Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. At the end of the class there will be a Demo Day when investors get to see the best this country’s researchers have to offer. Filed under: Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 25, 2015

This tweet from YC’s Sam Altman was in my feed this morning: another nice comment from demo day "there are more companies here with $1MM+ run rates than i see in months of startups pitching A rounds" — Sam Altman (@sama) March 25, 2015. Uncategorized Venture Capital' You can see why he’s pleased.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Equity Revenue Startup 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 19, 2016

The CIA set up In-Q-Tel to be the venture capital arm of the intelligence community to speed the insertion of technologies. First, our mantra to the students has been to learn about “Deployment not Demos.” Its systems were struggling to manage the rapidly increasing torrent of information being collected.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Community 120

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

Minimal viable products are being demo’d to sponsors and sponsors are reacting to what the teams are learning. In a company you know you’ve been successful when you generate revenue and profit. In those case revenue will become an additional metric. More next week on innovation and the intransigent middle.

San Diego 142

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 142

David Teten

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

I’ve listed below the points I recommend you cover when pitching your business to early-stage investors, including but definitely not limited to ff Venture Capital. We almost always require a demo, or at least a mockup. What are the expected revenues, expenses, and EBITDA three years out? Financial Overview.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Pre-Money Valuation Prospectus Early Stage 60

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

The company has just missed its quarterly revenue forecast. Lets take an example, and look at how they might do this: They will be able to tell you that revenue is composed of deals. To compute revenue, you multiply average deal size by number of deals. Bookings is the pre-cursor to Revenue. Obvious, isn’t it?

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

Duct Tape Marketing

JULY 14, 2022

She has spent twelve years in startups and built three successful companies without venture capital backing. So having done so many live webinars, demos, onboarding trainings for a consistent five years, sometimes five back to back for my previous company, I had just dreamt of a product, a magical product that would do my job for me.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Demand Cofounder Video 84

Up and Running

AUGUST 27, 2020

We’re profitable, and we just cracked $800K in annual recurring revenue earlier this year. We also knew we didn’t want venture capital funding. But, we decided that a sales hire could come later, since we could (for the time being) handle demos ourselves, and we were still in the process of building our sales funnel.

Founder 120

Founder Cofounder Bootstrapping Startup 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Channel incentives – does your product or proposition extend or replace existing revenue for the channel? ——————– Class 6 Feb 8 th Testing Revenue Model. Class Lecture/Out of the Building Assignment: What’s a revenue model? What types of revenue streams are there?

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Berkonomics

JUNE 8, 2017

This class of investor, once quite disorganized, has become much like the venture capital community, creating a process including due diligence (careful examination of a business before investment), terms of investment that match those of venture capitalists, and a process that often takes.

Private Equity 106

Private Equity Valuation Cap Table Accredited Investor 106

Haystack

OCTOBER 23, 2018

A few years ago, during a YC cohort (before Demo Day), a few sources told me about a SaaS founder in the batch who was on a mission. raised their Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz (this comes after the Series A led by Lightspeed, where I am a Venture Partner, a few years back). Oleg is a learning machine.

Artificial Inteligence 71

Artificial Inteligence Finance Security Founder 71

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

This human touch can be as light as email follow ups, or as much as inside sales people doing multiple sales calls and demos. It appears that LTV should be about 3 x CAC for a viable SaaS or other form of recurring revenue model. Aim to recover your CAC in < 12 months, otherwise your business will require too much capital to grow.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 27, 2013

Adams, authors of “ Venture Capital For Dummies ® “ You’ve managed to get the attention of well-established venture capitalists. Or maybe your projected earnings were reasonable, but your product demo went horribly wrong. If you’re not ready for venture capital, you have other options.

Venture Capital 171

Venture Capital Technical Cofounder Milwaukee Valuation 171

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

For simplicity I’ll assume you’ve raised some money from angels or seed investors and you’re either raising an A round or a B round of venture capital. Sometimes I encourage teams to create new analysis on cohorts, future revenue projections, competitor reviews, pricing studies, etc. these are simply guidelines.

Term Sheet 332

Term Sheet Due Diligence Campaign Sales 332

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 29, 2010

Closely just launched at DEMO this week and is the natural evolution of group buying and discount sites—allowing retailers to run these deals on their own in front of their own audiences. Chase should be a reseller of Homerun, Foursquare, Square, and all of the different ways that retailers can innovate, save money or grow revenues.

Syndicate 105

Syndicate Syndication Venture Capital Flash 105

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 30, 2014

It’s the end of Demo Day, an annual ritual for Techstars Boston, where Rae is the managing director. Think of it as a cross between a landlord, summer camp, and venture-capital firm. It has graduated nearly 100 companies in Boston alone, generating millions of dollars in funding and local revenue.

Technology 60

Technology Boston Cloud Silicon Valley 60

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 10, 2011

You can sit in a pitch meeting with an investor demoing your product, and hypothesize as to whether or not there will be a market or even a business model for something, or you can role reverse and "Show them the money".

Sales Cycle 121

Sales Cycle Government Revenue Sales 121

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2011

The combination of venture capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. At the end of the class there will be a Demo Day when investors get to see the best this country's researchers have to offer. What Took You So Long??

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Lean 118

Professor VC

JULY 31, 2008

The artists received very little of album sales, but kept concert and merchandise revenue. The artists received very little of album sales, but kept concert and merchandise revenue. The artists had very few sales of albums, but gave a concert and commodity revenue. Are DEMO's days numbered? Venture News.

San Jose 28

San Jose Software Review Angel Investor Silicon Valley 28

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

Everyone has their own definition of momentum (user numbers, revenue, channel partners, biz dev deals, whatever). Imagine the “typical&# deal – somebody comes into a VC’s office, they’ve never met, they’re highly referred by a friend and they’re pitching a product demo and a PPT.

Early Stage 360

Early Stage Startup Venture Capital Seed Stage 360

David Teten

JULY 12, 2013

For example, the Venture Capital Access Program (VCAP) , the initiative I co-founded focused on helping women and minorities increase access to venture capital, will likely be highly profitable, but I also know it’s good PR in the target market I care about, which is entrepreneurs. Enter into personal competitions.

PR 114

PR Public Relations Startup Technical Review 114

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

No amount of learning how to get a VC meeting or improving your VC demo skills will fix the lack of concrete customer data. A Progress Graph on the right visually shows how far you’ve come (in whatever units of goodness you’re tracking – revenue, units, users, etc.) Get back up and running.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 31, 2010

Fewer demos this time. Artists are using Social Media as a a catalyst to boost popularity, create new revenue streams and promote global goodness. Tags: Venture Capital & Technology nextNY. Current undergrads who participate can attend the Tech Meetup for free and some guest entrepreneurs even stop by once in a while.

New York 61

New York Community Social Media New York City 61

Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

You add that, now that they’re interested, you told them the story, they see the market, you’re demoing the product, you’re showing traction, they get it. Heaven forbid, if things are worse than expected, we see that and we connect the expense dots to the revenue dots. This will be context specific.

Lean 60

Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

Professor VC

AUGUST 26, 2011

Everyone seems to know someone who has raised huge amounts of venture capital without ever putting together even back of the envelope projections. Does a complicated sales build model make sense for a pre-revenue SaaS company? I often do this in the revenue tab. Rebuild our Inner Cities one Venture at a time?

Silicon Valley 35

Silicon Valley San Jose Hockey Stick Venture Capital 35

Professor VC

JULY 2, 2010

A similar trend is happening in alternative energy, the industry that has greatly benefited from both venture capital and US government assistance over the past decade. This does show that venture backed companies have a huge impact on the US economy. Labels: Andy Grove , economics , venture capital. Steve Bennet.

San Jose 28

San Jose Silicon Valley Venture Capital Angel Investor 28

David Teten

JULY 12, 2013

For example, the Venture Capital Access Program (VCAP) , the initiative I co-founded focused on helping women and minorities increase access to venture capital, will likely be highly profitable, but I also know it’s good PR in the target market I care about, which is entrepreneurs. Enter into personal competitions.

PR 60

PR Public Relations Startup Technical Review 60

Professor VC

JUNE 20, 2011

But of course, the model had us requiring only $10M equity to breakeven and to achieve $185M in revenues in 2008 (the magic Year 5 in all business plans). Once you raise venture capital, you are forced on a path to spend ahead of the business and seek the highest growth business model options. Are DEMO's days numbered?

San Jose 28

San Jose Angel Investor Term Sheet Venture Capital 28

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. Marketing starts to build a sales demo, writes sales materials (presentations, data sheets), and hires a PR agency.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

BeyondVC

NOVEMBER 29, 2005

I had a meeting last week where an entrepreneur insisted on showing me a demo first. Don’t worry, I want to see your baby in action, but save the demo for later as I want to hear you articulate these points first. He lost my interest right then and there. The Slide Deck: make it short and sweet, 15-20 slides will do.

Elevator Pitch 68

Elevator Pitch NDA Caching Agile 68

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

There are two reasons to raise money: You have a killer idea that is only partially validated, that you think can get to $50M+ of revenue in 5 years with 80%+ gross margins (if margins are lower, you need a lot more revenue)and you need money to get to product-market fit, or. It might be a wire-frame, PowerPoint demo or prototype.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Scalable Startup

MAY 5, 2012

In most of the pitches I get from early stagers these days, they start talking and demoing and don’t know when to quit. The other night someone was trying to show me a demo of their mobile app in a loud bar. Very sad demo. Respect the human sales skills. They keep “selling” me.

Sales 22

Sales Semantic Audio Mobile 22

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

Last week, I wrote about Akamai , a company with strong network effects that successfully transitioned from a single product to build a platform that garners over a billion dollars in revenue and is now a core part of the Internet’s fabric. Expedia grew to account for roughly one third of the company’s revenues. Think about that.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

BeyondVC

MAY 12, 2006

One of the interesting questions posed by a VC was how Microsoft valued technology and engineering assets versus companies with lots of customers and revenues. In the end, Steve rightly said that it comes down to a negotiation since revenue ratios, etc.

Flash 60

Flash AJAX Acquisition API 60

Up and Running

AUGUST 12, 2015

What is revenue going to look like? That if you are getting venture capital money, that if you are an angel investor, you’re going to want a business plan and if you are going to a bank, you might need a business plan, but other than that, I don’t need a plan. I want to have enough revenue to hire a manager.

Forecast 60

Forecast Video Business Plan United States 60

dondodge.typepad.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing Thoughts on business and technology Home Archives Profile Subscribe About Me « Boston VCs gets first look at Y Combinator Demo Day | Main | Digg-nation is HUGE! Posted by: Mario | August 16, 2007 at 05:51 AM Mario, I agree the venture investing landscape is changing. Most startups fail.

Equity 40

Equity Employee Dilution Valuation 40

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

Around 2003, Quigo was doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue with two main products: a ready-to-use, search engine marketing solution for advertisers called FeedPoint and a contextual advertising platform for publishers called AdSonar. Quigo Lands Overture as Client, Rejects Their Acquisition Offer. How Hashable Got Buzz.

Semantic 302

Semantic Acquisition Valuation Angel Investor 302