Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

There is nothing more pure than building a product, putting it out in the world and seeing paying customers using your product and in some cases loving it. As companies get this initial customer feedback on their product they start to have to ask harder questions about unit economics: How much does it cost us to acquire a new customer?

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In his tenure as CEO of DataSift we have never missed a monthly revenue figure. He has grown our US operations from 1 employee (him) to a global organization of 75 employees that will finish the year with 8-digit revenues (90+% recurring) and more than 350% year-over-year growth. He is very pleasant when he calls and writes.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

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. But those of us with longer memories remember that the revenue line can move south very quickly when the market overall turns south. Gross burn is the total amount of money you are spending per month.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

Should SaaS companies trade at a 24x Enterprise Value (EV) to Next Twelve Month (NTM) Revenue multiple as they did in November 2021? We could talk with customers, meet the entire management team, review financial plans, review customer purchasing cohorts, evaluate the competition, etc. By 2021 we had to write a $3.5m

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

The main thrust of the post is that with YouTube taking a 45% of revenue and talent taking 70% of the remaining revenue, YouTube Networks didn’t have sustainable businesses unless they invested heavily in technology as a tool to increase margin and provide defensibility.

Video 339

Video Technical Review Distribution Aggregator 339

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. They talk to customers, operations, sales, marketing and engineering to determine the company product roadmap. In the early days the CEO is the jack-of-all-trades, doer-of-all, famously the “chief janitor” or coffee maker.

CTO Hire 385

CTO Hire Entrepreneur Technical Review Leadership 385

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

Perhaps the most misused terms I see these days from entrepreneurs involve CAC (customer acquisition costs) and LTV (life time value) and a lack of understanding these critical components is driving many companies to premature failure. Customer acquisition cost. This is how much you spend to get a new customer. That bit is easy.

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Let’s take your revenue line. It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? I care about your assumptions going in.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

4 times / 100 means if a customer uses your app frequently (say 10-20 times / day) then they are crashing nearly every day. Customer Acquisition. At the highest level you’ll obviously want to track how many customers your adding every month (and for some businesses that have hit scale this is measured on a daily basis).

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

While this reaction to such a valuation is understandable, to anybody who has seen the meteoric rise in consumer demand and actual revenue the valuation is much less surprising and may turn out to be quite conservative. I think it’s quite possible that Bird could be the fastest growing company to reach a billion dollars in run rate revenue.

San Francisco 256

San Francisco Valuation Technical Review Los Angeles 256

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 11, 2021

Photo by Vanna Phon on Unsplash Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of many startups from e-commerce to gaming to marketplace companies, among others. that’s where the customers are. But if you ask anyone in the ecosystem of customer acquisition?—?founders, no surprise?—?that’s founders, marketers, investors?—?and

Founder 424

Founder Product Cofounder Acquisition 424

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue. So if it’s not necessarily revenue that’s preventing an investment, then WTF is traction? It’s marketing 101 for tech companies in terms of how you market to customers.

Technical Review 309

Technical Review Term Sheet Venture Capital Revenue 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

It turns out that to build a successful company you ultimately need this strange thing called “revenue” that people don’t just hand you: You need to earn it. And there’s this other thing called “gross margin,” which shows the quality of your revenue. How much ad revenue does TripAdvisor make?

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

It might be for technical reasons or it might be for customer adoption reasons. Many entrepreneurs would have / could have built successful businesses that changed their lives, enriched their careers, provided value to customers and made money for those involved. In revenue terms our first two years of sales were $2.1

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2010

They care about the quality of what is build more than they care about end customers. As you head into the phase where you’ve had real customers paying real money for a period of time you’ll have a whole new set of issues. You still have some leeway to hire above them if need be. In summary.

Fractional CTO 400

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 400

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers. Customer also buy social proof because others are acting as strong references.

Sales 382

Sales Startup Technical Review Matching 382

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

With nearly 25 million customers using Netflix it’s clear that everyone will have an opinion on this. The reason that incumbents can’t react is that their revenue and defensibility are continued by serving the high-end of the market for which it would take too much time & money for any competitors to effectively challenge.

Los Angeles 329

Los Angeles Revenue Retention Acquisition 329

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 18, 2019

An Insider’s Perspective “Bird Zero” that are custom designed by the company There is a story arc of the electric scooter market that took the world by storm in 2018, was second-guessed late in the year and has quietly re-emerged as a powerful force of growth where few really appreciate the speed and scale of what has happened.

South America 250

South America Global New York City Software Review 250

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2013

Work on budgets, submit RFPs, answer customers support calls, work the bug-tracking software, and trying to meet the next sprint release schedule. Your 2am coding session is more important than their 2am cocktails on the redeye back from Japan where they have no customers. Sell stuff. That makes no sense.

Software Review 398

Software Review Technical Review China Mexico 398

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2010

You can often measure how many deals were achieved but there often doesn’t flow a steady stream of revenues / profits from these deals. One of my favorite sayings in this area comes from a portfolio company, RingRevenue , who like to say “ease of use = use and use = revenue.&# what messages are we wanting them to receive?

Development Team Review 323

Development Team Review SEM Channel Social Media 323

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

The functions of an early-stage board are pretty obvious and well understood: Providing introductions to customers, biz dev partners, recruits, the press, other investors, etc. Over time you start to figure out who you customers are and how to sell to them or how to get them to adopt your products if you’re a consumer-oriented startup.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

We hadn’t even thought about having a customer support line or who would staff it. Our customers were generally happy but they were pushing us hard for promised features. We kept reading about their customer wins, their product releases and their biz dev deals. They haven’t hit their revenue targets.

PR 331

PR Software Review Ireland Germany 331

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

I tell people that they need to blog about their industry to drive customers and not blog to their egos to drive their peer group to their blogs. If you are early in a platform (Zynga to Facebook, AngryBirds to iOS, Maker Studios to YouTube) you catch a major marketing wave where acquiring customers and growing revenue is exponential.

Technical Review 384

Technical Review Hockey Stick SEM Channel 384

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

So that we’re speaking the same language I would define “exclusive” as a period in which your company is prohibited from doing business with certain customers or business partners, which is why many incorrectly assume this is necessarily bad. Why Exclusivity Matters to Your Customers or Business Development Partners.

PR 150

PR Early Stage Software Naming 150

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

.&# They know instinctually how customers buy and how to excite them. Because they’re street smart, most great entrepreneurs tend to prefer getting out and talking with real customers rather than sitting in a cubicle all day doing beautiful PowerPoint slides. Help me understand which you prefer.&# I lost zero customers.

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Cofounder Sales 306

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2016

I have experienced many first-time entrepreneurs with too much hubris if fund-raising came easily and press was fawning and employees joined in droves and customer adoption has been rapid.

South Korea 261

South Korea Silicon Valley Los Angeles Japan 261

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Invoca has grown its enterprise customer base 550% in the past three years including major customers like Microsoft, Allstate and SunTrust. It has grown recurring revenue by more than 500% and deal-size by 276%. I think he wanted a meaty role if he was going to leave and finally we had something compelling.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Fractional CTO Cofounder Early Stage 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

Yet our initial customer success didn’t translate into big revenue growth and we faced issues such as: Do we support developers, end-users or both? I loved the entire journey – good and bad – and the employees and customers. I had stayed for 6 years. Again, captured eloquently in the words of Reid Hoffman.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

You can always spot these types because they can’t tell you what their revenue number for last month was or what their sales target is for next month. Of course they “need&# the title to convince customers, biz dev partners and VCs that they’re to be taken seriously.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Due Diligence 325

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

Whenever I heard why we didn’t feel a sales process at an important customer was going well (or if we lost) I would get involved myself. They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers. Customer also buy social proof because others are acting as strong references. They’re in beta).

Sales 316

Sales Technical Review Matching Hiring 316

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

70–80% of the costs of most startups are employee costs so what you’re really talking about when a company is unprofitable is that they are growing their staff ahead of their revenue. Revenue When I look at an income statement I start by focusing on the revenue line. You need to understand the “quality” of the revenue.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

And importantly we’ve had revenue. It’s when the noise stops and you can actually get customer attention, press articles and VC meetings. People attending marquee conferences with rock bands, prominent speakers, Gartner Group prognosticators and lots of other happy customers. It has been a good run. I know, I know.

Marketing 354

Marketing Incubator Turkey Metrics 354

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

Along with Greycroft Partners we were the first investors in Maker Studios 3 years ago when the company had no revenue and limited infrastructure. but not that this justifies take a 45% revenue share. Industry averages for talent revenue shares are about 70% with top talent making even more. ” YouTube takes 45%.

Networking 366

Networking Media Distribution Video 366

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

Invoca is now doing 10s of millions in recurring revenue and is growing > 75% year-over-year but it took the first 3 years to really build out the technology and acquire our initial enterprise clients. I mentioned that we sold our position in Kyriba for > $1 billion but when we invested it had virtually no revenue.

IP 223

IP Intellectual Property IRR Cofounder 223

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

Success often comes from doing a few things extraordinarily well and noticeably better than the competition and is measured in customer feedback, product engagement, growth in usage and ultimately in revenue growth. They’re doing how much in SaaS revenue? You need to be successful and those are two different things.

Software Review 150

Software Review Turkey Portfolio Syndicate 150

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2009

But then your customes start using your products, your competitors come out with new offerings and your business partners decide to launch a similar product rather than working with you. They were rapidly innovating and involving customers. We then ran customer pilots for 30 days which proved very compelling.

Entrepreneur 291

Entrepreneur Term Sheet Early Stage Affiliate 291

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2018

Let’s say you have built a SaaS company where a large part of the early revenue comes from a few big customers or a large part of the revenue is services based vs. software based. The investor is a customer and they have money to spend but only for a limited number of companies. Let me give you an example.

Revenue 236

Revenue Valuation Portfolio Restful 236