Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 26, 2018

The challenge is to convince investors that your business will attract real customers, before you have a revenue stream that exceeds your expenses. Even if you are funding the project yourself (bootstrapping), you should be asking yourself the same question before you have burned all your resources.

Angel Investor 147

Angel Investor Distribution Bootstrapping Viral 147

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

I have discussed at length why revenue sharing channel deals may serve as perfectly fine alternatives to raising equity (or even complements) because of their non-dilutive nature. It certainly will be a better way to bootstrap the company. The game has started getting some traction already, and has a good virality index.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Diving in a bit more into some thoughts here: 1b) Ad-based revenue streams generally have terrible unit economics. A typical ad-based revenue stream on a media website is around $5 per 1000 eyeballs ($5m CPM and give or take $1-$20ish CPMs). This is obvious. Marketing first. Product second. 2) B2B startups have high margins.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Diving in a bit more into some thoughts here: 1b) Ad-based revenue streams generally have terrible unit economics. A typical ad-based revenue stream on a media website is around $5 per 1000 eyeballs ($5m CPM and give or take $1-$20ish CPMs). This is obvious. Marketing first. Product second. 2) B2B startups have high margins.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Spencer Fry

JUNE 29, 2011

You may see a lot of signups by a certain type of user, but that cohort may bring in only half the revenue of another cohort that may provide fewer total signups. The Viral Strategy. We're all familiar with the idea of viral user acquisition: Your current users invite other users to use your service. Everyone loves free stuff.

Philippines 77

Philippines Viral Bootstrapping Europe 77

Software By Rob

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

I’ll admit up front: I’m not a fan of using freemium in a bootstrapped business. If you have funding then freemium is possible to pull off, but growing a company organically using its own revenue doesn’t work when you have an extremely low customer lifetime value (LTV).

Acquisition 56

Acquisition Customer Bootstrapping Viral 56

Software By Rob

MARCH 26, 2015

The interesting part is that my own path moving from consulting to products followed the same steps, as you can see in my product revenue chart from the past decade: Each revenue jump is when I made the move to the next step of the Stairstep Approach. Step 2: Rinse and Repeat.

Bootstrapping 41

Bootstrapping Technical Review SEO Revenue 41

crowdSPRING Blog

JULY 14, 2011

It has been very challenging bootstrapping this venture with my financial aid from grad school. I think the craziest story comes from a serious conversation I had recently, with my team, about me running on Wrigley Field in a panda suit to help QRazy Panda go viral. What are some industry specific challenges you faced?

Small Business 92

Small Business SMS Bootstrapping Viral 92

Hippoland

OCTOBER 16, 2016

As a result, for these kinds of businesses, investors often don’t expect that companies can earn revenue right out of the gate, because they may not legally be able to. Do you have virality built into the product? In the beginning, this may not be a problem — you can bootstrap.

Startup 48

Startup Vertical Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

The big enterprise software companies almost all bootstrapped their way to profitability before they got their first external investors (typically via an IPO). You have to do this; addressing real customer needs releases revenue dollars that you need to survive. The sailboat startups don't invent a product out of pure imagination.

Software 127

Software Startup Architecture Bootstrapping 127

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

For this article, we asked 14 SaaS CEOs a simple question: “How much did you spend on your MVP before you had your first dollar of revenue?”. The MVP took around four months to build, during which time the company earned no revenue. They then spent the first year qualifying the product and testing out their revenue model.

Sweat Equity 78

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 78

Software By Rob

MARCH 26, 2015

The interesting part is that my own path moving from consulting to products followed the same steps, as you can see in my product revenue chart from the past decade: Each revenue jump is when I made the move to the next step of the Stair Step Approach. Step 2: Own Your Time.

Bootstrapping 36

Bootstrapping Technical Review SEO Revenue 36

Software By Rob

MARCH 26, 2015

The interesting part is that my own path moving from consulting to products followed the same steps, as you can see in my product revenue chart from the past decade: Each revenue jump is when I made the move to the next step of the Stairstep Approach. Step 2: Rinse and Repeat.

Bootstrapping 27

Bootstrapping Technical Review SEO Revenue 27

View from Seed

MARCH 22, 2016

Even if you’re in the pre-revenue, pre-seed or seed stage, there are still ways to get on a reporter’s radar. A business publication may care less about the technical nuances, but you can bet they’ll want to hear about your numbers and your strategy for raising revenue. This one is tricker in the pre-revenue stage. As with No.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage San Francisco Startup CTO Hire 120

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

For this article, we asked 14 SaaS CEOs a simple question: “How much did you spend on your MVP before you had your first dollar of revenue?”. The MVP took around four months to build, during which time the company earned no revenue. They then spent the first year qualifying the product and testing out their revenue model.

Sweat Equity 50

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 50

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

Google realized that being the way to find the world’s information was a blitzscalable market, thanks to the network effects in its AdWords revenue engine. Dropbox made a great file-sharing product, for instance, but it was their viral marketing campaign that allowed them to cheaply acquire millions of customers.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2017

The best startups, of course, are those who help the world become a better place, but unless your revenue exceeds your expenses and your work results in profit, you are doing charity, not running a business. It could also work well with a viral app (e.g. Is it virality? Various combinations. Useful feedback?

Startup 173

Startup Viral Silicon Valley B2C 173

Spencer Fry

FEBRUARY 28, 2013

Model our potential revenue: You should never found a company without a good idea about how you plan on making money. Even better, you should project how your potential revenue stream will grow over time. I recommend Tumblr , because it's easy and you can get some virality through re-blogging.

Startup 78

Startup Ruby XML Email 78

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 19, 2023

Should you bootstrap? Then I want to talk to you about adding a new revenue stream to your business that will completely change how you work with clients. It's really popular on Good Reads, it's on YouTube, it a lot viral videos on YouTube's took, summarizing it. Should you raise funding? Who should you partner with?

Audio 86

Audio Cofounder Framework Early Stage 86

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

At a high level, business is simple! :) You bring revenue in and your costs send money out the door. You want your revenue to be higher than your costs. I know nothing about viral marketing. So you might think about how to best poise yourself to bootstrap and get to profitability for the next couple of years.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

At a high level, business is simple! :) You bring revenue in and your costs send money out the door. You want your revenue to be higher than your costs. I know nothing about viral marketing. So you might think about how to best poise yourself to bootstrap and get to profitability for the next couple of years.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

We naively thought we would have a viral campaign, but it took us 4 months to create and cost us $25,000. I thought all of these are raising $5 million, $10 million, $15 million pre-revenue. How do you have proof that they’ll pay for this?” It was an incredible undertaking, and we had the hustle for every last dollar.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 260

Software By Rob

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

Where they don’t belong is with a bootstrapped founder trying to figure out how many customers she can expect to reach next month on her shoestring marketing budget. It then crunches those numbers together with an expected conversion rate and expected price to give you an idea of expected monthly revenue.

Marketing 64

Marketing Software Review Matching Bootstrapping 64

Duct Tape Marketing

DECEMBER 14, 2017

We saw the issue of how do we get people to know that our free tool exist, and it has grown organically very well, it has a viral effect at this point, but the other thing we really did a year ago was double down on our content marketing, so one of the biggest challenges we have is our customers are software developers.

Kansas City 40

Kansas City CTO Hire Las Vegas Software Developers 40

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

We naively thought we would have a viral campaign, but it took us 4 months to create and cost us $25,000. I thought all of these are raising $5 million, $10 million, $15 million pre-revenue. How do you have proof that they’ll pay for this?” It was an incredible undertaking, and we had the hustle for every last dollar.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 120

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

endeve – Issue invoices, manage clients and check revenues all in one place. Bootstrap – Online bookkeeping software that lets you track sales and expenses, organize your records for tax time, and more. Shoutlet – Distribute and track viral marketing campaigns across social media outlets. Join the 2.3

Software Review 78

Software Review Social Media Social Network Software 78

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 29, 2019

A lot of investors were interested, but many required some tracks, some results, some revenue before they could invest. But for me at that time, and the way I was thinking about it is how am I going to be able to create traction, how am I going to be able to generate revenue if I don’t have this product. Abdo Riani: Exactly.

Community 55

Community Bootstrapping Entrepreneur Distribution 55