The only concern was that they didn’t know what their cost of customer acquisition was, nor did they which channels would be most effective, or how much they could acquire out of each channel. The good thing is that customer acquisition is a pretty easily testable thing. It’s a very different animal than an enterprise sales strategy. MORE >>

This acquisition is a long story, but if you have a few minutes let me tell you the best parts. If you’re interested you can read about one of my acquisitions from a few years back in a post titled  The Inside Story of a Small Software Acquisition. Photo by psiaki. My Background. exit big! Aaaah yes…the search. MORE >>

For a time, Lijit pursued a similar model and having bumped into Federated in many a sales process we can attest to the strength of the Federated sales team. Federated brings to the combined entity a large and established sales force and the ability for Lijit publishers to access premium content relationships and advertising. MORE >>

First off, just to be clear, I’ve never been a sales person. played a sales person on TV. sales teams that I think work pretty well (including the team at my marketing software startup). Building Startup Sales Teams. Don’t hire sales people too early. You don’t need sales people, you need sales. MORE >>

This picture says it all: Average exit valuations have returned to pre-recession levels, above 2x sales, and are outstripping the ratios seen in recent years. In the UK,  the highest multiple was Moneybookers, which sold at 9x sales. My employer, Qualcomm, has already announced a $3bn acquisition of Atheros this month. MORE >>