Agile VC

JUNE 13, 2019

I know some of the investors in Chewy prior to the PetSmart acquisition, but I am not a shareholder nor do I intend to purchase shares in the IPO. revenue business still growing >50% YoY? Chewy now has over 10 million customers, repeat purchases by existing customers account for approximately 90% of their revenue today.

Leadership 100

Leadership .Net Revenue Acquisition 100

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

How They Make Money : Facebook’s primary revenue stream is of course selling advertising on Facebook.com, which in total accounts for 85% of revenue. The next chunk comes from Facebook’s platform, in essence “taxing” the revenues of app developers like Zynga, which represents 15% of revenue.

IPO 100

IPO South Korea Venezuela Revenue 100

Agile VC

SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

The business was strong and profitable (>$100M revenue, gross margins 50%+), but PayPal also faced challenges… diversifying beyond eBay sellers (many sell both on and off eBay), increased regulation, continued international expansion, etc. When we sold PayPal to eBay in 2002 we had just gone public earlier that year.

Mobile 157

Mobile Acquisition Revenue Management 157

Agile VC

JANUARY 21, 2015

And even acquisitions painted as successes may look very different below the (typically confidential) surface. But during the year 2000, we went through three different CEOs, fraud nearly killed the company, our revenue was negligible and unproven, and at our worst point, the company was burning well over $10 million a month — A MONTH!

Cofounder 188

Cofounder Seed Stage Employee PR 188

Agile VC

MARCH 8, 2012

For SaaS or other recurring revenue businesses these figures might be on a bookings basis rather than GAAP revenue, but conceptually they’re similar. Bill Gurley’s post last year does a great job analyzing why some businesses are valued at 10x+ revenue and most aren’t. Zynga – 8x+ trailing revenue.

IPO 100

IPO Silicon Valley Revenue Seed Stage 100

Agile VC

AUGUST 22, 2011

Salesforce is trying to create a platform both through internal efforts on Force.com and acquisitions (e.g. Even Amazon isn’t a platform… yes they have AWS but it accounts for <3% of their revenue and isn’t terribly profitable given the capex & opex currently going into growing it. Google of course has Android.

Silicon Valley 113

Silicon Valley Seed Stage Startup Syndicate 113

Agile VC

JANUARY 21, 2015

And even acquisitions painted as successes may look very different below the (typically confidential) surface. But during the year 2000, we went through three different CEOs, fraud nearly killed the company, our revenue was negligible and unproven, and at our worst point, the company was burning well over $10 million a month — A MONTH!

Cofounder 100

Cofounder Seed Stage Employee PR 100

Agile VC

AUGUST 12, 2011

The simple answer is “be able to convince a partnership of smart investors that your startup has a good probability of being a $100M+ revenue company within 5ish years.” Whether it’s customers, revenue, user acquisition, investors are more likely to be convinced when your startup has a good near past (last 3-4mo) trajectory.

Seed Stage 113

Seed Stage Silicon Valley B2B Acquisition 113

Agile VC

APRIL 13, 2012

Here in Boston both Microsoft and Google have made significant expansions in recent years in Cambridge, and PayPal/eBay is poised to do the same in downtown Boston through acquisition and organic growth. link] leehower. Thanks Chris, good read and hadn’t seen it before. link] Matthew Tagg. Interesting article!

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Startup 185

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

There’s been ample coverage in the popular press of course highlighting everything from the company’s revenue growth, lack of profitability, and the well-publicized fact that founder/CEO Jack Dorsey is also CEO of Twitter so would theoretically be running two public companies simultaneously. Revenue Composition. Starbucks Deal.

IPO 165

IPO .Net Revenue Acquisition 165