VC Cafe

JULY 21, 2022

The portion of women who play games has increased (+5%), with almost as many women playing games as men – 85% vs 81%, respectively ( source ) Gaming is expanding – companies who didn’t traditionally do gaming (like Netflix ) have understood that it’s a key activity for their customers time spent outside of work.

Forecast 190

Forecast IP Mobile Acquisition 190

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

This company provides a crowdsourced customer service solution to enterprises. Gio pitched it to me as a crowdsourced BPO, but I think he will have more success if he simply focuses on customer service as his core value proposition. They already have several customers including some telcos, and are at about $350,000 in revenues.

Cloud 115

Cloud Silicon Valley Incubator Finance 115

Up and Running

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Get your reputation together for that core service/product, and then branch out once you have loyal customers that have become advocates and spread your message throughout their personal networks. Implement systems to let the customers (and the data about customers) tell you what they like and what they don’t via purchasing trends.

Entrepreneur 149

Entrepreneur Sales Cycle Early Stage Texas 149

BeyondVC

JANUARY 6, 2018

This resulted in tons of collaboration with large enterprises ranging from product feedback to pilots and customer relationships. The talent base is improving, the customers are here, and the west coast VCs are paying attention. — BOLDstart Ventures (@Boldstartvc) June 16, 2017.

Cloud 60

Cloud Cofounder Portfolio Advisory Board 60

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Once again, we led each of these rounds at slide deck stage and helped land the first handful of customers to accelerate path to product market fit and their Series A rounds. will be a great fit with the Salesforce marketing cloud. Natalie Diggins (Neustar, ex-VP Cloud Platform/DevOps), Francesca Krihely (MongoDB, Dir.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

But Gregg stayed and grew and took on more responsibilities and became a senior member of Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud team. Invoca has grown its enterprise customer base 550% in the past three years including major customers like Microsoft, Allstate and SunTrust. It’s the people who want to work with you.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Fractional CTO Cofounder Early Stage 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

We back very early stage companies and work alongside executive teams as their build their teams, launch their products, announce their companies and raise their first downstream capital rounds. The biggest change for us in early-stage investing is that we now need to commit earlier. dot-com bonanza.

Pre-Money Valuation 471

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. The problem stems from selling each customer a custom one-time product.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. Startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known. Agora isan affordable “one-stop shop” for cloud computing needs.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

David Teten

AUGUST 15, 2013

Attendees “get hands-on experience, insight, tips and tricks from AWS experts on how to architect [their] applications, optimize [their] costs and deploy quickly to the AWS cloud.” This promotes the company’s core services to new customers, and hopefully locks them in as permanent customers. 3) Freebies. 4) Accelerators.

Startup 114

Startup Technical Support Venture Capital Balance Sheet 114

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. So, I’ll explain my reasoning through the story of ASC, a fictitious company that has a combination of characteristics I’ve seen across a number of early stage companies. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 10, 2016

At the same time, enterprises today can leverage the cloud to make faster, more efficient software changes; use social media to connect with customers; deploy predictive analytics to determine what their customers will want and connect and control devices via a central point with the Internet of Things (IoT).

Customer 100

Customer Advisory Board Asia Internet 100

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 9, 2019

A startup that begins to generate cash in the early stages of operation will often make the mistake of confusing income with available cash. Early profits should be directed back into your tech startup to boost growth and business stability. Don’t mix profits and cash. Establish Financial Goals.

Technical Review 81

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Finance 81

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 14, 2008 How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people Frequency is more important than talking to the "right" customers, especially early on. Youll know when the person youre talking to is not a potential customer - they just wont understand what youre saying.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Gust

DECEMBER 22, 2011

It’s possible to have a company with literally millions of customers (users) that employs only a handful of people, working in a small rented office, with hardware and software costing in the tens of thousands rather than millions of dollars. Most of our early-stage startup clients fit this description. Intellectual property.

Intellectual Property 149

Intellectual Property Technical Review Software Review IP 149

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 19, 2010

Well, I have coached early stage entrepreneurs for a couple of years now - diligently, patiently - and have learned a few things. The first step is to develop some reference customers, something all early-stage startups should do. Telesales simply don't work without reference customers. Rangrut.com.

Silicon Valley 114

Silicon Valley Technical Review Startup Early Stage 114

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

We’ve seen some modest progress in people upgrading from Excel to Google Sheets; use of some CRM; and a cloud-based storage service. In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 3, 2011

Its product Fetch Fans is a social media design application that builds highly interactive and custom branded Facebook business page tabs, Twitter and blog backgrounds, which was launched at DEMO earlier this year. The service would use early-stage smart phones and a push system developed by Rhino. What Could Have Been.

Social Media 172

Social Media Media Management Application Development 172

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 17, 2016

How they think and feel; their sense of community; and their appetite to share their opinions are all creating new paradigms for how any business, regardless of size, connects with its customers. According to our research, millennials ardently avoid calling customer service. Old school customer service rules haven’t changed.

Customer 100

Customer Singapore Advisory Board Asia 100

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 25, 2014

The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. Early Stage Startups: The Biggest Killers | Forbes – crowdspring.co/1mtenKl. A 3-Day Weekend…Every Weekend? 1nHSu7x.

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

Hunter Walker

JULY 24, 2018

Satya and I started Homebrew not because we wanted to optimize for investment management roles in our careers but because we believed practicing early stage venture in a deliberate manner would be the most satisfying and impactful way to spend the second half of our careers.

Cloud 83

Cloud Early Stage Venture Capital Matching 83

The Next Web

JUNE 20, 2013

When cloud services company Cornerstone OnDemand got its start in Los Angeles in 1999, the odds were against it. Improbably, founder and CEO Adam Miller and his partners soldiered on to eventually build a $2 billion+ cloud company. Three months after getting up and running, the tech bubble burst and all the money dried up.

Cloud 118

Cloud Southern California Los Angeles New York City 118

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 9, 2020

Brad has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Zephyr is a modern, cloud-based CMS that’s licensed only to agencies. Or, if you’d rather build a custom site, Zephyr includes agency services to be your plug-and-play dev shop. Brad has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987.

Community 87

Community Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 87

Gust

JULY 23, 2014

You can find this in a number of places, but in a nutshell, I prefer to invest in highly-scalable, technology-based ventures, with a particular focus on platforms, at a very, very early stage (but, oxymoronically, where there is already some type of traction).

Angel Investor 153

Angel Investor Elevator Pitch Pre-Money Valuation Technical Review 153

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 14, 2011

a group of entrepreneurs from TiE Chennai gathered at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) Research Park campus, and we spent the next four hours discussing strategy and tactics of early-stage entrepreneurship. At 11 a.m., I am very glad to see Girish and his team going after one such opportunity. Quantum Arc.

India 126

India Technical Review Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 126

Cracking the Code

JANUARY 14, 2014

to measure the sales ramp; marketing productivity of Cloud businesses. This is the most standard CAC ratio for early stage SaaS businesses. I think it depends on the stage of the company. Cloud Computing SaaS sales and marketing' the lack of! the lack of!

Cost 97

Cost Acquisition Customer .Net 97

View from Seed

JULY 15, 2020

Some early stage businesses may even be able to get to CFBE fairly quickly. Mid-stage portfolios can be more acutely impacted if many companies have fat cost structures and were investing heavily in growth that is not materializing.

Portfolio 215

Portfolio IRR Dilution Distribution 215

Austin Startup

MARCH 4, 2019

Meet the Locals Here are the most active early stage investors in town that you should meet while you’re here and do deals with. It’s a robust ecosystem so I’m only listing the ones we’ve done the most deals with here but Capital Factory is the most active early stage investor in Texas so this is a good sampling.

Silicon Valley 50

Silicon Valley Technical Review Texas Venture Capital 50

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 9, 2018

They use the Business Model (or Mission Model ) Canvas to keep track of their key hypotheses and then rapidly test them by talking to customers and iterating their Minimal Viable Products. Customer Relationships. Diagram the Customer Segment Relationships. Start diagraming out the relationships of all the customer segments.

Marketing 321

Marketing Startup Government SEC 321

Cracking the Code

JUNE 5, 2019

At VivaTech this year, we were fortunate to be joined in conversation by former Cisco CEO and Executive Chairman John Chambers, who now invests in early-stage tech start-ups around the world. The second rule is to always check with your customers before you acquire a business. Nothing beats customer references.

Acquisition 48

Acquisition Management Merger Social Media 48

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 26, 2018

Google is pushing hard to make artificial intelligence as easy to access as cloud computing, building services that reduce both costs and the technical skill required from users. They now have more than 10,000 businesses using Google Cloud AI services, including companies Box , Rolls Royce Marine , Kewpie and Ocado.

Artificial Inteligence 72

Artificial Inteligence Cloud Early Stage Web 72

Austin Startup

JULY 22, 2021

All finalists will receive: A fast track into the Capital Factory portfolio where you will receive opportunities to get in front of potential investors, customers and employees. According to Pitchbook, Capital Factory has been the most active, early-stage investor in Texas since 2010. Female Founders!

San Antonio 107

San Antonio Dallas Houston Founder 107

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

The class has talked to 1,780 customers to date. Part 5: value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences. It turns out that for commercialization, the business model (Customers, Channel, Revenue Model, etc.) Cloud- based Electronic Medical Records (EMR) are quickly becoming another distribution platform.

Distribution 224

Distribution Channel Lean Intellectual Property 224

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

They are changing the way customers engage with companies completely. With businesses moving towards cloud storage and some few dedicated storage arrays, dynamic storage software with an integrated deep learning algorithm can be of great help for organizations to gain additional storage capacity, at 60 -70 percent cost reduction.

Artificial Inteligence 94

Artificial Inteligence Flash Cloud Algorithm 94

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 18, 2012

Singapore-based early-stage technology seed fund Golden Gate Ventures has announced investments into cloud-based inventory and sales management SaaS solutions provider TradeGecko , online grocer RedMart and mobile payment provider Coda Payments.

Singapore 137

Singapore Asia China India 137