working on selling and marketing the games.” They think we’re brilliant.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 212

View from Seed

MAY 28, 2020

Advances in technology and changing consumer preferences have long been transforming the way food is created, distributed, and consumed. The food supply chain has been rattled with distribution shifting from restaurants to grocery and with food production bottlenecks resulting from fewer employees at work.

Memphis 256

Memphis Distribution Bankruptcy Operations 256

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. Tech acquisitions went crazy at the same time the IPO market did. What Do VC’s Do? And some companies didn’t even have to go public to get liquid. billion.)

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Bringing it back to inform the next iteration of the design and so forth.

Technology 308

Technology China United States Government 308

Eric Friedman

AUGUST 18, 2021

Previously, he was the COO of digital gift card start-up Giftly from its inception in 2010 to its acquisition by Giftcards.com in 2013. It’s a luxury brand, but a brand designed with certain scale effects. I don’t worry about my anti-portfolio. Eric Friedman: Let’s dig into the work that you do with portfolio companies.

Silicon Valley 88

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Cofounder Africa 88

View from Seed

APRIL 23, 2015

However … An unfortunate side effect of this particular POTAJ is that, in many startup pitches, entrepreneurs focus so much on product or tech that they leave out one crucial, deal-making-or-breaking detail: distribution. ” Founders must address distribution in their pitches both overtly and succinctly.

Founder 120

Founder Distribution Viral Seed Stage 120

ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

Use that intelligence to inform product portfolio and investment choices.”. Survey design. This means more people behind a screen, which means more opportunity across distribution channels. You’re no longer in a growth and acquisition position, so KPIs based on revenue targets, etc., Accepting that is key. are moot.”.

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121

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 121

Architecture Stealth Agile Distribution 121

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 8, 2015

Do we believe “startup-driven” innovation (innovation that comes from relationships with external, early-stage companies) should be part of the corporate innovation portfolio? Acquiring a growth-stage private startup can provide a faster ROI at lower risk than the acquisition of an early- stage startup.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Acquisition Boston Early Stage 120

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Across our portfolio and in my own entrepreneurial experience, I have seen three main sales models work successfully in scaling B2B sales: 1) Enterprise; 2) Telephone; and 3) Developer-driven. customer acquisition cost or CAC). Many companies will design their sales and marketing machine as a blend of each of these approaches.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Austin Startup

APRIL 17, 2017

Thrillbox Thrillbox is an immersive media analytics platform that provides distribution tools for content generators, advertising agencies, vendors, and networks. familiarity with use of social media on a corporate level, as well as experience with SEO best practices, designing landing pages, and website analytics tools (Google Analytics).

Semantic 48

Semantic Social Media Database Artificial Inteligence 48

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

It’s an impressive portfolio. Dave McClure’s AARRR metrics and Andrew Chen ‘s specifics on freemium models, viral marketing, user acquisition and engagement both offer examples of exit criteria for Customer Discovery and Validation for startups on the web. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Customer Development 223

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 223

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.) Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Customer Development 241

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 241

Lightspeed Venture Partners

JUNE 11, 2012

In 2009 I wrote a guest post at Industry Gamers about why social gaming is so attractive to investors , where I talked about the three key elements oin gaming: Development, Distribution and Discovery. But I think the framework of Development, Distribution and Discovery is still a useful lens to view the industry. Paid acquisition.

IP 114

IP Distribution Viral Mobile 114

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 26, 2018

Google has been investing in a broad healthcare portfolio, Amazon has been investing in pharmacy distribution and Apple…? It may be the first one built into the watch, but it’s not the first Apple Watch ECG app cleared by the FDA – AliveCor , got over-the-counter-clearance in 2014 and Cardiac Designs in 2013.)

China 67

China Technical Review Software Review Algorithm 67

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV).

PR 319

PR Venture Capital Hiring Seed Capital 319

Occam's Razor

JULY 24, 2018

When designating a metric as a KPI, this is your foremost consideration: depth of influence. Analyzing these metrics not only fundamentally changes marketing strategy (think tens of millions of dollars for large companies); their insights can change your company’s product portfolio, your customer engagement strategies and much more.

Analytics 93

Analytics Framework Metrics Algorithm 93

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

JANUARY 21, 2011

Right out of Graduate School, I started my career with one of the big four accounting firms in their M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) practice. That said, I have some of my stock portfolio in hedge funds managed by folks I know (I know you are thinking Madoff at this point), and most in vehicles that are on auto-pilot.

Internet 80

Internet Technical Review Stock Due Diligence 80

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The distribution of investors should mirrorthe distribution of startups, which has the usual power law dropoff.So These conventions werent designed to drag out the funding process,but thats why theyre allowed to persist. It seems probable that investors have till nowon average been overcontrolling their portfolio companies.

Startup 93

Startup Valuation Non-Compete Deal Flow 93

online.wsj.com

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com. He also combed the portfolios of VC firms and talked to people at start-ups, he says. In early 2011 an acquisition by a Fortune 500 company fell apart.

Venture Capital 107

Venture Capital Software Review Rhode Island North Dakota 107

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 13, 2021

You know, “I have profit loss statements and cost of customer acquisition and long-term value and cohort analysis and all of these things,” (all of which of course super important for understanding and valuing businesses appropriately), and what they’re growing to, and what the growth stage, and what is the future. You know, maybe I’m wrong.”

Incubator 36

Incubator IPO Networking Cofounder 36

K9 Ventures

DECEMBER 10, 2011

No distributed teams, no overseas teams, and definitely no companies that rely on “outsourcing” to build their core technology. ” Now that last statement is a little off, since I have a portfolio company in Berkeley and one as far south as San Jose. I’ll give the example of the acquisition of CardMunch by LinkedIn.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley San Jose Portfolio Cofounder 124

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 12, 2013

But how do we distribute credit for the conversions across all those channels? The outcome in either scenario is a restructuring of the organization that is exquisitely geared towards taking advantage of portfolio optimization. You can even get great first-step guidance about how to rebalance your portfolio from that last column.

Channel 161

Channel Analytics Campaign Conversion 161

K9 Ventures

DECEMBER 10, 2011

No distributed teams, no overseas teams, and definitely no companies that rely on “outsourcing” to build their core technology. ” Now that last statement is a little off, since I have a portfolio company in Berkeley and one as far south as San Jose. I’ll give the example of the acquisition of CardMunch by LinkedIn.

Silicon Valley 112

Silicon Valley San Jose Portfolio Cofounder 112

Scott Edward Walker

JULY 7, 2011

Redemption rights are principally designed to protect investors from a situation where, after a period of time, their portfolio company is just moving “sideways” and, accordingly, is not an attractive acquisition target or IPO candidate. What Does a Redemption Rights Provision Look Like?

Term Sheet 49

Term Sheet Redemption Venture Capital Preferred Stock 49

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Design/Front End: Twitter Bootstrap : Include this in your website, and you are half finished. LiveRoad : A Great IDE for design is very helpful. Color Scheme Designer. great web customer acquisition tutorials. online/offline, extensible wireframing tool w/design library. Customer service. Get Satisfaction.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 9, 2016

We rarely hold people responsible for Traffic Acquisition accountable, we rarely hold people responsible for Site Design and Merchandizing accountable. Question time for your Acquisition, Design and Merchandizing team. Learn how to use this metric to drive those two changes: marketing portfolio – people thinking.

Analytics 60

Analytics Metrics eCommerce PPC 60

VC Cafe

JANUARY 16, 2011

Aerotel Medical Systems is a world leading manufacturer of modular, home and mobile telecare and telemedicine solutions designed to transfer essential data over the telephone, mobile phone and the Internet. This allows customers to create, manage and track processes that include tagging of physical objects using barcodes. Mer Telecom. -

Mobile 103

Mobile Securities and Exchange Commission Flash IP 103

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 13, 2012

How can I e.g. determine the ROI of my mobile traffic acquisition, when people regularly convert on their laptops later… What would be the current best practice to move towards a proper cross-device attribution, while maintaining or improving on privacy standards at the same time?? That means: All of these metrics are off.

Analytics 124

Analytics Channel Metrics Web 124

Occam's Razor

MAY 19, 2014

The examples cover elements we optimize for in our acquisition ( what are we doing to attract traffic ), behavior ( what happens once they land on our website ) and outcomes ( did we end up making money, were the customers satisfied ) strategies. I wonder what the distribution looks like? Click-through Rate <-> Bounce Rate.

Metrics 159

Metrics Analytics SEC Acquisition 159

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 the " buy now, buy now, buy now, buy now " design and merchandising on their websites makes that amply clear. Bonuses have been distributed.

Metrics 152

Metrics Analytics Search Channel 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. Pick hard metrics to designate as your key performance indicators.

Analytics 140

Analytics Web Metrics DC 140