View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

For context, seed-stage pre-money valuations are up 24% from H1 2020 to H1 2021. Early-stage valuations are up 70%, and late-stage valuations are up 103% (source Pitchbook ). Seed investors are being compensated for the risk because later-stage investors are paying higher prices, and diluting early-stage investors less.

Valuation 319

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 319

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

For context, seed-stage pre-money valuations are up 24% from H1 2020 to H1 2021. Early-stage valuations are up 70%, and late-stage valuations are up 103% (source Pitchbook ). Seed investors are being compensated for the risk because later-stage investors are paying higher prices, and diluting early-stage investors less.

Valuation 295

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 295

A Crowded Space

AUGUST 12, 2011

By this, I really just mean what I look for in entrepreneurs and companies at early stages. Social media / word-of-mouth will dwarf every other channel of acquisition. Start with a niche in a city, demographic, or vertical. But I wanted to organize my thoughts on this primarily for my own purposes.

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Vertical Social Media Acquisition 60

VC Cafe

AUGUST 29, 2022

As an investor in early stage startups in gaming and metaverse/web3 at Remagine Ventures , I naturally consume a lot of content on this topic, and this post also helps me digest and separate signal from noise. million (partly thanks to their acquisition of RTFKT), followed by Dolce & Gabbana at $25.7 Industry reports.

IP 187

IP Strategic Investors Vertical Early Stage 187

ConversionXL

JANUARY 18, 2022

This is particularly true for complex verticals such as B2B SaaS products, where product marketing’s ability to pinpoint users with the most need and educate them on product features and benefits proves useful. To become and remain competitive, you need both brand marketing and product marketing at each stage of your company’s development.

Marketing 110

Marketing Product Audience Equity 110

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. As usual, then, I worked with three entrepreneurs working on specific businesses.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Version One Ventures

JULY 11, 2013

For example, at version one ventures, we’re focused on early-stage (seed and Series A) opportunities in e-commerce, SaaS, and marketplaces/platforms across North America. Vertical SaaS (investments: Frontdesk , Jobber ): In the new era of enterprise software, the winners will be purpose-built, vertically sliced tools.

North America 147

North America Vertical Venture Capital Early Stage 147

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Your customer acquisition cost and lifetime value are the two magical numbers you need to calculate for each one of your campaigns. Cost of Acquisition (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a user through a given channel. Using this approach, we’ve been able to identify a number of profitable customer acquisition channels for Slidebean.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

For context, seed-stage pre-money valuations are up 24% from H1 2020 to H1 2021. Early-stage valuations are up 70%, and late-stage valuations are up 103% (source Pitchbook ). Seed investors are being compensated for the risk because later-stage investors are paying higher prices, and diluting early-stage investors less.

Valuation 156

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 156

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

Being swamped with funding is a problem that most early stage companies would love to have. At the beginning, it’s important to do things that don’t scale, especially when it comes to customer acquisition. Here are four key drawbacks: Pitfall 1: Solving every problem with non-scalable hacks.

Guerilla 158

Guerilla Seed Money Vertical Early Stage 158

Austin Startup

JUNE 27, 2017

Many investments in startups start with local venture firms in the early stages and then attract non-local venture firms for later stage and larger deal size opportunities. Entrepreneurs with early stage companies typically look for local funding before going out of region to pursue other funding sources.

Venture Capital 54

Venture Capital Austin Texas Private Equity 54

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Additionally, funds such as Foundry Group and Google Ventures have taken their own approaches – the former creating a separate early stage entity , the latter encouraging their seed stage partners to create standalone personal syndicates. 3) The Alternate Liquidity Syndicate. 3) The Alternate Liquidity Syndicate.

Syndicate 98

Syndicate Syndication South America Seed Stage 98

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

Feenix focuses on companies in the consumer space across a number of industry verticals including: multi-unit Food & Beverage operators, hospitality, managed workspace (office or food halls), location based entertainment venues, and various direct to consumer online companies.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

We spent the first 45 minutes or so talking about industry trends (in this order): The history and background of True Ventures, one of my favorite early-stage VC’s (and the one with whom Om is a venture partner). Network of vertical focused sites: BeachMint, BeachMint, WineMint, etc.;

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Non-Compete Vertical Europe 225

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

Being swamped with funding is a problem that most early stage companies would love to have. At the beginning, it’s important to do things that don’t scale, especially when it comes to customer acquisition. Here are four key drawbacks: Pitfall 1: Solving every problem with non-scalable hacks.

Guerilla 91

Guerilla Seed Money Vertical Early Stage 91

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

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. Eric and I will be working on others. This a hard concept and even harder to implement.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Hippoland

OCTOBER 16, 2016

In this post, I’m going to very *simplistically* dive into some high level categories and talk about how early stage investors consider each. Obviously within this category there are a LOT of verticals that are looked at very different — everything from e-commerce to B2B SaaS to marketplaces. But, you need to be growing FAST.

Startup 48

Startup Vertical Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 6, 2010

In addition, software industry veteran Larry Warnock, who led the acquisition of Phurnace Software by BMC Software earlier this year, has joined Gazzang as CEO. By recognizing an early customer pain in the adoption of cloud platforms, Gazzang has quickly established an impressive track record with its core client base.

SQL 59

SQL PHP Database Open Source 59

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Data companies focused on early-stage startups include Aingel , fundsUP , Preseries , PredictLeads , and Sploda. The Pocket Negotiator is very early-stage attempt to aid in the negotiating process itself. ExitRound helps early stage companies identify buyers in smaller exits. . the Untouched Vertical.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Version One Ventures

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Outcome: Just sold to PayPal for $4B (PayPal’s largest acquisition to date). This was not our early-stage sweet spot and the $100M valuation felt rich. Early-stage investing is not easy and we make a wrong decision every day! Early-stage investors are more wrong than right. Eight years and $49.9B

Portfolio 202

Portfolio Cap Table Early Stage Valuation 202

Rob Go

DECEMBER 10, 2012

Historically, small businesses have been pretty slow technology adopters, and the cost of customer acquisition has been too high relative to the LTV of these customers. Healthcare IT is another historically difficult category for early stage investors that I think might present more opportunities now than in the past.

B2B 62

B2B Internet Vertical Early Stage 62

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

What’s the customer acquisition cost? I see a lot of early-stage entrepreneurs waste too much time chasing money rather than figuring this out first. Who influences a sale? Who recommends a sale? Who is the decision maker? Who is the economic buyer? Where is the budget for purchasing the type of product you’re selling?

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

For example, if you’re an early-stage SaaS provider that is shifting from a horizontal solution to a vertical focus, your mission, culture, and competencies can stay the same and the pivot transition will probably go smoothly. It’s easier (but still hard) when you’re running a small, early-stage organization.

Startup 36

Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Rocket Science Games | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Early Stage Startup « Rocket Science 4: The Press is Our Best Product Burnout » 7 Responses Steve , on July 16, 2009 at 9:10 am Said: Steve, This is an excellent post. Quick acquisition by a Sega or EA I suppose.

Silicon Valley 207

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207

View from Seed

AUGUST 2, 2017

Others take bets on certain verticals or business models, such as marketplaces, SaaS, or enterprise technology. Sunrise , a calendar app we invested in from our first fund, was used every single day by millions of consumers prior to their acquisition by Microsoft. Early-stage investing is still the only thing we do.

Seed Stage 273

Seed Stage Portfolio Cofounder B2B 273

Rob Go

JULY 11, 2013

I was asked recently how NextView evaluates such early stage companies for investment. Here are a couple examples from our portfolio: Vertical Communities: One of the exciting attributes of GrabCAD in the early days was its rapidly growing, engaged community of mechanical engineers.

Distribution 66

Distribution Vertical Viral B2B 66

VC Cafe

JULY 11, 2011

It’s hard to be an early stage startup. Active Insight provides a SaaS product for customer acquisition optimization, providing adaptive content, targeted marketing, sales intelligence, predictive analytics and customer engagement campaigns based on real-time micro segmentation. Israel Innovation Road Trip company list.

Artificial Inteligence 92

Artificial Inteligence Turkey Boston 92

Hunter Walker

MAY 19, 2014

Anecdotally, over the last 3-6 months we’re definitely seeing more examples of larger early stage or multistage funds offer to do 80-100% of a company’s seed round. This theory is the most structural one suggested here and I tend to believe is influencing some early stage investment behaviors. (d)

Seed Stage 99

Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication Founder 99

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2018

janryan (@janryan) | Twitter Kerry Rupp Kerry is a Capital Factory Mentor and founding partner of True Wealth Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in women-led companies in the sustainable consumer and consumer health verticals. SXSW Panel: Return on Inclusion: Investing in Diverse Startups Arlan ????

Technical Cofounder 48

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 48