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 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

That’s a bit of a cautionary tale to VC investors today who might think it’s inevitable that the private value they are enjoying in their portfolios will certainly translate to distributions in the near future. The chart below illustrates this, with the black vertical line representing the average VC return. Source: AngelList.

Valuation 319

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 319

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

That’s a bit of a cautionary tale to VC investors today who might think it’s inevitable that the private value they are enjoying in their portfolios will certainly translate to distributions in the near future. The chart below illustrates this, with the black vertical line representing the average VC return. Source: AngelList.

Valuation 295

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 295

Occam's Razor

JULY 24, 2018

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. Slice the matrix vertically along the time-to-useful dimension….

Analytics 93

Analytics Framework Metrics Algorithm 93

The Equity Kicker

AUGUST 28, 2012

IBM has just announced the acquisition of social recruitment business Kenexa for $1.3bn, the latest of a string of ‘social’ enterprise software businesses to be acquired this year. The first major acquisition of a social business was Salesforce’s acquisition of Radian6 for $326m nearly 18 months ago.

Vertical 94

Vertical Acquisition eCommerce Flash 94

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Techstars provides their accelerator portfolio companies with access to financial, human and intellectual capital to fuel the success of their business. Homebuyer (Cincinnati, OH) Dan Green, CEO Homebuyer is a lead nurture system for mortgage lenders that reduces customer acquisition costs and increases per-loan profits.

Austin 62

Austin Curation Startup Dallas 62

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

That’s a bit of a cautionary tale to VC investors today who might think it’s inevitable that the private value they are enjoying in their portfolios will certainly translate to distributions in the near future. The chart below illustrates this, with the black vertical line representing the average VC return. Source: AngelList.

Valuation 156

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 156

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

However, as an investor watching my portfolio companies and other start-ups in the market, I can see how large rounds negatively impact the culture of budding business. At the beginning, it’s important to do things that don’t scale, especially when it comes to customer acquisition. Pitfall #4: Culture of “we’ve done it”.

Guerilla 158

Guerilla Seed Money Vertical Early Stage 158

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 26, 2011

To begin with, there seems to be a serious shortage of customer acquisition experts--particularly given how hot subscription services have gotten. Fab.com (First Round portfolio company) just announced a new round of funding and that they reached 350,000 subscribers. In New York City, that just shouldn't happen.

New York City 113

New York City Marketing SEM Acquisition 113

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

Network of vertical focused sites: BeachMint, BeachMint, WineMint, etc.; first vertical to launch by 2010 Holiday Season. Will expand IBM’s business analytics capabilities and become part of IBM’s application and integration middleware portfolio. Potentially limits acquisition opportunities for independent ad networks.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Non-Compete Vertical Europe 225

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

However, as an investor watching my portfolio companies and other start-ups in the market, I can see how large rounds negatively impact the culture of budding business. At the beginning, it’s important to do things that don’t scale, especially when it comes to customer acquisition. Pitfall #4: Culture of “we’ve done it”.

Guerilla 91

Guerilla Seed Money Vertical Early Stage 91

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. Eric and I will be working on others.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Version One Ventures

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Bessemer started the idea of the “anti-portfolio” – the companies that you passed on, but ended up doing very, very well. . After Honey was acquired by PayPal for $4B a few weeks ago, we thought it was a good time to share the Version One anti-portfolio: Honey. We had a chance to invest in a $500K round at a $12M valuation in 2015.

Portfolio 202

Portfolio Cap Table Early Stage Valuation 202

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?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

However, in private markets, there is more room to optimize across all 11 steps of the investing process: firm management , marketing, fundraising , origination , manage relationships, due diligence, negotiation, monitoring, portfolio acceleration , reporting, and. If you have one, please contact me. 7) Negotiate .

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 25, 2018

Bogdanovich, who’s worked with dozens of companies on Salesforce integration and marketing automation, sketched an order of operations for data acquisition and deployment in demand gen campaigns: Bring clean data into the CRM. Tom Tunguz offers a framework that uses a scale from 1 to 10 to assess demand generation portfolios: 1.

Demand 132

Demand Vertical Campaign Channel 132

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. But, if they are not, it’s very hard to use paid acquisition to generate that type of traffic for under $5. This is a fantastic customer acquisition situation.

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. But, if they are not, it’s very hard to use paid acquisition to generate that type of traffic for under $5. This is a fantastic customer acquisition situation.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Austin Startup

JUNE 27, 2017

A strategy for meeting these investors in Austin is to figure out the board schedule of their portfolio companies, as they they will likely travel here for those meeting. This list is venture funds that have invested in two or more Austin-based companies over the past two years. link] Click here to download a PDF with all of the tables above.

Venture Capital 54

Venture Capital Austin Texas Private Equity 54

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. We see incredible opportunity in the road ahead, and view this as an excellent fit for our early-stage investment portfolio.”.

SQL 59

SQL PHP Database Open Source 59

Rob Go

FEBRUARY 22, 2017

Our portfolio company Grove exhibits this characteristic. ” The company is also insanely good at finding these customers too, so they don’t waste customer acquisition dollars on the wrong customers. But a few others seem to be emerging, with conveyor belts that are specifically tuned to their particular vertical.

Portfolio 36

Portfolio Vertical Retention Valuation 36

Rob Go

DECEMBER 10, 2012

In our own portfolio, we’ve made a few investments here. 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. This is why ecommerce fashion and design (eg: Fab and Pinterest) have emerged now vs. earlier.

B2B 62

B2B Internet Vertical Early Stage 62

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Their VC firm, In-Q-Tel , has been in business for 10 years, and like most VC firms they have an annual event where they show off their new portfolio companies to their limited partners and other VC partners. So I gave my “ The Secret History of Silicon Valley ” talk as the keynote to the CIA’s venture capital conference.

Silicon Valley 247

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 247

BeyondVC

MARCH 19, 2007

Sure, they didn’t tell us much in the public sessions as sometimes you can come away with the impression that Microsoft is doing everything and the only opportunities for startups are niche verticals built on Microsoft’s platform. The consumer mobile breakout session was one of the more informative discussions that I attended.

Acquisition 60

Acquisition Cloud Mobile Vertical 60

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 14, 2022

If I can build a partner program using software with a thousand different partners, with a thousand different tactics, I, I have inherently a, a diversified portfolio. Bob Glazer (07:19): I, I, I think it's, every business needs to add the sort of activity to their portfolio. They are the partner and the supplier are all in one.

Marketing 89

Marketing Affiliate Channel Software Review 89

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 2, 2021

He also shared his perspective on M&A (including Uber’s recent acquisitions of Postmates and Drizly), autonomous vehicles, the complexities of working in highly regulated industries, and how his personal and professional background shaped the way he approaches leadership today. RH: The honor is ours. This is awesome.

Iran 39

Iran Technical Review Non-Compete Lean 39

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

However the VC’s are managing a portfolio while you, the entrepreneur are managing one company – yours. Your point about the VC portfolio model vs. the entrepreneur’s “portfolio of 1″ is one I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and have also discussed with many other entrepreneurs.

Silicon Valley 207

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

A contemporary analog to this type of vertical integration is Comcast/NBC-U. When Facebook was opening up their platform, these guys thought that it was an interesting way to do user acquisition and preference acquisition of individuals and that they would be able find a way to monetize it in commerce-oriented verticals.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

View from Seed

AUGUST 2, 2017

Others take bets on certain verticals or business models, such as marketplaces, SaaS, or enterprise technology. For example, Upserve , a NextView portfolio company, is an all-in-one tech platform (POS, payments, CRM/loyalty, BI) to help restaurants better serve their customers. We’re Excited for What’s Next.

Seed Stage 273

Seed Stage Portfolio Cofounder B2B 273

Rob Go

JULY 11, 2013

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. But this time, I gave a different answer. We tend to favor companies that have a “distribution advantage”.

Distribution 66

Distribution Vertical Viral B2B 66

Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 28, 2012

You can help customers find the best fit for them among your product portfolio but doing so successfully at scale is as much dependent on in application marketing as it is good content on your website. Build your website for throughput and efficiency in support of customer acquisition through the trial experience. compliance).

Software 43

Software Vertical Acquisition Channel 43

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2020

The JAIC is a tiny team, yet we have a product directorate with 32 products that we’re building across six verticals – all the way from warfighter health to Joint warfighting to Business Process automation, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, cybersecurity and predictive maintenance. Selling JAIC Like Enterprise Sales.

Artificial Inteligence 388

Artificial Inteligence Fractional CTO Technology CTO 388

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2021

However, Cabinet members who are responsible for vertical portfolios still manage the government’s large functional agencies, and there continues to be significant overlap between those who handle commercial, defense, and diplomatic policy. Indeed, this was the purpose for which the council was created in 1947. military installations.

Artificial Inteligence 418

Artificial Inteligence Security Taiwan United States 418

VC Cafe

MARCH 8, 2010

Adding Convergin products to Oracle Communications portfolio is expected to enable customers with next-generation solutions to address network migration to an all IP core at significantly lower integration and hardware costs. Formerly known as PhoneDo Networks, Convergin was founded in 2000.

IP 68

IP Analytics Portfolio 68