Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 24, 2011

Your friends and family are really the only answer until you have a significant revenue stream. In fact, most of the most active investment firms are located there, although NY now has moved solidly into second place (ahead of Boston). To make this work, you will need an initial valuation of at least $5M.

Venture Capital 233

Venture Capital Revenue Elevator Pitch Silicon Valley 233

Rob Go

MAY 21, 2014

Everyone knows that nobody gets consumer in Boston. Boston has amazing consumer companies, but the region gets no love for some reason. Care just went public, is an $80M+ revenue business, and has a multi-hundred million dollar market cap (not a vapor private valuation). It’s just a given. Couple thoughts.

Boston 57

Boston Cram Down Indiana eCommerce 57

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

LinkedIn’s product had only been live for a couple months, we only had tens of thousands of registered users, and wouldn’t start generating revenue for more than a year after this point. round which closed in November 2003, and the pre-money valuation between $10 million and $15 million. It was a $4.7M link] leehower.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

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?) Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

Below, we talk to Glen Mello , Managing Director of Silicon Valley Bank’s accelerator team in Boston. Traction and revenue? Typically, the gross margins aren’t there compared to software, so revenue isn’t quite as important in the early stages of getting to market. Business model? Previous capital raised?

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

The Startup Toolkit

AUGUST 30, 2012

The valley only has about 4x more VC deals than London (although average valuations are admittedly 2x higher): The valley is not 1000x better. After ~120 meetings everywhere from Boston & New Jersey to LA & Sand Hill Road, we gave up, dug in our heels, and got back to building our business. But check it. Everywhere.

Silicon Valley 52

Silicon Valley San Francisco New Jersey India 52

Rob Go

JUNE 16, 2014

A few notable excerpts: Kyle Alspach’s commentary on seed and series A at BetaBoston; Brad Feld’s tweet a few weeks ago that “$100k MRR [monthly recurring revenue] used to be interesting. On top of that, there are fewer series A investors now than there have been in the past (at least in Boston).

Early Stage 67

Early Stage Boston Portfolio Venture Capital 67

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2014

I’ve known Joe for a while – we met through Techstars Boston, where he’s been a great mentor and very active angel investor. He’d gotten a random note asking about his valuation when we invested relative to another financing that was just announced. How did someone come up with the valuation?

Valuation 143

Valuation Stock Angel Investor IPO 143

Mike Michalowicz

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

There is a lot happening in the Boston restaurant landscape. Some say it’s the ridiculous and ever-escalating Boston rents, some say Millennials are to blame, but in either case – complaining never pays the bills. He has owned and managed restaurants in several of the different Boston Neighborhoods. link] [link].

Boston 120

Boston New York Hosting Cost 120

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

Rob,” he said, “no offense, but you aren’t going to get a world class, been-there-done-that CEO into a company with less than $1 million in revenue. It’s nice to get great valuations and hire A-players. Over the last year, we finally had a strong revenue base and a great team in place, and I was able to take three weeks of vacation.

Founder 120

Founder Startup Cofounder Business Model 120

Austin Startup

JANUARY 25, 2020

I remember enjoying reading his book “ Delivering Happiness ,” the story behind how he led Zappos and drove it to a billion dollars in revenue before Amazon bought it. Having just moved to Austin from Boston, she thought adding African car sales could help, maybe thinking Africans looking for used cars can use it to find car deals.

Delaware 62

Delaware SEC New York City New York 62

Agile VC

JANUARY 27, 2012

Revenue ramp of Groupon and Zynga –> Kleiner famously said Zynga was the fastest growing company they’d ever invested in , no mean feat for the original backers of Google, Amazon, Netscape, etc, and Groupon might be the fastest ever startup to reach $1B in revenue. Read More ».

Hockey Stick 113

Hockey Stick Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate 113

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 22, 2018

Boston, USA Oct 1st – 3rd, 2018. Boston, USA. Boston, USA. He is a respected expert in the industry with particular expertise in due diligence, online business valuation and strategic exit planning. Business of Software. Business of Software is smaller than most of the conferences on this list—by design.

Las Vegas 124

Las Vegas Software Review Affiliate Cofounder 124

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

Rob Go

APRIL 13, 2015

I hosted a group of HBS students in a tour of startups in downtown Boston a couple weeks ago. When Kayak went public, the company had one of the highest revenue/employee ratios of any business. Lending Club: IPO Market Cap: $8.4B, Revenue: $98M (2013), Employees: 628 (2014), Rev / Employee: $156K.

Technology 28

Technology IPO Boston Cofounder 28

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 13, 2012

He is on the board of the Angel Resource Institute, and is a partner with Montlake Capital (a late stage growth capital fund) and with Revenue Capital Management (a royalty based lender). For the first half of this year, valuations aren’t outlandish, at about $2.7 He’s c0-authored two books and many academic articles.

Angel Investor 103

Angel Investor Venture Capital Seed Stage Silicon Valley 103

Rob Go

JANUARY 16, 2013

I went to Groupon to find the daily deal site has just launched a couple weeks prior in Boston, after running a few deals in CHicago in late 2008. To make a long story short, I cold called Andrew Mason and fought like crazy to try to invest in what was ultimately a huge round at a $250M valuation led by Accel in the fall of that year.

Seed Stage 38

Seed Stage Chicago Aggregator Bootstrapping 38

Rob Go

JANUARY 7, 2013

Actually, growth equity firms I find are best at this, because they have very specific financial criteria that they look for, such as ranges for revenue, ebitda, growth, etc. Geography: 20 / 25 investments are based in the Boston and New York areas. Live Product, Pre Revenue: 6 1/2. 5 are in other locations. Consumer: 9.

Portfolio 49

Portfolio Seed Stage Cofounder B2B 49

Venture Chronicles

APRIL 19, 2010

cities, including Chicago, Boston, New York and San Francisco, for large groups of potential buyers on the Web, through email or via social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. From Groupon Grabs $135 Million From DST and Battery–Valuation Above $1 Billion for Social Buying Site | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD ].

San Francisco 39

San Francisco Stock Options Valuation Chicago 39

Altgate

DECEMBER 11, 2008

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Great Startup Event In Boston A Squeeze On Boston Venture Valuations → White Collar Crime Spree Posted on December 11, 2008 by fnazeeri What is going on with the rash of “white collar&# crime?

SEC 28

SEC Boston Nashville Illinois 28

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 20, 2023

12:22] Would you look at the value derived by digital technologies differently than by producing customer value or revenue? [14:23] It'll be in Boston from September 5th through the 8th. And the model we had in mind, there's a book called Valuation, which our, our firm has had an updated every year for the past 20 years or more.

Technical Review 67

Technical Review Silicon Valley Generative AI Arizona 67

VC Cafe

JUNE 29, 2012

When I met Instagram, Kevin (the founder) had great numbers, but he wasn’t even thinking about revenue. Rick – I’m a Boston-based VC. In your case, come to Boston. Don – Private money valuations have gone up. Kevin – consumer Internet plays, often times they don’t have a business model.

Developer 103

Developer Silicon Valley Software Review Mexico 103

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Baptiste , a new writer at OnStartups and local Boston entrepreneur. 5 great viral marketing campaigns (and what small businesses can learn from them!) - crowdSPRING Blog , September 13, 2010 At crowdSPRING we talk a great deal about how we can leverage our limited marketing resources to drive traffic and revenues and build strong community.

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

Altgate

MARCH 8, 2009

Growth stage investors are usually the Series B or C investors who come in when the product is in the market but there is little or no revenue and the team is probably in the 20-something range with the goal to ramp it up to 40-50 employees with the new money, build out a sales team, etc. Also, the $1.5 Bookmark the permalink.

Later Stage 34

Later Stage Early Stage Venture Capital Portfolio 34

dondodge.typepad.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing Thoughts on business and technology Home Archives Profile Subscribe About Me « Boston VCs gets first look at Y Combinator Demo Day | Main | Digg-nation is HUGE! The entrepreneur expects the company to be worth many times this valuation and so does the investor. That is how much you should raise.

Equity 40

Equity Employee Dilution Valuation 40

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

There never has to be atime when you have no revenues. Another concept we need to introduce now is valuation. I say "in theory" because in early stageinvesting, valuations are voodoo. As a company gets more established,its valuation gets closer to an actual market value. Startups valuations aresupposed to rise over time.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

The venture capital industry is so heavily skewed to Northern California, which the remains spilled over Boston, New York & Southern California. We will invest pre-revenue and even pre-product if we have discovered the right team in the right kind of market. There are of course other outposts like Austin and Seattle.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 14, 2010

To me, this indicates that venture capitalists (VCs) are looking for business, but they are clearly moving away from early-stage (pre-revenue) deals. In fact, nine of the ten most active investment firms are located there (with one in Boston). To make this work, you will need an initial valuation of at least $5M.

Venture Capital 123

Venture Capital Elevator Pitch Silicon Valley Massachusetts 123

Cracking the Code

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

As the company announces its $530 million Series F at a valuation of $8.5 Starting in three cities - Tel Aviv, London and Boston - at almost the same time helped, but can you walk us through how you thought about building a global company from day one? What have you learned from it?

Community 62

Community Cofounder Security Open Source 62

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

Only a handful of so-called unicorns — companies that have achieved a valuation of over $1 billion in the last 10 years — come from Israel, and only one Israeli firm, Teva, ranks in the world’s 500 largest companies by market capitalization. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Israeli startups are struggling to scale.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Venture Capital used to be a tight club clustered around formal firms located in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. Their need to get into high-profile deals has driven late-stage valuations into unicorn territory. and there were no books, blogs or YouTube videos about entrepreneurship. Finally the board would fire the VP of sales.

Restful 227

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 227