Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

We should end the year with a few million in fully recurring revenue and we’re projected to double next year. But more spend = more viral opps = more revenue down the road. >50% of our revenue in now viral. I raised $500k in seed money to start the company. Probably revenue based.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329

Version One Ventures

JULY 22, 2014

If not, revenue from your customers will be your best source of financing. There’s a lot of “easy” early-stage money floating around right now, but don’t get fooled into taking seed money if you don’t have a viable path for later rounds. You need to assess early on if your business is venture-fundable.

Finance 167

Finance Seed Money Bootstrapping Angel Investor 167

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

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

The answer to the age-old question of whether your business should be trying to make money or raise money is almost universally the latter. Generating solid revenue streams early on will make many of the fundraising problems much easier to handle later on. 4 Reasons to Focus on Revenue Before Fundraising. More Leverage.

Startup 78

Startup Revenue Cofounder Angel Investor 78

Version One Ventures

DECEMBER 14, 2016

forward revenue in February 2016 (the low), they appreciated by 6% each month for the following six months. At the same time, seed money is still abundant due to the proliferation of micro VC over the past few years. They make their products cheaper and easier to use in order to appeal to more customers.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Early Stage Portfolio Valuation 60

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

You need three things to create a successful startup: to start withgood people, to make something customers actually want, and to spendas little money as possible. The woman in charge of sales was so tenacious that I used to feelsorry for potential customers on the phone with her. Paul Erdos wasparticularly good at this.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Hippoland

JANUARY 23, 2018

It will be hard to raise a pre-seed round through traditional methods If you are raising money through traditional methods (such as with angels / micro VCs / VCs) via a convertible note or convertible security or equity deal, it will be a lot harder to raise pre-seed money in 2018. The market had definitely shifted.

Early Stage 48

Early Stage Convertible Security Seed Stage SEC 48

Hippoland

JANUARY 23, 2018

It will be hard to raise a pre-seed round through traditional methods If you are raising money through traditional methods (such as with angels / micro VCs / VCs) via a convertible note or convertible security or equity deal, it will be a lot harder to raise pre-seed money in 2018. The market had definitely shifted.

Early Stage 48

Early Stage Convertible Security Seed Stage SEC 48

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

If you are raising a seed round now, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself. There are still the same debates on whether or not you should take seed money from VCs. iOS App Store revenue still dwarfs Google Play’s, but the challenger is catching up fast. Entrepreneurs are survivors by nature.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 9, 2018

Literally, one week later we had secured seed money, established business roles, added on another partner, ran the numbers, and started a pest control company! 9-Increase in my revenue. This year I was able to increase my revenue by more than double from the previous year. We started talking, seriously about the idea.

South Korea 57

South Korea Entrepreneur Portugal Social Media 57

crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

It launched in 2013 with $3 million in seed money from American and Australian investors, and offers a series of templates intended to make good design easier to execute and more accessible. Canva, the graphic design platform promoting itself as tool that empowers the world to design, is not new.

Design 48

Design Cofounder Silicon Valley Seed Money 48

crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

It launched in 2013 with $3 million in seed money from American and Australian investors, and offers a series of templates intended to make good design easier to execute and more accessible. Canva, the graphic design platform promoting itself as tool that empowers the world to design, is not new.

Design 48

Design Cofounder Silicon Valley Seed Money 48

crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

It launched in 2013 with $3 million in seed money from American and Australian investors, and offers a series of templates intended to make good design easier to execute and more accessible. Canva, the graphic design platform promoting itself as tool that empowers the world to design, is not new.

Design 48

Design Cofounder Silicon Valley Seed Money 48

crowdSPRING Blog

FEBRUARY 16, 2016

William Bygrave, an entrepreneurship professor at Babson College, cautioned in an article for The Wall Street Journal: What we really don’t want to do is literally spend a year or more essentially writing a business plan without knowing we have actual customers. Successful entrepreneurs move quickly.

Washington 48

Washington Incubator Cofounder Angel Investor 48

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 17, 2017

million customers. The goal of model building is to prove that if you take all the baby steps in the right order, and you test out pricing and cost assumptions as best you can along the way, and you keep listening to potential customers as you progress, then you develop reasonable confidence that success is mathematically possible.

Valuation 48

Valuation Forecast Seed Money Business Model 48

Rob Go

NOVEMBER 15, 2016

For most companies, this means top-line revenue, but in some cases it’s more about numbers of active users or number of customers. You might do unscalable, hacky things to get customers. 5M in ecommerce revenue or marketplace GMV used to be interesting, but now it’s more like $10M.

Product 28

Product Seed Stage Seed Money Metrics 28

Rob Go

MARCH 20, 2013

The best trick I’ve heard (which is actually really hard to do) is to talk to customers, but to do it from the perspective of a skeptic. Is it possible to take seed money and not go for the Series A, etc, and just earn revenue? One is to do a royalty based financing, where some percent of revenues goes back to investors.

Bootstrapping 46

Bootstrapping Finance Dividend Vesting 46

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Also if one has a portal that is massive in ideas such as Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube combined like my own without third party back ends it cost a pretty penny to build a custom one if one did not know about clones etc. Thus engineers who have the know how would be an asset. All what you said is so true.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

It wasnt because they werent accredited investors that I didntask my parents for seed money, though. When we were starting Viaweb,I didnt know about the concept of an accredited investor, anddidnt stop to think about the value of investors connections.The reason I didnt take money from my parents was that I didntwant them to lose it.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76