YoungUpstarts

MAY 14, 2018

Of course, these are important ingredients to growth, but the – perhaps unconventional – truth is that this kind of growth can be riskier and less compelling to investors than growth through acquisition. A desired deal is one that is engineered specifically with the big picture in mind. Structuring the Desired Deal.

Acquisition 109

Acquisition Finance Raleigh Mezzanine 109

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

Perhaps the most misused terms I see these days from entrepreneurs involve CAC (customer acquisition costs) and LTV (life time value) and a lack of understanding these critical components is driving many companies to premature failure. CAC is often measured incorrectly and doesn’t often doesn’t capture the true costs of acquisition.

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

How long does it take me to pay back my original customer acquisition costs? what your product & engineering thought they cared about and you adapt your offering. How profitable is my product or service? What sized team can I afford in order to sell, market & provide service to these customers?

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

Kayak was started here in my backyard of Boston… co-founder & CTO Paul English and the product/engineering team is based here in Concord MA. Now that Google’s acquisition of ITA is closed, following lenghty FTC review, it would appear Kayak is poised to proceed with their IPO in the coming months. =.

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

These lost startups land higher valuations, have larger teams, outsource more product development and spend more money on customer acquisition than their peers. Until you have product-market fit, hire builders: engineers, designers, and growth and product people. How do you know you have it? Honestly, we don’t know.”?

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

While statistics are weak on startup success rates, the worst one I’ve seen suggests that 2 in 1000 venture backed startups will ever achieve $100-million or more in valuation. Either way, the “hurdle” for successful, scalable startups is high, and it gets higher every day as customer acquisition challenges continue to increase.

Startup 332

Startup Cofounder Customer Development Viral 332

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2015

I usually envision a 50-50 ownership split for their efforts, but every engineer believes the technology side deserves the majority share. Patents can raise startup valuation by investors by as much as a million dollars, and will attract acquisitions rather than copycats.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Intellectual Property Cofounder Bootstrapping 120

Haystack

DECEMBER 29, 2018

Also during this time, the underlying metrics in that business can change positively, potentially trapping companies to accept the initially-agreed upon valuation. Governments blocking acquisitions, the curtailment of company expansion, more scrutiny on overseas operations of U.S. by a mile, continued to soar in volume and valuation.

Technical Review 165

Technical Review Venture Capital Russia China 165

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

I think everybody heard about this acquisition. They bought distribution and engineering talent. billion valuation. They only recently raised $30 million at around a $300 million valuation and THAT raised eyebrows. Atebits dba Tweetie (acquired by Twitter). Twitter bough their most used iPhone client.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Hunter Walker

MAY 13, 2023

per engineer.” Especially in the early days of mobile/iOS engineering, if you hired strong technical talent into your early stage company, you basically created an acquisition outcome floor. Those who do, often believe they can hire from the open market without the hassle of an acquisition.

Early Stage 117

Early Stage Cap Table Acquisition Sales 117

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Max entered Stanford in the fall of 2010 as a freshman, took as many of the engineering entrepreneurship classes as he could and independent study with me. (He However, this does not mean that investors don’t have a significant effect on valuations and M&A). I was feeling pretty old. Max set the record for smarts divided by age.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Duct Tape Marketing

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Since 2015, her company, Barney, has guided over 150 media, marketing & tech companies through acquisitions. 10:25] Are you seeing anybody selling parts of their companies rather than an entire acquisition? [11:19] All those things go into, you know, setting what that, that valuation is outside of just the financials.

Entrepreneur 79

Entrepreneur Technical Review Cofounder Valuation 79

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?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA CTO Hire SEM 167

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 24, 2011

Additional work in figuring out the precise go-to-market consumer, academic institution, or enterprise - each is a different business), and consequent business model and pricing model will help enhance the company's valuation. His customer acquisition strategy, however, needs a lot of work. Photo by nazreth. Discuss.

Illinois 114

Illinois Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Chicago 114

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012

What about dramatic mergers and acquisitions – aren’t those the panacea to ailing companies? During the latter years, their market valuations leapfrogged their industries by at least three times. 3) What drives your economic engine. Are charismatic superstar CEOs the answer to enduring success? Disciplined Action.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Merger Framework Valuation 150

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. Underwriters realized that as long as the public was happy snapping up shares, they could make huge profits from the inflated valuations. Carpe Diem.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

Why not go further, develop more valuation, customer experience, and really, deeply validate the business? Her main questions were around customer acquisition and financing. As far as customer acquisition is concerned, we discussed, again the power of organic search engine optimization.

Cloud 115

Cloud Incubator Silicon Valley Finance 115

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

But the press (and I suspect many of the senior execs of these companies) don’t really explore the corrosive downside of these acquisition. If I don’t commit to millions of dollars of acquisitions I will … die? Hire legions of young, impressionable graduates from the top engineering universities. Woo the press.

Liquidation Preference 357

Liquidation Preference Retention Early Stage Lock-up Period 357

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

The value ascribed by subsequent investors (in a secondary); buyers (acquisition); or the public markets (IPO). Yes, via conversion rights at a valuation cap. Yes, via conversion rights at a valuation cap. Early-stage: Cofounder with engineering/ product background from top-tier university or major technology company.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

For example, for a company that has been reliant solely on paid acquisition the growth team should experiment with developing organic channels such as search engine optimization, content marketing, or social media marketing to complement the paid efforts. Open Up the Ideation Process.

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 5, 2018

by Walker Deibel , Managing Director of Centra and author of “ Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game “ If I asked you to name a business success story, what would you think of? Lately, we’ve seen startups able to reach a billion-dollar valuation, so-called “unicorn” companies, in the limelight.

Startup 159

Startup Acquisition Portfolio Venture Capital 159

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 10, 2022

BuildingConnected’s first and only acquisition was a company I founded called TradeTapp. HW: So then you ‘did your time’ at Autodesk post-BuildingConnected acquisition. What did you learn from the two acquisition experiences, and the whiplash of going from small startup -> bigger startup -> big public company that quickly?

Cofounder 89

Cofounder Founder Acquisition Startup 89

The Equity Kicker

FEBRUARY 27, 2014

That contrasts with previous eras where great sales and marketing capabilities and great engineering were often more important than product (think about the great enterprise software success stories of the 1990s…). They process 50bn messages per day with 99.9% uptime and a service so good that 72% of active users come back daily.

Product 123

Product Valuation Retention Acquisition 123

www.mattbartus.com

DECEMBER 9, 2012

How to pump up your VC valuation. Let’s say you receive a term sheet for a $1 million investment at a $3 million fully diluted pre-money valuation, and you’re kind of disappointed. One possibility is to negotiate a higher valuation and offer warrants (i.e., and the acquisition price. A View from the Valley.

Warrant 40

Warrant Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 40

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

Now as SVP of Engineering at Box, he’s had the chance to scale their engineering team and help take the cloud collaboration company public. Earlier this month, I was at an event where Sam mentioned he writes a letter to his Box engineering team every Sunday. What do you look for in a “Box engineer?”

Engineer 48

Engineer Liquidation Preference AJAX IPO 48

VC Cafe

JULY 27, 2021

Last week Epic Games announced the acquisition of 3D content marketplace Sketchfab to support the “open and interconnected Metaverse” What exactly do they mean? From avatar technology, to game engines. billion valuation. of the mobile gaming market. In consoles and PC it’s probably 100%. 2) VR adoption.

Cofounder 183

Cofounder Mobile Revenue Cloud 183

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2015

. “the ecommerce company gained fauxmentum by raising artificially high amounts of venture capital and spent lavishly on customer acquisition despite long payback periods and questionable LTV” __. I’m not saying you shouldn’t grow engineering or do PR. We live in heady times. limit your fixed costs.

Balance Sheet 150

Balance Sheet eCommerce Venture Capital Acquisition 150

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 23, 2021

For example, if you haven’t achieved product-market fit, instrumenting every aspect of customer acquisition is overkill. I’ve seen entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing all their efforts on customer acquisition when they also needed to fix a leaky funnel or customer churn. Just track metrics that help you improve the product.

Venture Capital 46

Venture Capital Metrics Investment Bankers Framework 46

Rob Go

DECEMBER 28, 2011

Ebay’s third largest acquisition in the last 3 years. And a little less relevant is DropBox, part of Cambridge Y-Combinator class back in 2007, this year raised over $250M at ~$4B valuation. Raised $174M in its IPO in April, current market cap ~$550M. Carbonite: Raised $62.5M in its IPO, current market cap of $282M.

Technical Review 54

Technical Review Boston Software Review IPO 54

The Next Web

OCTOBER 7, 2013

“It kinda sucks to be engineer #1.”. That’s what a couple of my friends – engineers at Google and Bloomberg who have been following the rise of startup culture with intrigue – told me recently. They were referring to non-founder engineers, most commonly the first hire for technology businesses. Engineer #1?

Engineer 129

Engineer Dilution Option Pool Vesting 129

Eric Friedman

JANUARY 24, 2020

Just take the recent acquisition of Plaid by Visa. This has almost nothing to do with funds raised, valuation, or headlines gathered. This has everything to do with the engineering talent working on a problem, the NPS score from customers, and the paying clients that are excited to tell a friend about what they are doing.

Elevator Pitch 135

Elevator Pitch Valuation Revenue Early Stage 135

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 31, 2013

Snapchat may be a company with no revenue and an unrealistic valuation, but it is changing the way people think of messaging. Snapchat made waves earlier this year when the company reportedly rebuffed a $3 billion acquisition attempt from Facebook and $4 billion from Google. Let us know in the comments!

Startup 60

Startup Cofounder San Francisco Software Review 60

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 26, 2022

The vast majority of their customer acquisition is word of mouth. When you put those two things together, you get high-quality customers, high LTV, and acquisition at super low costs. And you know, a cost goes out with an acquisition, so whether it’s hiring a salesperson, commissions, or paying Google. David Zhang.

Partner 132

Partner Cofounder Retention Acquisition 132

Austin Startup

JUNE 27, 2017

Valuations in startups increased dramatically during the Dot Com boom and then both valuations and the availability of investment capital nationally collapsed in 2001 with the Dot Com bust and 9/11. But the timing of the launch of these new funds almost assured their failure regardless of their investing acumen.

Venture Capital 54

Venture Capital Austin Texas Private Equity 54

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2010

It’s nice to have protected IP, but that will mostly matter later on in the event of an acquisition. For consumer web startups, the more traction you show, the better valuation you will get. Patents are nice but… in a consumer Internet business, it’s most likely that you aren’t re-inventing the wheel.

Elevator Pitch 102

Elevator Pitch Incubator Technical Review Startup 102

Start Up Blog

AUGUST 25, 2013

Alan is the Head of Engineering for Google Aust / NZ and has been in and around computers since the early 1980′s. When asked how one should value a company that doesn’t make any – he said the ‘Cisco Valuation Model’ is best. With serious time in the game he has some interesting stories.

Australia 80

Australia Startup Valuation Cofounder 80