Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process. Even for those who don’t care to dive into the numbers, it’s worth a quick glance because co-founder/CEO Andrew Mason wrote a letter which forms the preamble of the full document. Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $713M.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

M&A experience (Morgan Stanley and later co-headed M&A for Barry Diller at IAC). Helped merge company with Seedling – on track to do $20 million combined revenue in 2015 – will now become Chairman). billion IPO), Envestnet (Chicago, $1.25 Kara has worked in finance in Boston, NYC and Silicon Valley.

Partner 408

Partner Las Vegas Los Angeles Baltimore 408

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 29, 2014

Here at WePay, 2014 was a big year for us as well — we pivoted fully into our API business, introduced the industry’s first risk API, launched the first white label payments product with complete protection from fraud, and more than doubled our revenue. The IPO market for financial technology companies will start to heat up.

IPO 236

IPO API Silicon Valley Mobile 236

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

You may have heard that venture capitalists in Silicon Valley no longer read business plans. All startups, including non-profits, need revenue to thrive, such as such as from subscriptions, retail, online, licensing, or services. They want to see revenue to share in the return. Budget time and dollars for each.

Business Plan 423

Business Plan Product Intellectual Property Elevator Pitch 423

YoungUpstarts

JULY 29, 2013

by Meng Weng Wong, co-founder and social engineer at JFDI Asia. But they’ll sit up and pay attention when you talk about the customers and revenues of the business. Because we’ve learned the hard way that $100,000, which is six months of runway in Silicon Valley, is a retirement jackpot in half of Southeast Asia.

Asia 207

Asia Singapore Cofounder Incubator 207

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Why do these founders get to stay around? Because the balance of power has dramatically shifted from investors to founders. — Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm.

Founder 252

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 252

Scalable Startup

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

[contact-form] Can any other region “catch up” to Silicon Valley, or be the next Silicon Valley? These towns are setting their expectations way too high while the real Silicon Valley giggles at the sight. Silicon – Uh, yeah, that word? It’s what started all this.

Silicon Valley 22

Silicon Valley San Francisco Angel Investor Hawaii 22

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

For instance, if a consultant proposes to help you with public relations, pay them a commission equivalent to the greater of a flat fee per story placed or a percentage of revenue generated from the PR coverage. If a consultant claims they can enhance your marketing efforts, pay them based on their direct impact on your incremental sales.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Instead, we do everything possible to validate the founders belief. Most people cant sustain more than a few of these iterations, and the founders rarely get to be involved in the later tries. In order to do this, we have our customer development team work hard to find a market, any market, for the product as currently specified.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. Some companies and founders refuse to serve existing customers, and are always lurching from one great idea to the next.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

And from a financial perspective, any investor would be better off buying stock in Amazon than buying and share of a corner bookshop; if you invested $100 in Amazon’s 1997 initial public offering (IPO), those shares would have been worth about $120,000 in 2018. Blitzscaling is a strategic technique for moving faster, not a reckless gamble.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

www.mint.com

MARCH 9, 2010

If the answer to the question centers around “We will achieve revenue soon so our net will improve and give us more runway,” it means the company is in trouble because no product ever ships on time nor achieves the company’s “conservative forecast.” These days revenue is the best source of capital. Who is on your board of directors?

Software Review 68

Software Review Startup Post-Money Valuation Technical Review 68

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

It was still a year away from its IPO. We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment. At HP the founders were still at the company and still running the business.

Silicon Valley 169

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 169

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley. What is the right revenue model? Consider this question: what percentage of all books that are purchased does the buyer actually finish reading cover-to-cover? Thanks again for a great post.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

readwrite.com

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

There’s a lot of talk in Silicon Valley about the decline of consumer Internet companies and the rising interest in companies that sell software to enterprises. And nobody is loving this more than Aaron Levie, the 27-year-old co-founder and CEO of Box, which sells cloud-based data storage and collaboration software to enterprises.

Silicon Valley 64

Silicon Valley Architecture San Francisco Cloud 64

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

If a company has reached a level of success, has been around for a few years and you believe the company has potential to break out into a much bigger company then you should let the founders take money off of the table. Founders however are asked to take low salaries and never really get back the time they worked for free.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 20, 2013

20 years ago, the classic startup model was to have young founders start a breakthrough company, then bring in “grey hair” in the form of experienced executives once it was time to scale the business. In other words, Ben asserts that bringing in a professional CEO should be a last resort for a founder. During the dot com era, Yahoo!’s

Founder 78

Founder Hiring Cofounder Hawaii 78

Agile VC

APRIL 13, 2012

I spent some time with some startups in San Francisco proper, as opposed to the heart of Silicon Valley (see Note 1). And going even further back there have been a few random ones have been built before like Salesforce.com and e-tailer RedEnvelope (IPO’d in 2003 though now defunct as a company).

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Startup 185

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2020

I've known Brian Chesky, Co-Founder, CEO and Head of Community at Airbnb for a long time. This was supposed to be Airbnb's biggest year by many measures, including its IPO, which was one of the most anticipated since the 2008 financial crisis. What can organizations do to remain true to their vision for generations to come?

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Hosting Cofounder Employee 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. And then, at my first Silicon Valley startup , I watched friends get laid off in successive waves as it started to fail. Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

we had no revenue. As a result, we knew that our pitch would need to steer into investors’ biggest concern: the lack of revenue. Instead, our strategy was to steer immediately into the revenue question because that was the top concern of investors in 2004. We made the mistake of listing three different revenue streams.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

Reid Hoffman

JUNE 8, 2021

While many travel industry leaders chose to “go dark,” as Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky put it , while they decided how to navigate next steps, Chesky took a different approach: He got candid. Today, we are thrilled to have Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky with us. We’ve had I think an 11-year relationship.

Silicon Valley 69

Silicon Valley Hosting Rhode Island Design 69

Professor VC

JUNE 20, 2011

The last blogger in Silicon Valley. Since the iControl system chronicles all meetings, I was able to find the automatic picture snapped from my first meeting with the founders, Reza Raji and Chris Stevens on April 22, 2004. ProfessorVC. Monday, June 20, 2011. How much is enough? Financing, that is.I

San Jose 28

San Jose Angel Investor Term Sheet Venture Capital 28

Reid Hoffman

JUNE 8, 2021

While many travel industry leaders chose to “go dark,” as Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky put it , while they decided how to navigate next steps, Chesky took a different approach: He got candid. Today, we are thrilled to have Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky with us. We’ve had I think an 11-year relationship.

Silicon Valley 36

Silicon Valley Hosting Rhode Island Design 36

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 13, 2020

- This article was co-authored with my colleagues Varun Purandare and Candice du Fretay and published initially on Tech.eu. It reminds me of living in Silicon Valley 10 years ago when so many foundational SaaS companies were started. The average revenue multiple is now 17x+, close to 10 times higher than during the 2008 crisis!

Europe 71

Europe Cloud Silicon Valley 71

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

This post was co-authored with Omri Stern and originally appeared in Harvard Business Review. Are Israeli companies on the verge of developing a repeatable playbook to scale their companies and become market leaders, not just acquisition fodder for the Silicon Valley giants? The founders have started companies before.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem. Unfortunately, revenue a trailing indicator. Its a great time to increase revenues without spending money on acquiring new customers.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve seen the Valley grow from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara to today where it stretches from San Jose to South of Market in San Francisco. I’ve watched the Valley go from Microwave Valley – to Defense Valley – to Silicon Valley to Internet Valley. So how did this happen? Where is it going?

Restful 227

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 227

Cracking the Code

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

Accel Euroscape: The 100 most promising Software-as-a- Service companies in Europe and Israel -This article was co-authored with my colleague Pia d'Iribarne and published initially on Tech.eu. Rising tide When I was in Silicon Valley, I spent most of my time investing in SaaS companies.

Europe 48

Europe Artificial Inteligence Vertical 48

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 2, 2021

According to an interview with Elon Musk, this campaign cost Paypal about $60 million , which most Silicon Valley historians would consider money well spent. If somehow Sofi could obtain allocation to these so called “hot IPOs” clearly it would be a powerful marketing tool.

IPO 82

IPO Customer Matching Silicon Valley 82

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

Blogs weren’t popularized yet so it was an oddity for me to read the founder of a software company spewing out advice. Juno IPO’d while Joel was there, and it was the first “broken&# IPO of the dot-com era. Joel met his co-founder for Fog Creek software and learned a valuable management lesson.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software St. Louis API 285

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Meanwhile, the rash of early liquidity and recent IPOs — unsatisfying as they were — gave liquidity to thousands of employees at large companies, and a subset of those made very real money. This time around, there has been an explosion at the early stages, and the very late pre-IPO growth stages. Now it’s glutted.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. As a founder of a company, there is nothing more painful than to see your most loyal and devoted customers suffering. That is what company founders and staff do not get.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158