Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

If you don’t understand your key financial metrics, you have no way of monitoring your business’s health—and you risk mingling assets, incurring penalties for filing taxes late, overlooking expenses, and running into difficulties paying bills and employees, just to mention a few! Each article will give you: A brief definition of the metric.

Metrics 60

Metrics Burn Rate .Net Churn Rate 60

VC Adventure

MARCH 17, 2022

With the markets down significantly, financings (at least at the later stages) slowing down, and inflation and interest rates on the rise, perhaps now is a good time to talk about your burn rate. Your underlying business metrics should.

Balance Sheet 121

Balance Sheet Burn Rate Valuation Metrics 121

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. Three months in, the burn is now at $70k/month. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. Heads down on product, they say. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Here are a few: We know what customers want. By hiring experts, conducting lots of focus groups, and executing to a detailed plan, the company became deluded that it knew what customers wanted. Everyone had fun; the product worked. But that was two full years before any customers were allowed to use it.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). Were talking PayPal -sized variations.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2020

It’s got a big burn rate, it’s too big to pivot, and it goes bust. We’re obsessively focused on customers and use cases. We don’t just ask who is going to use a product, for what and why. The customer experience has got to be better. And what are the metrics for customer love?

Partner 68

Partner Early Stage Portfolio Metrics 68