Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. billion for a company with less than $50 million in sales.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Berkonomics

JUNE 4, 2015

I have a positive fetish for recurring revenue. When I hear a company pitch a business model which I believe has the potential to acquire a customer once, and keep the customer paying for a multi-year period without further marketing expense, my ears perk up. This assumes reasonably low churn of 10% or less.

Revenue 48

Revenue Acquisition Houston Merger 48

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 17, 2012

Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Even mergers and acquisitions (M&A) came early. Fresh customer base. New management skills.

Entrepreneur 249

Entrepreneur Merger Bandwidth Acquisition 249

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 26, 2010

Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Even mergers and acquisitions (M&A) came early. Fresh customer base. New management skills.

Acquisition 214

Acquisition Merger Startup Bandwidth 214

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2012

Business model. In this section, you need to be passionate about recurring revenue, profit margin, and volume growth. Marketing, sales, and partners. Describe marketing strategy, sales plan, licensing, and partnership plans. Project both revenues and expense totals for next five years, and past three years.

Elevator Pitch 247

Elevator Pitch Exit Strategy Burn Rate Merger 247

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 12, 2017

If you have a sales model that involves relationship selling to high-level decision makers, you can be sure they would prefer a detailed proposal from you with a request to “sign here.” Is third-year revenue of $10M good or bad? There’s no baby step analogy to the pilots discussed above for a sales situation.

Term Sheet 48

Term Sheet Technical Review Due Diligence Merger 48

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2012

Clearly define the customer, channel, and revenue model associated with this solution. Explain the business model. In this section, you need to be passionate about revenue, profit, and volume growth. Marketing, sales, and partners. For a family business, don’t project an exit. Exit strategy.

Business Plan 283

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 283

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Even mergers and acquisitions (M&A) came early. Fresh customer base. New management skills.

Startup 232

Startup Merger Bandwidth Acquisition 232

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2015

Image via Pixabay.com Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Even mergers and acquisitions (M&A) came quickly. Fresh customer base.

Merger 120

Merger Acquisition Differentiation Channel 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2011

Business model. In this section, you need to be passionate about recurring revenue, profit margin, and volume growth. Marketing, sales, and partners. Describe marketing strategy, sales plan, licensing, and partnership plans. Project both revenues and expense totals for next five years, and past three years.

Elevator Pitch 234

Elevator Pitch Exit Strategy Burn Rate Merger 234

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

How does your business model make money? Good causes such as feeding the world’s hungry may help your marketing but may not sustain a business. The business model has to clearly define who is your customer, market penetration expected, how much customers pay versus total costs and the investment required to sustain cash flow.

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Advisory Board Liquidity Event Startup 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2011

Clearly define the customer, channel, and revenue model associated with this solution. Explain the business model. In this section, you need to be passionate about revenue, profit, and volume growth. Marketing, sales, and partners. For a family business, don’t project an exit. Exit strategy.

Business Plan 290

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 290

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 7, 2014

Based on performance over the last year, the two halves are approximately equal in revenue and operating profit. This is more a matter of perception than reality; HP currently deals separately with customers and channel partners through its business units. Potential loss of some real synergies in the supply chain and sales process.

Merger 171

Merger Channel Social Network Stock 171

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 19, 2010

Business model. In this section, you need to be passionate about recurring revenue, profit margin, and volume growth. Marketing, sales, and partners. Describe marketing strategy, sales plan, licensing, and partnership plans. Project both revenues and expense totals for next five years, and past three years.

Elevator Pitch 235

Elevator Pitch Exit Strategy Burn Rate Merger 235

Gust

AUGUST 19, 2012

Business model. In this section, you need to be passionate about recurring revenue, profit margin, and volume growth. Marketing, sales, and partners. Describe marketing strategy, sales plan, licensing, and partnership plans. Project both revenues and expense totals for next five years, and past three years.

Elevator Pitch 146

Elevator Pitch Exit Strategy Burn Rate Merger 146

Gust

AUGUST 5, 2012

Clearly define the customer, channel, and revenue model associated with this solution. Explain the business model. In this section, you need to be passionate about revenue, profit, and volume growth. Marketing, sales, and partners. For a family business, don’t project an exit. Exit strategy.

Business Plan 182

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 182

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 8, 2015

Wants to promote intrapreneurship to extend its business model and retain creative employees like Google, Amazon, and Facebook do. For example, Google’s acquisition of Nest (which had customers, revenue and a distribution channel) allowed it to enter the connected home market immediately. Does it become a new division?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Acquisition Boston Early Stage 120

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

Most of the startups they invested in either died by running out of money before they found a scalable business model or ended up in the “land of the living dead” by never growing (failing to Pivot.). Until 1995 startups going public typically had a track record of revenue and profits. Startup lifecycle in an IPO Market.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

David Teten

AUGUST 6, 2015

Here’s a Datavore sample of a visual summary of a model: MODEL LOGIC SHOULD BE LOGICAL. A model that shows X% growth over time with no embedded correlation to sales/marketing is a huge red flag. A model that shows Beginning Cash + Revenue – Expenses = Ending Cash doesn’t tell the whole story.

Balance Sheet 60

Balance Sheet Software Review Forecast Acquisition 60

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

The Goods: Your Business Toolbox | Thursdays. Todays Small Business News | Daily. Sales & Marketing | Wednesdays. Writing A Business Plan. Selling A Business. SALES & MARKETING. Internet and Online Business. Business Software. Finance | Tuesdays. Innovation | Fridays. Email address: Home.

Arizona 40

Arizona Equity Iowa Venture Capital 40

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2010

Clearly define the customer, channel, and revenue model associated with this solution. Explain the business model. In this section, you need to be passionate about revenue, profit, and volume growth. Marketing, sales, and partners. For a family business, don’t project an exit. Exit strategy.

Business Plan 186

Business Plan Exit Strategy Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 186

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

It probably had more to do with the fact that they had doubled their sales annually for several years, and still managed to squeeze out a profit of $11M in their year of acquisition. Employs a profitable business model with customer traction. Includes balanced and hard-hitting marketing and sales. billion a few years ago.

Intellectual Property 48

Intellectual Property Initial Public Offering Merger Acquisition 48

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

What makes this tricky is that markets evolve, and an innovative technology or business model can transform a normal market into a Glengarry Glen Ross market. 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. The difference?

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

JANUARY 21, 2011

Right out of Graduate School, I started my career with one of the big four accounting firms in their M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) practice. I travelled all over the world wherever business deals were happening, gained tremendous experience and exposure to the Corporate landscape, and learned invaluable life lessons in my career.

Internet 80

Internet Technical Review Stock Due Diligence 80

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

You lost credibility with your statement: “The problem is that many programmers have loads of talent with no product sense and business students have great designs with no way to implement them.&# Take the top 10 largest tech innovators (take your pick of largest by revenue or largest by idea) of the last 20 years in Silicon Valley.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84