Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” ” If you’re not profitable you’re purely a cost center to them. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) =. Operating Costs.

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. Looking ahead at the next decade I am excited by what I believe will be viewed as one of the best and most rational investment periods for venture capital due to seven discrete factors: 1. The Exit Problem.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

The Equity Kicker

JUNE 17, 2015

Firstly this table comparing 1999 and 2014 on key bubble-related metrics. But second there has been a big shift from IPOs to late stage private rounds. That makes sense, but it looks to me as if they have less valuation discipline than we normally see in either the public markets or in smaller venture rounds.

IPO 60

IPO Early Stage Valuation Metrics 60

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

While poised with a limited number of transactions this year, the world of public Cloud Computing and SaaS companies has been marked by two events in the past few months: the acquisition of Omniture by Adobe and the high profile IPO of LogMeIn, a leading provider of PC remote access and support with a very interesting freemium model.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review IPO Cloud 48

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 27, 2009

New Capital Earmarked for Global High-Growth Investments LARCHMONT, N.Y., 26 Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), the oldest venture capital practice in the United States, today announced the closing of a $350 million supplement to its current fund family, BVP VII, which closed in June 2007. 2009 Bessemer Venture Partners.

Software Review 48

Software Review Partner United States Venture Capital 48

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

TL:DR : This post aims to recap significant changes in the venture capital industry over the past ten years, and then make some [biased] predictions as to major forces at play in the next five years. However, all three shifts are related and can be summed up simply as: Geeks are Taking Over Venture Capital.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

— 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. In the 20th century tech companies and their investors made money through an Initial Public Offering (IPO). The founders.

Founder 274

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 274

K9 Ventures

APRIL 9, 2014

But scaling is hard, and these companies can suffer from The Curse of Over Capitalization. Threshold for an IPO is higher Ten years ago, if you had $20M in revenue you were ready to go public. Hiring costs are up dramatically The cost of hiring top quality talent in the bay area has gone up dramatically.

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Scott left the company, which eventually IPO’d and became Internet Brands. And finally, Scott demonstrated his internal management tool for managing the metrics of his business. Tags: This Week in Venture Capital. They raised around $350 million to try and sell cars direct over the Internet. It’s awesome.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

As the costs of production fall, it’s getting easier and easier to send in a proposal or even a complete work. Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. I’ve met a lot of gatekeepers in the past few months.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

With this seed capital – more often than not totaling between $100,000 and $1,000,000 - the company accomplishes a number of key technical milestones, gets a beta customer or two, and then goes on a "road show" to venture capitalists around the country for capital to “scale” the business. There are a lot of dark, hard days.

Angel Investor 112

Angel Investor Venture Capital Sweat Equity Cram Down 112

Growthink Blog

APRIL 15, 2015

For those in the bubble camp, Domo is “ Tech Unicorn ,” a recent start-up worth, either through a financing, an acquisition or IPO, more than $1 billion usually without any meaningful profits to speak of and thus instead valued via reasonings and justifications far outside of the pale of traditional finance and accounting.

Valuation 48

Valuation Venture Capital Finance Acquisition 48

Haystack

DECEMBER 26, 2018

On top of this, the cost of bringing projects online has fallen, it’s become more fashionable to play the startup game, and so forth. Money has been coming into the U.S. and the Bay Area specifically at a rapid rate. the cash windfall to the Bay Area will surge past the days of Facebook’s offering.

IPO 76

IPO Private Equity Valuation Acquisition 76

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 26, 2012

In an interview with ReadWriteWeb, Davidson explains how the latest industry to receive the disruption treatment has been the venture capital business itself, with the epicenter of the quake right around San Francisco. There used to be the Four Horsemen of the IPO world, back in the '80s and '90s. Number of U.S.

IPO 115

IPO Stock San Francisco Lean 115

Tim Keane

JANUARY 12, 2010

  I’ve sat down with entrepreneurs and a copy of a term sheet guide I like [ “Term Sheets & Valuations - A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Venture Capital Term Sheets & Valuations ” by Alex Wilmerding, Aspatore Press.] and walked through each proposed term and why it is or isn’t important. times the investment.).

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Valuation Dividend Liquidation Preference 68

Gust

SEPTEMBER 17, 2014

Me: So, you raised venture capital? There were no metrics. Him: On metrics. If we priced it based on any metrics your company would likely be worth less than 7 figures at your A round. There are a million ways to do quick, easy, low-cost rounds with prices. Maybe an IPO – who knows? On the phone ….

Liquidation Preference 153

Liquidation Preference Valuation Term Sheet Stock 153

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

Truth: The Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Truth: There’s nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. Truth: The Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed.

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 167

Rob Go

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

The title of the report is “Top 20 Tech Venture Capital Firms of 2012″ The chart in the main body is titled “PrivCo’s Ranking of the Most Successful Venture Capital Firms (2012)” The giveaway is in the subtitle below that: “ranked by total number of private tech co. The report is here.

Venture Capital 61

Venture Capital IPO Stock Portfolio 61

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

You see, Dan knows more about venture than most people; and if Dan isn’t aware that “pre-seed is a thing,” then I haven’t done a good enough job of explaining to the world what I and K9 do! If the Micro-VCs are looking for Series A-like metrics, what does a company do when it’s just getting started? Those times are long gone.

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 12, 2007

Attendees included Blue Nile , Postini , LinkedIn , Lifelock , Wize , Sparter , Zopa , Revver , Wikia , Flock , Vimo , Delivery Agent , Gerson Lehrman Group , Pure Networks , Zensys , Summit , T3Ci , Endeca and Nominum - a wide spectrum of companies, both in terms of stage (very early to pre-IPO) and sectors (consumer internet, software, chipsets.).

Software Review 48

Software Review SEM Marketing Las Vegas 48

VC Cafe

JANUARY 14, 2022

There are two main forms of exits for startups: trade sale/M&A or IPO. SPACs had their moment in the sun in 2021, with a record number of companies choosing to go public using the SPACs in favour of traditional IPOs. This excludes real estate prices and relates mainly to cost of living (prices of goods).

Technical Review 158

Technical Review Lock-up Period South Korea 158

Seeing Both Sides

APRIL 12, 2012

When I first entered the venture capital business 10 years ago after being an entrepereneur, my partners warned me that "my bar" for new investments would get higher over time. When they get customers, they are told to show engagement metrics. Instagram at $1 billion) and the impending earth-shattering Facebook IPO?

IPO 44

IPO Metrics Venture Capital Social Media 44

Ben's Blog

MARCH 24, 2011

Let’s look at public market comparables and venture capital flows to see if we can find a match. Venture capital flows. A basic driver for a private technology market bubble is the over-supply of venture capital into the sector. If too much venture capital hits the streets, valuations will bubble up.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Database 78

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 20, 2016

All Unicorn participants — founders, company employees, venture investors and their limited partners (LPs) — are seeing their fortunes put at risk from the very nature of the Unicorn phenomenon itself. About this same point in time, the journalists that focus specifically on the venture capital industry noted something quite profound.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40

Cracking the Code

MAY 25, 2010

One of his secret: "Incentivize your marketing team on sales not leads" Jeff Jordan, CEO of OpenTable speaking about his IPO process: " Build relationships with key public investors 2-3 years before going public (Morgan Stanley, Fidelity and T. ipo process. Venture Capital. (3). You really did a great job on that!

Software Review 74

Software Review Cloud IPO Jordan 74

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

The usual tempo for raising money from venture capital is at a minimum of a year between financings. And show that you’re focused on the metrics that matter: revenue numbers, engagement traction, etc. What’s more, the sales and marketing costs of acquiring listings are expensive. Identify the right metrics for success.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Save Asia for post-IPO Single instance, multi-tenant, single datacenter - Have only one version of the code in production. Effectively measuring and understanding your CAC and CLTV metrics are key to future success. You put into words what we were thinking for our cost of client. Brian, Paglo www.paglo.com. Great list!

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

Cracking the Code

MARCH 10, 2008

Lets call this ratio the Customer Acquisition Cost ratio or CAC ratio. The definition becomes for the last quarter of 2007: CAC Ratio = (GM (Q4 07) - GM (Q307)) x 4 / S&M costs (Q307) A CAC ratio of one would be equivalent to breakeven marginally on a new customer in one year. Venture Capital. (3). internet. (6).

Sales 79

Sales Software Review Marketing Technical Review 79

Scalable Startup

FEBRUARY 1, 2013

And so the other reason that I am very interested in delving deep into this space is that it seems like IPOs like Workday, Palo Alto Networks are sort of — they have metrics and analytics that Wall Street understands, more so than a Facebook; like “We are going to sell X number of this in the next year.”

Software Review 22

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Stock 22

Cracking the Code

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Deutsche Bank report has a very interesting chart on the topic presenting the Free Cash Flow margins vs. the revenue growth four years post IPO for select software leaders: As you can see, with 20% Free Cash Flow margin and a 50% growth rate, Salesforce is well positioned in the pack! Venture Capital. (3). per share to $8.0

Software Review 48

Software Review Software Technical Review Cloud 48

Cracking the Code

JULY 6, 2007

Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. SaaS business metrics: why are they different? Different models require different performance metrics. The MRR is a great metrics, but it can be perfected. Friday, July 06, 2007.

Software Review 66

Software Review Metrics Valuation Technical Review 66

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 4, 2008

2007 was a turning point for the SaaS industry with the successful IPOs of NetSuite, SuccessFactors, DemandTec, Salary.com, Aprimo and Constant Contact. What metrics should I be using to drive a saas business? or What do I need to do to get ready for an IPO. Save Asia for post-IPO. “Bookings” is for suckers.

Software Review 48

Software Review South Korea IPO Portfolio 48

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). Startup Metrics for Pirates â?? SaaS Metrics Tutorial â?? tells you how much adwords cost. hire low-cost international engineering talent. Boilerplate Venture Funding Documents. National Venture Capital Association â??

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 13, 2021

You know, “I have profit loss statements and cost of customer acquisition and long-term value and cohort analysis and all of these things,” (all of which of course super important for understanding and valuing businesses appropriately), and what they’re growing to, and what the growth stage, and what is the future. I was wrong.”

Incubator 36

Incubator IPO Networking Cofounder 36