Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

Yet they see warning lights flashing, based on a still fragile global economy, and volatile markets ahead. The reasons are a lot more complex than the meltdown of key investment banks in the US a few years ago, so don’t expect a big change in the numbers soon, even with recent stock market rallies.

IPO 120

IPO SEC Prospectus Startup 120

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 9, 2022

I’ve been asked by portfolio companies and plenty of others about how they should be changing their strategy given the stock market pullback and what they’ve been hearing on “VC twitter”. Ok, so if you’re a fundable company, you’re a fundable company—great big market, relevant team, solid plan. The incentive is too strong.

Stock 97

Stock Marketing Valuation Later Stage 97

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 19, 2017

KPMG’s Venture Pulse Q3 2017 reported that the Asian market has raised $12.3 With more money being invested in startups around the region, the barriers to entry that prevent startups from entering the market are reduced. Venture capital fundraising can be divided into three stages: seed, early stage, and later stage.

Venture Capital 196

Venture Capital Asia Artificial Inteligence Later Stage 196

thebarefootvc

JANUARY 27, 2014

I think that later stage valuations are frothy (for reasons I explain below) while earlier stage valuations are starting to stabilize from previous highs (with the exception of the superstar serial entrepreneur) - turns out scaling in a sea of competition (both startup and entrenched) is not so easy.

Technical Review 63

Technical Review Valuation Venture Capital Investment Bankers 63

Gust

JANUARY 4, 2012

What kind of risk do we run of being put out of business by others’ IP rights ? Later stage companies have some additional concerns: What favorable impact could IP have for PR, marketing and investor relations purposes, or as an attraction to potential acquirors? Easier said than done!)

Intellectual Property 143

Intellectual Property IP Startup United States 143

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. If you’re not a founder (by choice, timing or temperament,) you may be an early employee or a later stage startup employee. By now the company may have found and settled on a repeatable business model.

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 9, 2021

These innovations are impactful, but there are also ample opportunities to innovate purely on the business model. That’s a statement of business innovation, not technological innovation. Over and over, he has gambled on products and product areas where no current market existed. I helped establish product market fit.

Leadership 42

Leadership Technical Review Cofounder Later Stage 42

Austin Startup

MAY 11, 2017

645 Ventures 645 Ventures makes deeply-researched investments in institutional Seed to Series A rounds for exceptional companies who demonstrate stellar early results in the areas of market validation, product differentiation, team strength, and brand narrative. We solve problems and dominate critical markets.

Private Equity 48

Private Equity Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage 48

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

In many instances, you raise an institutional round to either fulfill a product strategy or go-to-market strategy or you’re increasing sales and marketing hires, so you have better visibility into what needs to happen in the next six, 12, 18 months. Business model? These are value-creation milestones.

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 3, 2021

You’ll be operating with limited resources, limited knowledge, and quite possibly, a business model poised to change in the immediate future. Still, you need to find some way to pull your company out of this early-stage quicksand. In some situations, that renders the marketing budget exhausted from the start.

Early Stage 125

Early Stage PPC Retention Churn Rate 125

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

The role of a founding CEO in a startup searching for a business model is radically different than a CEO building and growing a company. Certain VC’s like the new class of Super-Angels and small VC funds specialize in the early stage of a startup where you are searching for a business model. Lean Startups ?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

Ask 10 people what account-based marketing (ABM) is and you’ll get 10 different answers. Some see it as a sales tactic, while others view it as a content marketing strategy. Because every business adapts ABM to suit their own growth model, the definition changes to fit. What is account-based marketing? Coordinated.

Customer 98

Customer Marketing Channel Acquisition 98

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

Perhaps, when things settle down a bit more, those companies will even raise series A capital from traditional institutional sources to expand the product features, beef up the operations team more fully and make progress in finding initial product-market fit. But many are. Shift of value from equity holders to token holders.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

Perhaps, when things settle down a bit more, those companies will even raise series A capital from traditional institutional sources to expand the product features, beef up the operations team more fully and make progress in finding initial product-market fit. But many are. Shift of value from equity holders to token holders.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2013

For startup new product development, this is a strategy used for fast and quantitative market testing of a product or product feature, popularized first by Eric Ries for web applications. Osmosis marketing. Osmosis marketing is the hot new term for word-of-mouth advertising. Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Social mobile web.

Entrepreneur 274

Entrepreneur Accredited Investor Silicon Valley Angel Investor 274

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

Violent market swings usually hit public companies first. Private companies in less-relevant market segments can often fly under the radar in turbulent times like the recent recession. Public stockholders are more easily swayed by emotion and the activities of the crowd, than real market conditions.

IPO 242

IPO SEC Prospectus Startup 242

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 9, 2017

Whether early or later-stage, the growth of every company most often depends on how much capital is available to fund its growth. Not to mention all of the resources that will have to be invested in marketing and growing a community around it. Define Your Business Model. Keep Detailed Records.

Burn Rate 100

Burn Rate B2C Finance Later Stage 100

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2016

It’s like trying to sell a home still being built at next year’s dream market price. Investors know that valuations at startup early stages are negotiable, but they do expect that smart entrepreneurs understand the top three elements of a startup valuation would include the following.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Startup 120

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2013

Most first-time entrepreneurs write huge business plans, instead of creating a short pitch-deck. Focus on building a prototype, test your business model and create a clear strategy to become a sustainable and scaleable business fast. And your first community person is not likely to be your VP Marketing.

Management 120

Management Cofounder Startup Bootstrapping 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

This is the fourth article in a series on novel ideas for SaaS metrics, which started with The unprofitable SaaS business model trap , COC: a new metric for cancellations , and The mistake of 1/c in LTV. Its tough for a growing SaaS business to ascertain whether or not it’s truly profitable. Here’s a way to do it.

Metrics 238

Metrics Revenue Flash Later Stage 238

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Bob had taken to heart the business model canvas and Customer Development lessons. After a demo and lunch, the VC (who normally did later stage deals) wrote my ex student a check for a seed round. Bob was in the wrong business, not the wrong market. Life couldn’t be better. You’re sitting on a gold mine.

Customer Development 330

Customer Development Cofounder Later Stage Software 330

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

You see, equity capital is raised in stages or rounds. The five main stages include the following: 1. Early Stage Investment (Series A & B) 4. Later Stage Investment (Series C, D, and so on) 5. Series B is the round that follows series A in early stage financing. Pre-Seed Funding 2. Seed Funding 3.

Equity 88

Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

cdixon.org

AUGUST 3, 2012

Some observations: - Thousands of early-stage consumer web/mobile companies were started and funded in last 24 months. Facebook’s market cap is about half of what most tech investors expected before the IPO. - A few breakout early-stage consumer hits (Instagram, Pinterest) have reached tens of millions of users in record time.

Bridge Financing 86

Bridge Financing Early Stage Valuation Later Stage 86

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

A version of this article is in the Harvard Business Review. Uber , Zenefits , Tanium , Lending Club CEOs of companies with billion dollar market caps have been in the news – and not in a good way. — all great things when you are executing and scaling a known business model. And while new markets were created (i.e.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

The Entrepreneurial Mind

JUNE 14, 2010

They do play a role, but only a limited one with later stage businesses that have good cash flow. Remember that the Great Depression saw the start-up of many businesses that later thrived and became industry giants, including Disney, Hewlett-Packard, Publix Super Markets, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, just to name a few.

Kentucky 56

Kentucky Washington Nashville Bootstrapping 56

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

Of course, hitting your objectives alone doesn’t guarantee success--you might have set the wrong objectives or the market needs may shift over time--but it’s a reasonable proxy for measuring interim success. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what's happened in the capital markets over the last 20 years--the good and the bad?

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 3, 2018

Researching the market and competition. Launching your app in the market. Now comes the most critical stage of your app development process – RESEARCHING THE MARKET AND COMPETITION. First you determine the need of your product in the market. For that, You explore the market in person. Sketching and Drawing.

Mobile 113

Mobile Developer Social Media Later Stage 113

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

In liquid markets, most of the calories expended on technology and analytics are focused on trade selection, or “ origination ”. I use another live Google doc to maintain my database of companies I’m marketing to other VCs. 2) Market . Many tools designed for B2B marketing in general are also relevant to investors.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

August 2010 Two years ago I wrote about what I called " a huge, unexploitedopportunity in startup funding :" the growing disconnect betweenVCs, whose current business model requires them to invest largeamounts, and a large class of startups that need less than theyused to. Get funded by Y Combinator.

Startup 93

Startup Valuation Non-Compete Deal Flow 93

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 26, 2011

What's the business model? I think you'll see a lot of focus on companies like Tumblr, Twitter, Foursquare and Pinterest--services that haven't really established a business model yet to justify their sky high valuations.

Technology 116

Technology Valuation Community Restful 116

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 17, 2020

While multiples are indeed often an input for valuing mature, slower growing companies, in the private, high growth tech market, entry multiples tend to be a byproduct of the valuation process: What investors are really trying to understand are possible exit values. A multiple is a company value divided by a metric.

Valuation 36

Valuation Balance Sheet Cofounder Forecast 36

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours. Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. When I asked, “What are you working on?”

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

With a portfolio that includes food, tech, and services, the fund is industry-agnostic and focused on the overlooked and underrepresented with high-margin business models. We identify great innovative companies with solid business models and help them determine the right growth path for their businesses.

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

Seeing Both Sides

OCTOBER 6, 2010

Klarman writes: "Investing in bargain-priced securities provides a "margin of safety"-room for error, imprecision, bad luck, or the vicissitudes of the economy and stock market.” Later stage investors may have downside protection if they buy smart, but early-stage VCs do not.

Omaha 35

Omaha Due Diligence Silicon Valley Stock 35

Hunter Walker

JULY 18, 2022

Multiples dropped in public and private markets, growth expectations were cut, and business models with high spend for promise of future ROI became quite unfavorable. While the ‘red hot economy’ days seem to be over, a soft bounce or mild growth US market won’t necessarily impact all startups the same.

Valuation 116

Valuation Cap Table Startup Later Stage 116

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours. Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. When I asked, “What are you working on?”

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

Some have done earlier-stage deals and done well. Others have chased earlier-stage but lack the skills or relationships to do this effectively. Some have moved into later stage investments in an effort to “put logos on their websites.&# In a bull market many players see drift in their activities.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296