Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2022

You can’t succeed in business without an operational model that delivers value to customers at a reasonable price, with an underlying cost that allows you to make a profit. The key issues here are time to market and cost. Distribution. How do you distribute your product or service? Cost structure.

Business Model 256

Business Model Distribution Viral Green 256

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

Similar to the explosion of seed funds in the past decade, we (and some limited partners too ) believe these Flexible VCs are on the forefront of what will become a major segment of the venture ecosystem. We detail below the major categories of VC: VENTURE CAPITAL TYPOLOGY. FLEXIBLE VC VS. OTHER VENTURE CAPITAL MODELS.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

In this three-part series I will explore the ways that the Venture Capital industry has changed over the past 5 years that I would argue are a direct result of changes in the software industry, not the other way around. When I built my first company starting in 1999 it cost $2.5 Open source became a movement – a mentality.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software PHP Open Source 334

David Teten

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Inevitably, things cost more and take longer than expected. For example, they’re monitoring cost per unit of service (not just cost by department) to be sure that they offset cost increases (e.g., Without systems in place to manage distributed spending, finance teams will leave money on the table.”.

Agile 60

Agile Management Forecast Silicon Valley 60

VC Cafe

JANUARY 24, 2023

In one of the sessions I attended the room was packed with developers, and in the web3-focused session, most of the chatter was not on NFTs or Play to Earn, but on the potential of generative AI to reduce costs, increase productivity and test various aspects of the game creation value chain from ideation, to development and marketing of games.

Generative AI 104

Generative AI San Francisco Technical Review Europe 104

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

On December 3rd Brad Feld wrote a one paragraph blog post titled “ Raising Venture Capital &# in which he linked to my blog. The Original Post (after the jump): Venture Capital, By Mark Suster (December 2nd, 2006). I don’t plan to write the authoritative venture capital blog, just some anecdotes.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 18, 2018

It is defined as an online repository of information for storing and distributing shared documents, and can be used during business transactions such as mergers and acquisitions and private equity and venture capital funding. This is for security, cost and efficiency reason. Value and cost go hand in hand.

Technical Review 81

Technical Review Due Diligence Merger Private Equity 81

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

In response, venture capital firms like Sequoia and Andreessen/Horowitz are hiring new partners just to work with their portfolio companies and match them to corporations. Ventures that are further along and now executing their business model are no longer startups, they are now early-stage companies.

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Q: What is going to happen to the cost of capital? Q: What is the opportunity cost of not being in tech? That’s a bit of a cautionary tale to VC investors today who might think it’s inevitable that the private value they are enjoying in their portfolios will certainly translate to distributions in the near future.

Valuation 319

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 319

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2015

Thus it behooves every entrepreneur to optimize their investment strategies early, based on time and dollar costs, as well as odds of success. The right investor will have specific feedback on pricing models, distribution and market positioning to improve scalability. Weigh the cost of every pitch against the potential return.

Cost 120

Cost Angel Groups Due Diligence Silicon Valley 120

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

The famed business strategist Michael Porter described a set of successful general strategies which firms employ to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage: differentiation strategy and cost leadership strategy for those firms with a broad market scope, and a segmentation strategy for those with a narrow market scope. Cheers to your VC.

Seed Stage 191

Seed Stage Belgium Differentiation LP 191

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Q: What is going to happen to the cost of capital? Q: What is the opportunity cost of not being in tech? That’s a bit of a cautionary tale to VC investors today who might think it’s inevitable that the private value they are enjoying in their portfolios will certainly translate to distributions in the near future.

Valuation 295

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 295

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

Copyright gives you the right to prevent others from copying, distributing or making derivatives of your work. Each patent filing will cost your company $10-30k and take 1-4 years. Posted in Technology, Venture Capital. Tags: Technology Venture Capital. Copyright. And it has to identify all prior art.

Intellectual Property 213

Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Lately I’ve been having to say things I thought I’d never have to remind people, like, “getting to positive gross margin in several territories is a very low bar to claim success” or “profitable excluding marketing costs” is not actually a real thing. But not doing basic research makes no sense.

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

As the venture capital business has come roaring back in the last 5 years, startups are awash in available capital. For example they can reduce component cost, introduce a line extension or create new versions of the existing product. These innovations do not require change in a company’s existing business model.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

When I started my last company, we were focused on developing technology to lower the cost of detecting and diagnosing Type 2 diabetes. The market for our product was global, and we had unique advantages in terms of our product and how we distributed it to customers. Be ready when it counts. But I also faced some significant hurdles.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Up and Running

OCTOBER 30, 2017

How easy is it (and how much will it cost you) to acquire a customer? How much money and effort will it cost to deliver the value you would like to be offering? Depending on the size and goals of your venture, you may need to seek financing from an “angel” investor or from a venture capital firm.

Venture Capital 166

Venture Capital Business Plan Limited Liability Company Finance 166

VC Cafe

MAY 23, 2023

As I mentioned in my post on the LLM Benchmarking , venture capital investment in AI startups was down 43% in Q1 2023. Models will get smaller over time, the computation will move from the cloud to on-device, and costs for incorporating generative AI in both new and existing products will keep dropping. What else do we know?

Generative AI 165

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence ChatGPT API 165

Transformify

MARCH 14, 2020

Startup hubs like Berlin, London, New York, Los Angeles, Bangalore, Hong Kong and Singapore offered access to venture capital and vibrant start ecosystems thus attracting the brightest founders. Work from home and remote work also significantly cut office costs.

Hiring 98

Hiring Bulgaria Italy Spain 98

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 30, 2015

You incorporate expected company returns, mortality rates, and fee structures to try to predict how a venture capital fund works from a cash in, cash out, and NAV standpoint. And no, the numbers don't exactly add up--but they're more than close enough for venture capital. It's also not the "average fund". So here goes.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Pre-Money Valuation IRR Valuation 60

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. It costs less money to start companies so the world should have way more startups.&# I’ve heard the “world is different&# argument in every bubble I’ve ever seen.

Florida 299

Florida Technical Review San Antonio Los Angeles 299

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Q: What is going to happen to the cost of capital? Q: What is the opportunity cost of not being in tech? That’s a bit of a cautionary tale to VC investors today who might think it’s inevitable that the private value they are enjoying in their portfolios will certainly translate to distributions in the near future.

Valuation 156

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 156

David Teten

JULY 25, 2017

This is roughly comparable to PRNewswire’s distribution service. Besides Foundersuite (ff Venture Capital portfolio company), some of the companies with variations of this idea are Biztree , Foundersuite , Goodwin Founders Workbench , Guides.co , Inc.com , and StartupRocket. Ethics Policy, Expenses policy).

Portfolio 60

Portfolio Technical Review Private Equity Database 60

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business 6 months. Is the revenue dependent on a concentrated set of distribution partners or platforms that put future revenue at risk? What did they actually do?

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

VC Adventure

AUGUST 15, 2018

Back in the olden days of venture capital, company boards had wide discretion in pricing company options. At the time, the cost of each of these valuations ran between $10,000 and $15,000 annually for each company. Quick note: I’m not your lawyer. I’m not giving legal advice in this post.

Valuation 48

Valuation Common Stock Cap Table Software Review 48

Version One Ventures

JANUARY 2, 2019

“Changing the narrative on distributed teams in Silicon Valley”. Among our Silicon Valley-based portfolio companies, every company past “A” has a distributed team. platform integration, customer service and distributing team members across the board. . Venture Capital. Expanding our bio/healthcare thesis”.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Distribution Artificial Inteligence 144

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

The main drivers, from our viewpoint, are: Many tech entrepreneurs no longer view venture capital as an inevitability in their growth path, and have grown skeptical of the traditional “growth at all costs” mindset found in many startup circles; and An increasing number of VCs are growing comfortable with LLCs.

Delaware 48

Delaware LLC Startup Silicon Valley 48

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Using Monetate Real-time Marketer, companies are boosting sales while slashing costs and time-to-market. VP of Engineering, AppNexus - New York, NY "It's over a billion ad impressions a day, we got a full tank of venture capital, half a pack of cigarettes, the future of ad networks is dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."

Part-Time VPE 92

Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Engineer Sales 92

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 15, 2017

If you deliver exactly the same results at the same net cost to the customer via a SaaS product, you may get a tech multiple 10X higher. Heck, there was no venture capital in Dixie in that era. Price is no longer cost + markup = customer price. What is your Customer Acquisition Cost?

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Nevada Silicon Valley 48

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 5, 2012

Adjudica.com sells its group-medical-cost monitoring tool as a Web-based service to large health plan operators. Now that everything is in the cloud, many ventures are looking toward building their own Something as a Service to leverage their expertise and get third parties to adopt their frameworks. I have a platform to sell you.

St. Louis 127

St. Louis Kansas City Technical Review Kansas 127

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. Electron-based Venture Capital. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. Here’s why.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 14, 2012

You can’t succeed in business without an operational model that delivers value to customers at a reasonable price, with an underlying cost that allows you to make a profit. The key issues here are time to market and cost. Distribution. How do you distribute your product or service? Cost structure.

Business Model 242

Business Model Distribution Viral Green 242

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 4, 2023

These fees are charged to cover the costs of operating the crowdfunding platform, including marketing, payment processing, and customer support. While these fees may seem reasonable at first glance, they can add up quickly and significantly impact the amount of capital that the startup receives from the crowdfunding campaign.

Startup 141

Startup Campaign Cofounder Venture Capital 141

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

While developers can now spin up applications faster than ever before, one of the downsides is the complexity of managing these distributed applications and technologies. Year of HQ2 and Distributed Teams: It was a banner year for non-Silicon Valley cities as NYC and Northern Virginia were selected as Amazon’s HQ2.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

Sometimes that’s venture capital generally (like last year’s conversation with Reid Hoffman ) and sometimes it’s in a space where I’ve invested (like mobility and city innovation with Bird’s Travis VanderZanden , one of our portfolio founders.) And so it is with video. Quibi = “quick bites”).

Los Angeles 244

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Mobile Video 244

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Nic Brisbourne explains how the falling cost of doing business in tech is making space for thriving regional ecosystems, calling for better local funds in these new emerging hubs. When the cost to start a company fell dramatically things started to change.

Silicon Valley 97

Silicon Valley Cost Startup Boston 97