Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 29, 2016

For the SaaS and recurring revenue companies, if they missed by more than 5% in 1H16 and didn’t reforecas t, they’ve had a particularly grueling uphill climb for the past six months. Remember That The Lifetime Value Of A Canceled Customer Is Zero. How LTV Metrics Lie — And What To Look Out For.

Metrics 120

Metrics Revenue Web Conversion 120

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 29, 2015

AmeriData was a public company, a voracious acquirer (we acquired 40 companies in three years), and a very fast growing business (they were less than $50 million in revenue when they acquired Feld Technologies and over $2 billion in revenue three years later when GE acquired them.)

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital Reputation Affiliate Conversion 70

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 15, 2014

Seed is the new Series A. (~$2M used get for building product, establishing product-market fit and early revenue). 6M-$15M used to scale customer acquisition and revenue). . (~$500K used for building team and initial product/prototype). Series A is the new Series B. (~6M-$15M Series B is the new Series C.

Stock 114

Stock Mezzanine Acquisition Revenue 114

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 22, 2012

Many of these are young companies, often with little or no revenue. My startup, all five employees and $0 revenue, is being sued by a patent troll. I’ve actually cried from the injustice and worry; Every three hours of legal advice costs the same as an on-shore customer service representative with benefits for a week.

Software 174

Software Entrepreneur Mobile Revenue 174

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 29, 2019

These companies grew collectively to well over $200 million in revenue and had nearly $1 billion in exit value combined. This process stood for WHO is your customer, WHAT are they buying, and WHY do they buy it.

Early Stage 123

Early Stage Austin Sales Venture Capital 123

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 25, 2015

Imagine being an investor and being approached by a business SaaS company that has raised $5 million, has $100k / month of revenue, has been growing at about 5% per month, and is doing a $10 million round. Your revenue growth flattens out for a few quarters but you didn’t get ahead of the cost dynamic.

Finance 70

Finance Bootstrapping Acquisition Revenue 70

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 13, 2011

And suddenly they are $10 million, or $20 million, or even $50 million revenue companies. Sure – their customers and partners know who they are. Their CEO’s don’t run around bloviating about what they are going to do some day. They just do it. Before anyone has really noticed. Without any real competition.

Portfolio 171

Portfolio Community Revenue Partner 171

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 8, 2010

There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. The only logical solution in my book is what Amazon says in paragraph 3.

Colorado 163

Colorado Affiliate Government Advertising 163

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 31, 2010

As a result, on a going forward basis, I was getting Amazon affiliate revenue (via Viglink) for anyone that clicked through one of my links and bought something on Amazon. As a result, all your dead Amazon affiliate links will be overwritten with our affiliate code and the revenue will be credited to you.

Affiliate 118

Affiliate Colorado Cofounder Programming 118

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 24, 2014

The company is a real company with significant revenue and over 100 employees. The customer base is incredible. Managing the emotional swings in business comes easier to me because of my experience in athletics.” ” The retrospective with the company was powerful. ” The core of the company is strong.

Philadelphia 185

Philadelphia Leadership Partner Management 185

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 30, 2013

investors or revenue from U.S. customers to start and grow their businesses in the United States, and to remain permanently if their companies grow further, create jobs for American workers, and strengthen our economy.” Obama: “Create a “startup visa” for job-creating entrepreneurs.

United States 151

United States Colorado Green Canada 151

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013

The first are companies like Yesware that are rapidly growing revenue and customers, are in the 30 to 100 employee range, are dealing with balancing resources to accomplish their goals, but have an incredible amount of open ground in front of them.

Denver 130

Denver Portfolio Leadership Finance 130

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 20, 2015

” “Our customer traction demonstrates product/market fit.” There’s a fun post from Ben Horowitz in 2010 titled The Revenue of the Fat Guy that weaves in comments from Fred Wilson about product/market fit where Fred argues in his post Being Fat Is Not Healthy. “We have product/market fit.”

Product 70

Product Marketing Valuation Search 70

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 26, 2012

Engaging with Customers Online with Wendy Lea of Get Satisfaction. Often the results will come after lots of customer education, usage analysis, or feature iterations. If no customers use the new feature, have you really accomplished anything? Data Science at LinkedIn with Yael Garten. Is it okay to celebrate milestones?

Retention 139

Retention Social Network Distribution Conversion 139

Feld Thoughts

JULY 27, 2016

I know there is a lot of advice going around right now – especially in the bay area – that you should focus on your product, start getting customers (or users), make them deliriously happy, and not worry about the rest of stuff for a while. When I say things like this, I feel old.

Finance 70

Finance Hiring Restful Naming 70

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

Lest you think this is science fiction, I can assure you that Oblong has several major customers, is generating meaningful revenue, and is poised to enter several mainstream markets with g-speak derived products. The company has been steadily building momentum over the past few years since we invested.

Cofounder 113

Cofounder Revenue Operations Founder 113

Feld Thoughts

JULY 29, 2014

” Over the weekend, there was some commentary on AWS in fight of its life as customers like Dropbox ponder hybrid clouds and Google pricing. Amazon turned in slightly declining quarter-over-quarter revenue on AWS, although significant year-over-year quarterly growth, as explained in Sign of stress or just business as usual?

Cloud 176

Cloud Partner Hosting Cost 176

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 20, 2013

If the SEC didn’t agree with your auditors on revenue recognition, you’d end up in a crazy escalating set of discussions. But the public data is still out there for everyone – especially your competitors and customers to see. If you didn’t time it right, you’d have to do new financial disclosure.

SEC 142

SEC IPO Investment Bankers Valuation 142

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 12, 2011

Revenues and costs should both be based off of a robust set of assumptions. customer behavior, support inquiries, marketing analytics). Dick and Jane had limited formal business accounting experience, but they both knew how to balance a checkbook. Build a financial model that forecasts the P&L. historical data).

Balance Sheet 136

Balance Sheet Forecast Cap Table Early Stage 136

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

Last week Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff also predicted dead unicorns as startups seem to focus more on their valuations than their customers.” I once was on the board of a company that had generated lifetime revenue of $1.5m ” Now, I don’t blame Aileen for the word unicorn. Don’t feel bad for me.

Liquidation Preference 70

Liquidation Preference Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net 70

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 12, 2010

One patent suit with a slightly determined plaintiff could very easily end a software startup just in legal fees, let alone the impact of the suit on gathering customers in the future. Luckily, perhaps, plaintiffs want money, and so in most cases it’s not worth it for them to sue a company with no revenue.

Software 130

Software Startup Cost Revenue 130

Feld Thoughts

JULY 31, 2013

Today, Zayo has eclipsed $1.1Bin revenue and $600M in EBITDA, leading to an estimated Enterprise Value in the vicinity of $6B. Our biggest customers are the wireless carriers and big content/Internet companies. I will provide a quick synopsis for those who prefer a two-paragraph summary. and London. We raised $2.7B

Bandwidth 147

Bandwidth Colorado Startup IRR 147

Feld Thoughts

MAY 30, 2018

Connect ‘18 is bringing together thought leaders and experts – from across industries and verticals – who are experts in the world of data-driven customer intelligence and marketing. The Rise of Augmented Humanity – the role artificial intelligence is capable of playing in creating deeper customer connections.

Denver 16

Denver Artificial Inteligence B2C Vertical 16

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 19, 2013

It was a gathering of 60 entrepreneurs over four days (for three years) who were all under 40 and founders of companies with more than $1m in revenue. It was the first time I discovered my peer group and while I was young (24 years old) and small ($1m in revenue) I felt like I immediately fit in. Who is your customer?

Brazil 181

Brazil API Lean Revenue 181

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 5, 2017

This is a recurring theme in my world when a company hits around $5 million of revenue on their first product. Sometimes it’s a single executive; often times it’s the way the engineering and operations organizations (including customer support) interact.

Founder 117

Founder Product Development Engineer Revenue 117