Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

On December 3rd Brad Feld wrote a one paragraph blog post titled “ Raising Venture Capital &# in which he linked to my blog. The Original Post (after the jump): Venture Capital, By Mark Suster (December 2nd, 2006). I don’t plan to write the authoritative venture capital blog, just some anecdotes.

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Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

Start With a Business Model, Not a Business Plan | WSJ – [link]. The danger of waiting to long to find a business model? In Silicon Valley, Technology Talent Gap Threatens G.O.P. Special Report: Silicon Valley’s dirty secret – age bias | Reuters – [link].

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Startups don’t fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model. Look at the Product Development model and you might wonder, “Where are the customers?” customers aren’t buying it, the cost of distribution is too high, etc.) before you ship.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). It ultimately failed because she was focused on engineering the product, but didn’t validate the rest of her business model (product/market fit, distribution channel, customer acquisition, etc.).

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. Electron-based Venture Capital. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. Here’s why.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 15, 2017

What seems to be the best way to create customers and revenue may result in a business model that is out of vogue with the investment world and shortchanges you on enterprise valuation. Heck, there was no venture capital in Dixie in that era. He forgot a major highlight of the business model, and the damage was done.

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Technical Review Software Review Nevada Silicon Valley 48

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it. Your mileage may vary, just my two cents.

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Up and Running

MAY 3, 2012

Entrepreneurship continues to be a sexy topic for governments, with every country worth its salt trying to create its own tech hub, mimicking Silicon Valley. Sean Seton-Rogers of PROfounders Capital recently claimed that of the more than 3,500 business plans they had received, his London, U.K. What is there not to like?

Entrepreneur 82

Entrepreneur Technical Review Silicon Valley Lean 82

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. Rather they understood that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

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Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

Finally, and importantly, society is better off because Amazon makes the system for distributing books (and other products) vastly more productive, freeing up resources for other value-creating investments. Microsoft and Apple believed that microprocessors would allow consumers to have their own computers.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I responded to their RFP by proposing that Ardent build the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center a distributed supercomputing environment with hundreds of Ardent personal supercomputers rather than a monolithic Cray supercomputer. And where are we today…distributed computing. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Faith-based Entrepreneurship At first, entrepreneurship is a Faith-based initiative. Order Here. Now In Print!

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Reid Hoffman

JULY 27, 2021

I was still unprepared; I had no idea that I also needed to learn about go-to-market strategy and distribution. Network strength is one of the reasons that people who want to build great software businesses have, and will continue to move to Silicon Valley. VENTURE CAPITAL AND THE MBAS OF SILICON VALLEY.

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital Balance Sheet Cofounder 69

Reid Hoffman

JULY 27, 2021

I was still unprepared; I had no idea that I also needed to learn about go-to-market strategy and distribution. Network strength is one of the reasons that people who want to build great software businesses have, and will continue to move to Silicon Valley. VENTURE CAPITAL AND THE MBAS OF SILICON VALLEY.

Silicon Valley 69

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Balance Sheet Cofounder 69

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Do you know have they distribute their product? Rule 1: In an existing market Customer Development means not only understanding potential customers, but your competitors in detail – their product features, their sales channels, their demand creation strategy, their business model, etc. Do you know how they create demand?

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Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Innovation – Business Model? At a glance, you can see how startup capital needs differ by markets, how distribution channels and demand creation activities differ by market, and even how VC’s assess risk and reward by market. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Technology? Order Here.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. Peter described the first company in which “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” and we were enthralled.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I finally understood how valuable these contests can be for students in cities or countries without a venture capital or entrepreneurial infrastructure. At a university business plan competition, for the first time they can swim in the sea of expertise that we/I take for granted in the middle of Silicon Valley.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Lightspeed Venture Partners

DECEMBER 10, 2012

They could have either paid someone a healthy salary out of the profits that they are making, or they could have given someone a much smaller equity stake in the company to attract an experienced business person. They often do get warrants attached to their loans, but for nowhere near 15% of the company; usually an order of magnitude less.

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Covenant Warrant Southern California Los Angeles 162

Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

She’s opening a small deli in an office park in the Silicon Valley. She knows her business thoroughly as an employee, and now she’s doing it on her own, so she’s struggling with, exactly like this question, how do I forecast this? What distribution, are we using gems or are we a web? This is Magda.

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Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

The one-page pitch format is also more suitable for SaaS businesses that are constantly testing new ideas. Your pitch is going to cover your strategy (what you’re going to do), your tactics (how you’re going to do it), your business model (how you will make money), and your schedule (who is doing what and when). venture capital.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Professor VC

JUNE 20, 2011

The last blogger in Silicon Valley. I took a look back at our original financial model we presented to VCs in 2004. The business model (OEM through broadband and home security companies for mass distribution) if not specific product functionality has remained largely the same. ProfessorVC. Steve Bennet.

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San Jose Angel Investor Term Sheet Venture Capital 28

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

I've been in venture now twice. I was in Boston, working for the first time in venture capital as an analyst for this guy who was incredible and an amazing mentor. In a place where there are many, many venture capital firms, he couldn't think of a single female general partner. What's the message?

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crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 26, 2013

“So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. Don’t let Silicon Valley fool you—millenials are the least entrepreneurial generation | Quartz – [link]. Downfalls of Distributed Startups – [link]. – [link]. ” – [link].

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

For a Series A round you want to prove you have built a repeatable and scalable sales/revenue model and understand all parts of the business model. Series B is about proving your net revenue model (can you be profitable?). Team, Product, Traction, Business Model and Market. Business Model.

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Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

We had a special edition of This Week in Venture Capital this week shooting out of the Next New Networks offices in New York. Our guest was Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital. We discussed NY vs. Silicon Valley and NY vs. Boston. We also discussed having distributed teams (e.g. TechCrunch article.

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

It is the first in a series of posts he’s writing about the decisions a young entrepreneur needs to make when she/he is first starting a business. The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. Johnny Good post. How to have good startup? [.]

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Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Professor VC

DECEMBER 8, 2015

one company running out of cash and another with cash but searching for a business model). Often times those involve trading within a venture capital portfolio or between two venture firms portfolios. But what about the case where both companies are well capitalized and doing well?

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Merger LP IPO Redemption 28

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

Evangelos has spent the last 15 years as a Venture Capitalist, first at Apax Partners and later at Trident Capital. During the last three years he’s worked with over 100 companies, many of which established Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley. These specialist companies were still small local businesses.

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital United States Technical Review 120

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

of venture capital deals. Those companies have garnered only about 2% of all capital invested. ” In venture capital, the industry- or sector-focused funds specifically disavow diversification: Andreessen Horowitz, which is a generalist as a whole, has launched dedicated funds across Crypto , Bio , and Fintech. .

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Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2022

The government buys and distributes commercial images from startups to supplement their own and shares them with Ukraine as part of a broader intelligence-sharing arrangement that the head of Defense Intelligence Agency described as “ revolutionary.” Today, commercial companies have their own satellites providing unclassified imagery.

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Life Beyond Code

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

Thus, I have come to the conclusion that if I could help a million entrepreneurs globally reach $1 million in revenue (and beyond), that would be the foundation of a robust, distributed, and sustainable economic value creation that would add up to a trillion dollars in global GDP. a distributed, democratic model of capitalism.

Programming 116

Programming Silicon Valley Bootstrapping Technical Review 116

Lightspeed Venture Partners

JULY 23, 2011

The dramatic reduction in the cost of starting a technology business combined with readily available risk capital has created a near perfect market for anyone with an idea and some risk tolerance to become an entrepreneur. In most cases the outcomes of such experiments are determined with less than $1M in invested capital.

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review 113

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

– Mike [link] Reply Jeff Skinner , on May 24, 2010 at 9:28 am said: Steve, you don’t know me though I use your ‘Customer Development process’ video in my classes (Entrepreneurship at London Business School). Jeff skinner Faculty, London Business School. Can we touch base on this.

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Up and Running

DECEMBER 9, 2014

If you’re looking for five million dollars, you should be thinking institutional capital. We’re building a True SaaS company in Boise, Idaho, not in Silicon Valley or not in New York. You have to focus on for the nuts and bolts, what is the business model, how are we going to make money.

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Small Business Finance Forecast Metrics 95

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). free, distributed source code control management system. Boilerplate Venture Funding Documents. National Venture Capital Association â?? model legal documents. TechStars Model Seed Funding Documents â?? Raising Venture Capital.

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Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 13, 2021

To do that, I think that you need to set it up with essentially a similar kind of venture capital position, because the things that help the companies – the things we do at Greylock and those Series As and the seeds and the Series Bs – is a 10-year cycle of invention and reinvention. It isn’t just like, “Oh, we worked it all out.

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