Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2012

Don’t expect them to believe your $100M revenue projection, if you are still waiting for the first revenue dollar. Get a real customer and real revenue. Funding for pre-revenue startups used to be the domain of angel investors, but they have moved up-stage. Only real results count. Attract a well-rounded team.

Intellectual Property 260

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 260

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

For this article, we asked 14 SaaS CEOs a simple question: “How much did you spend on your MVP before you had your first dollar of revenue?”. We also got lucky and qualified for some startup benefits with companies like Rackspace, who covered our infrastructure costs for the first year,” continues Arsenault. “We Image source).

Sweat Equity 50

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 50

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2011

Don’t expect them to believe your $100M revenue projection, if you are still waiting for the first revenue dollar. Get a real customer and real revenue. Funding for pre-revenue startups used to be the domain of angel investors, but they have moved up-stage. Only real results count. Attract a well-rounded team.

Intellectual Property 253

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 253

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 22, 2010

Don’t expect them to believe your $100M revenue projection, if you are still waiting for the first revenue dollar. Get a real customer and real revenue. Funding for pre-revenue startups used to be the domain of angel investors, but they have moved up-stage. Only real results count. Attract a well-rounded team.

Intellectual Property 222

Intellectual Property Sweat Equity CTO Hire Fractional CTO 222

grasshopperherder.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Piercing the Corporate Veil – Sweat Equity Consulting. But much like becoming a co-founder, getting paid sweat equity is essentially becoming an investor in the company. I think it’s difficult, if not impossible, to value a pre-revenue company with any reasonable accuracy. GrasshopperHerder.com.

Sweat Equity 41

Sweat Equity Equity Cofounder Non-Compete 41

socialmatchbox.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

If you have a friend who is a recruiter then ask them to tell you what they recommend that will not cost anything. This means considering what the opportunity cost for working on a high risk venture is relative to other things they can spend their time on. If they own a Mac Book Pro that may cost around $1,800 bucks (new).

Part-Time VPE 41

Part-Time VPE Sweat Equity DC Washington 41

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 6, 2016

It’s more possible to bootstrap today than a few years ago, as the cost of entry continues to go down. With one of the new free tools and a dose of sweat equity, you can create a website for almost nothing -- and you are on your way to success with ecommerce, your latest invention or personal services.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Hockey Stick Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 120

Austin Startup

JUNE 26, 2019

I recruited a top-flight engineer and serial entrepreneur to build our MVP, on equity?—?and You might notice what’s not on that list above: revenue, investors. No revenue isn’t always a problem for venture-style businesses; no investors + no revenue = challenges for most founders without tremendous self-funding.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup B2C Sweat Equity 54

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 1, 2015

The average amount per startup was $23,000, usually in the form of a convertible loan, rather than an equity investment. The vehicle of choice is most often a convertible note, which is really a loan with a specified duration and interest, with an option to convert it to equity when professional investors come in later.

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Equity 120

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2012

Explain in terms your mother could understand, and quantify the “cost-of-pain” in dollars or time. Clearly define the customer, channel, and revenue model associated with this solution. In this section, you need to be passionate about revenue, profit, and volume growth. Industry & market sizing. Explain the business model.

Business Plan 283

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 283

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

The business model has to clearly define who is your customer, market penetration expected, how much customers pay versus total costs and the investment required to sustain cash flow. How big is the funding request, and how much equity will you give? Quantify founder investments, both cash and sweat-equity.

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Advisory Board Liquidity Event Startup 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2011

Explain in terms your mother could understand, and quantify the “cost-of-pain” in dollars or time. Clearly define the customer, channel, and revenue model associated with this solution. In this section, you need to be passionate about revenue, profit, and volume growth. Industry & market sizing. Explain the business model.

Business Plan 290

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 290

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

How can I go about looking for a (very) good programmer willing to do this as sweat equity? You can find a technologist to join you as a partner, for half of the company’s equity. It’s common for a college student to do a sweat equity partnership with another college student. So you see my dilemma.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Fractional CTO Partner CTO Hire 40

Up and Running

DECEMBER 23, 2019

Sweat Equity. “I This way your biggest cost is just your personal time. I did this by budgeting for my expenses in order to cover the costs I needed. Using Revenues to Fund Growth. Using Revenues to Fund Growth. You can use your own savings to fund your company and move to a cheaper area to save money.

Finance 92

Finance Sweat Equity Bootstrapping Entrepreneur 92

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Investors want to hear about your first customers, other investments put into the company (including your own sweat equity), key media placement, signed letters of intent (LOI) to purchase/partner, product and customer milestones , key hires, and so on. 160 is average revenue per user (ARPU). 1,000 new leads captured per month.

Sweat Equity 122

Sweat Equity Churn Rate Elevator Pitch Forecast 122

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Instead of hearing from your long lost third-cousin, you will be inundated with an avalanche of ‘congratulatory’ emails, calls and letters from people who want to relieve you of the burden of your hard-earned equity round. Many such ‘congratulations’ will come from consultants. Performance-based deals are healthy for all parties.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

Gust

AUGUST 5, 2012

Explain in terms your mother could understand, and quantify the “cost-of-pain” in dollars or time. Clearly define the customer, channel, and revenue model associated with this solution. In this section, you need to be passionate about revenue, profit, and volume growth. Industry & market sizing. Explain the business model.

Business Plan 182

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 182

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Researchers polled experts in lending, mezzanine capital, private equity, venture capital and private businesses themselves. Respondents deemed between 12%-16% of companies generating revenues to be essentially “worthless” and deemed 20%-26% of their pre-revenue investments to be “worthless.” Add to this that 72.7%

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2010

Explain in terms your mother could understand, and quantify the “cost-of-pain” in dollars or time. Clearly define the customer, channel, and revenue model associated with this solution. In this section, you need to be passionate about revenue, profit, and volume growth. Industry & market sizing. Explain the business model.

Business Plan 186

Business Plan Exit Strategy Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 186

Up and Running

APRIL 10, 2019

When building a digital marketing agency without outside funding, you need to make sure you have a plan in place to be able to train people as and when they join you without incurring additional cost to the business. They both cost a lot of money, and we didn’t want to have to use outside funding to do that. Bad clients cost you money.

Marketing 79

Marketing Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Harvest 79

Up and Running

JANUARY 24, 2014

Investors want to hear about your first customers, other investments put into the company (including your own sweat equity), key media placement, signed letters of intent (LOI) to purchase/partner, product and customer milestones, key hires, etc. 160 is average revenue per user (ARPU). is our customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Sweat Equity 138

Sweat Equity Churn Rate Forecast Business Model 138

Gust

AUGUST 7, 2012

Sweat equity can be a problem. Projecting absurdly high profits doesn’t mean it’s a profitable business; it means somebody doesn’t understand the business well enough to know its costs and expenses. They are not measured by the quantity of impressive graphics or the size of the revenue projections.

Business Plan 172

Business Plan Sweat Equity Salary Founder 172

www.virtuosimedia.com

MARCH 8, 2012

If the idea was reliant on ad revenue for profit, it quickly becomes apparent that there will be no incoming money at all. In addition to cost quotes, also ask for time quotes so you can get a feel for how long the project should take to implement. Research the cost of advertising your product. At this point, everyone loses.

Technical Cofounder 41

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Technical Review NDA 41

Women Entrepreneurs Can

MAY 9, 2019

During the early days, these are your key contributors and they must be willing to put as much sweat equity into the organization as you are. Scaling will increase the cost it takes to do business and it often does it before you’re able to generate additional revenue in the traditional way your company acquires sales.

Programming 40

Programming Sweat Equity Startup Private Equity 40

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Don’t exacerbate the issue by needing to figure out how to deal with large equity deadweight on your hands (investors won’t like that the #2 stakeholder is absent, even estranged, from your company). So, the best way of dealing with this issue is to take a long, long vesting period for all major sweat equity founders.”.

Cofounder 89

Cofounder Startup Technical Cofounder CTO Hire 89

Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

An entrepreneur starts a company in classic " bootstrap " fashion - with a combination of sweat equity and their own financial resources. With this capital, the company propels itself to $50 million+ in revenues, and to either a sale to a strategic acquirer or to an initial public offering. There are a lot of dark, hard days.

Angel Investor 112

Angel Investor Venture Capital Sweat Equity Cram Down 112

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

spent $20 million to get back to the same revenue that I had when I was CEO. created a vastly higher cost structure; I had 80 people mostly on base salaries under $100,000 and was bringing in revenue at the rate of $20 million annually. .”). During this year they. deprecated the old feature-complete product (ACS 3.4)

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Small Business Force

OCTOBER 14, 2016

Professional investors, be they angels, venture capital or private equity firms are always looking at far more deals than they could invest in. However you define it, be it eyeballs, customers, revenue, cash flow, what have you accomplished to date with your business? So, at the end of the day, you are selling. Cash flow, loans, etc.

Sweat Equity 20

Sweat Equity Private Equity Valuation Equity 20

www.thestartup.eu

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Let’s break down their costs: Logo design: a simple contest on 99designs with a $300 prize. Total cost: $5000. Total cost: $100. Sweat Equity: Juliette and Marco put in a bit of work during weekends as project managers, designers, developers, sysadmins, etc. Developers are in Argentina, Ukraine and Russia.

Bootstrapping 49

Bootstrapping Italy Sweat Equity Europe 49

sivers.org

JUNE 25, 2010

Youll estimate time and cost better. But what I think was hard, and it was something he couldnt consider was that it would be harder to find a *maintaining* programmer, and how much it would cost to run the software, because of technical details he didnt understand. Thinking of your project in milestones makes all the difference.

CTO Hire 84

CTO Hire Hiring Software Review Technical Review 84

Small Business Force

AUGUST 22, 2009

Your business is typically the single largest element of your asset base and estate, often with both real capital tied up and huge amounts of sweat equity invested. Do expectations far exceed those multiple of revenues or valuations? It's an emotionally charged, often intensely personal matter for you, the entrepreneur.

Valuation 20

Valuation Sweat Equity Merger Sales 20

Small Business Force

AUGUST 22, 2009

Your business is typically the single largest element of your asset base and estate, often with both real capital tied up and huge amounts of sweat equity invested. Do expectations far exceed those multiple of revenues or valuations? It's an emotionally charged, often deeply personal matter for you, the entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur 20

Entrepreneur Valuation Sweat Equity Merger 20