Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

So if your costs are $500,000 per month and you have $350,000 per month in revenue then your net burn (500-350) is equal to $150,000. Gross margin (GM) is the amount of profit you make per sale of your product or service taking into account your total costs of selling that product or service. Think DropBox, Airbnb, Uber, Maker Studios.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

One of the first bets we made in Agtech was Grove started by two young, passionate engineers out of MIT – Gabe and Jamie. We we backed Team Grove’s mission (Kevin sourced the deal and joined the board) and just encouraged the team not to ramp up costs like many contemporary startups because we’re going to play the long game.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Software Review Founder Boston 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2013

deliver profitable revenue that while on gross margins of 50% vs. software at 85-95% it is still profits to help you cover fixed costs. Often your sales engineers can do the customizations without bugging the core eng team. it's all in this article if you want the details].

Software Review 321

Software Review Software IP Technical Review 321

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. He talks about making things that people want & going after a big enough market. “Why do founders want to take the VCs’ money? Growth, again.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

However, the higher you get within an organization in the sale (and the larger the deal) executives are often looking to “win in the market,” which means growing revenue faster, offering products or services at a lower cost or offering features that their competitors can’t. ” Here’s what I mean.

PR 150

PR Early Stage Software Naming 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

It’s such a tricky balance between being cost-focused & scrappy versus being impractical with how you spend your time. What if you are measuring CAC wrongly and you’re really not acquiring customers cost effectively? If I could bottle this moment and spend all my time here I would be in heaven. And so must you.

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

You know, the weird thing, Derek, and I should probably let you speak some time, but I was deeply technical when I went into Andersen consulting, and I got paid much less than engineers who graduated, because I had a degree in economics. They paid engineers $4,000 more entry-point. Engineering vs. non-engineering. [00:10:32]

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Technical Cofounder San Diego Startup 337

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

I helped make this decision by “triangulating&# between our DBA, lead technical architect and our VP of Engineering (who had a better grasp of the financial costs & development costs of each decision). As a content management system we had lots of write activities and went with Postgres.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

For example, a recent phone call I had with a young entrepreneur straight out of one of the most prestigious engineering schools in America he asked, “I have an offer for $400,000 in seed money but the VC wants me to agree now to bring in a new CEO.&# This company is doing its SEED round and they already want to bring someone new in.

Pakistan 297

Pakistan India Technical Review Software Review 297

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 8, 2010

Most technology startups seem to be founded by three types of people: product managers, engineers or biz dev types (MBAs and the like). They are the LIFEBLOOD of sales organizations because they’re plentiful and deliver great value relative to their costs. They’re also usually very loyal to your organization.

Early Stage 350

Early Stage Startup Sales Campaign 350

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

So when Google started pushing AdSense (ads for affiliate or 3rd party sites) they had a HUGE cost advantage. it seems that Twitter should have the same Google-like cost advantage. They bought distribution and engineering talent. Google had huge destination traffic. They could take a long term view. Enter TweetUp.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

When you’re building a startup and can’t hire the engineers you need, can’t retain staff, can’t get press coverage and can’t hire sales people – it certainly affects you. That’s not true.

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

In 1995, while in high school, Seth wanted to start a business scanning paper documents for companies, but realized it was a non-starter when he learned that a scanner costs $4k. Seth’s interest in helping others grew out of his lack of having a mentor. Why did you pursue an MBA at Stanford?

Connecticut 286

Connecticut Cofounder Silicon Valley Web 286

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 25, 2011

What excited me was that they had an immensely talented team that understood how to produce & distribute low-cost videos, initially via YouTube. Maker Studios is dedicated to working with “talent” in the same way that Silicon Valley is dedicated to working with engineers. make sure to reach out to team Maker.

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Los Angeles Distribution Internet 291

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2015

But when economic conditions turn nobody is paid to innovate: They are paid to cut costs, cancel projects, reduce staff, do more with less, stop attending conferences and improve the bottom line. I’m not saying you shouldn’t grow engineering or do PR. limit your fixed costs. limit your fixed costs.

Balance Sheet 150

Balance Sheet eCommerce Venture Capital Acquisition 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

It’s true that the carrier then gets their huge slice for being the billing and payment engine but the idea is that you as a website more than make up for this in terms of customer conversion. 15mm in Series A.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2014

What they do with the money is add more engineers and maybe hiring a marketing person. The best ones bring in more executive leadership so you can appropriate allocate resources across sales, marketing, product, engineering and support. But at what cost? I’d say 20% of startups I see level-up early after their A round.

Startup 381

Startup PR Finance Hiring 381

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

By now we all know that the largest part of the online spend has been SEM (search engine marketing) where people buy CPC (cost per click) links to display alongside the “organic&# search results in the search engine. They are detail oriented, cost focused, quality obsessed and chasing a big market opportunity.

Advertising 284

Advertising Las Vegas Affiliate RSS 284

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 22, 2016

But we’ve noticed and appreciated that you don’t want to win at all costs. As long as you promise to become an engineer. You love to compete. Whether on the soccer field in the classroom or watching NFL football games — you like to win. Losing gracefully is an important skill in life. And as a Philadelphia Eagles fan.

Philadelphia 231

Philadelphia Dallas Engineer Conversion 231

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Cost – The biggest reason to give serious consideration to whether an MBA is necessary is the cost. They looked at total cost to the student and lost wages and then they plotted the incremental increases in salary that students who graduated got over the course of their careers. It pays for all of our great engineers.

NPV 337

NPV Chicago Balance Sheet Database 337

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

But if you’re in a competitive space where you want to get a little more engineering done before the world is ready to start researching you then you may choose to delay. The benefits usually far outweigh the costs. But I wouldn’t delay too long or unnecessarily. Should I Bundle it With More Juicy News?

Startup 355

Startup PR Dividend Merger 355

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2015

If you’re a solo founder and haven’t built out your team or engineers I’m likely to want 15+%. They know that they have complete flexibility to raise as much as they want (within reason) but they emotionally absorb the costs in terms of dilution. Those are the big three.

Pre-Money Valuation 150

Pre-Money Valuation Option Pool Post-Money Valuation Dilution 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Spread through word-of-mouth as the company has no sales team, all engineers. Scott’s first big foray into industry-changing companies came with CarsDirect, an IdeaLab company where he was the initial founder & CEO. They raised around $350 million to try and sell cars direct over the Internet. Total raised: $125mm See: TechCrunch.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 26, 2016

Even an extraordinary engineer or product lead who have built a breakthrough product aren’t guaranteed success unless they can get access to capital, get much needed press to drive low-cost customer acquisition and persuade fickle business leaders to join their company and help them shape their businesses beyond tech innovation.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles West Virginia Venture Capital Silicon Valley 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

Or maybe you’re developing second screen viewing applications like GetGlue or building a YouTube studio to deliver low-cost content. The fact that they can be both an economic engine and a driver for social change is awesome. I would like to say it again. Large markets with white space don’t exist.

Entrepreneur 330

Entrepreneur Tunisia Egypt Iran 330

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2010

They might not replace an engineer or two that quits. It’s legitimate to ask for cost cutting if you think the bridge won’t last long enough at the current burn rate. You don’t want to have a perpetual tin cup in your hands begging for scraps to exist. Better even still if there’s a way to fund 9 months.

Startup 290

Startup Burn Rate Warrant Bankruptcy 290

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

Each VC has their own take on which services to provide and mostly they’re free but some smaller VCs charge portfolio companies for use of these services but usually at a cheap cost. Other firms like Google bring massive resources to design or engineering and as as corporate VC can offer things normal VC firms can’t offer.

Portfolio 150

Portfolio PR Partner Early Stage 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

App is one step forward, two steps back – In 1999 I launched my first company, BuildOnline, a SaaS-based (back then we were ASP’s) content management platform for large-scale engineering and construction projects. They therefore have large cost bases and have to pass on those costs to you. - You have a data problem.

Flash 326

Flash Mobile Application Development Cloud 326

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

Open source computing, which reduced costs to start a company by 90%. Web Services, led by Amazon’s AWS, which reduced the costs a further 90%. While the costs of starting a tech company have plummeted it still does take money to hire a team, launch products and market oneself. Welcome to the future.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Kansas City Startup Venture Capital 390

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

Ask them how much they think such a solution would cost them. It you have a great software engineer that’s awesome. Ask if they’d be willing to pay for a solution like that if it existed. Build prototypes and/or product. Start building out your product.

Founder Vesting 365

Founder Vesting Intellectual Property Stock Options IP 365

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 28, 2011

5 engineers. Multiple each engineer x $1 million and subtract each MBA by $1 million and that’s your valuation As an MBA I can say that. While I’m passionate about being scrappy when you start and controlling your costs, I’m equally passionate about performance when you have a bit of cash. Nothing else.

Hiring 325

Hiring Early Stage Valuation Engineer 325

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2012

And sound engineers. In driving down the costs of building businesses it’s driving down the age of startup founders and thus they’re starting companies where young people want to live – in urban environments. And costume & set designers. And post production. And writers! And even … yes … actors.

San Francisco 313

San Francisco Technology Los Angeles Incubator 313

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

Around 2003, Quigo was doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue with two main products: a ready-to-use, search engine marketing solution for advertisers called FeedPoint and a contextual advertising platform for publishers called AdSonar. Quigo Lands Overture as Client, Rejects Their Acquisition Offer.

Semantic 302

Semantic Acquisition Valuation Angel Investor 302

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

If you don’t want to read that post, the summary is: Open source computing drove computing costs down 90%, which spurred innovation in technology. Open cloud led by Amazon with their AWS services drove total operating costs down by 90%. This led to an explosion in startups. Not to mention providing the capital for growth.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

Sort of amortizing the costs of their sales reps over more products. So Should I Avoid Channels at all Costs When I’m a Startup? Also, many businesses scale more cost effectively through channel partners. That’s going to cost you margin. Channel partners come in multiple flavors. If they have $1.2

Channel 293

Channel Startup Sales Partner 293

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

I talked to one startup CEO who told me, “you have young engineers who want to make $200,000 or more to work for me. You don’t have a pool of thousands of Google engineers to hire when they’re ready to leave the mother ship. eBay and others. You just don’t. Get over it. Some of it will be UGC.

Silicon Valley 313

Silicon Valley Southern California Los Angeles Semantic 313

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

They had a proprietary browser, their own search engine, their own content, chat rooms, email system, etc. This is an awesome trend and will further lower the cost of startup development. SimpleGeo is designed with the idea that startups can create new mobile products without having to each build their own mapping functionality.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Internet Technical Review 318