View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

This can take the form of customer quotes, NPS scores, usage and engagement metrics, negative churn, and referral metrics. You can also emphasize rapidly improving metrics in addition to just the absolute levels, especially since young companies should be rapidly iterating on and improving the product experience.

Seed Stage 192

Seed Stage Metrics PR Leadership 192

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OCTOBER 28, 2019

But this financing contour description is just a proxy for underlying business metrics. The milestones and the funding rounds to accomplish everything before that are much more specific and idiosyncratic to the specific startup based on the business model, sector, team composition, etc. A continuum.

Seed Stage 247

Seed Stage Finance Dilution Early Stage 247

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SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

For consumer companies with transactional business models like marketplaces, brands, or e-commerce companies there usually isn’t a large window of time where you’ll be post-product but pre-revenue. So these startups should look to raise seed capital either before launch or once they can show early revenue for proof points.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

View from Seed

MARCH 3, 2015

It’s so important to line up the type of marketer and leadership that fits the business model, the product, or even the founder’s philosophy or early attempts at marketing. I know that inbound lead-gen is my specialty, so I looked for a startup that wanted to play to those strengths.

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

View from Seed

MAY 16, 2019

But Office Commercial is a $24B a year revenue business on its own, and while a much older and more mature franchise than the others it’s still growing 25%+ annually. Also similar to Adobe, both Office 365 and Adobe’s Creative Cloud have pretty successfully transitioned from their legacy client software business models to SaaS.

Lock-up Period 168

Lock-up Period Retention Azure .Net 168

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MARCH 15, 2017

Internally, the scarcity of tangible business metrics – product usage or revenue multiples for example – can make an investment decision feel daunting. Financial Metrics & Financing: Perhaps the most variably sized section of the NextView investment memo.

Due Diligence 265

Due Diligence Seed Stage Portfolio Metrics 265

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FEBRUARY 27, 2019

They could look quite different based on whether you’re pre- or post-PMF: Pre-PMF: Key hypotheses of the business you want to prove/disprove?—?they they can range from customer acquisition, product engagement/stickiness, or business model. Post-PMF: Key milestones the business needs to hit (e.g.

Hiring 120

Hiring Bandwidth Product Early Stage 120