YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

Among these opportunities, the chance to pitch an investor and secure funding is perhaps the greatest of all — at least in the early stages of your startup career — as it can ultimately determine the long-term fate of your company. You may be able to generate revenue, but VCs want exponential growth. Be ready when it counts.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

A lot of my time is spent helping early-stage companies get to proof points so that they can raise capital. They might have some seed money and are thinking or raising a Series A based on success of an early release (MVP). Bill Payne is an expert on how early-stage investors should look at valuation.

Valuation 198

Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Getting investors to trust you with their money is always a challenge, and it’s even more difficult in the early stages, where you don’t have a significant revenue stream, a few customers, or maybe even a product yet. At these stages, it’s all about you, and your ability to communicate and execute effectively.

Due Diligence 271

Due Diligence Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Preferred Stock 271

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. Flexible VC 101: Equity Meets Revenue Share. By tying payments to actual revenues, founders and investors remain aligned around the company’s real-time performance, good or bad. Flexible VC: Revenue -based. Of the Inc.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2017

In case you haven’t noticed it, the rapid evolution of do-it-yourself (DIY) facilities for developers, including 3-D printers, SketchUp and makerspaces such as TechShop , have scaled down the cost of prototypes and hardware design by an order of magnitude. Quick low-cost design and fabrication alternatives are extremely valuable.

Technical Cofounder 153

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Wiki Cofounder 153

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

While the rewards may be a boon to their company in the short term, the consequences of accepting outside funding too early can be debilitating. There’s a reason why I refer to early-stage VC funding as vulture capital, and to be honest it’s pretty accurate. Focus on Product Development First.

Early Stage 85

Early Stage Venture Capital Bootstrapping Pre-Money Valuation 85

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

We are in a bubble (with so many private $1bn+ valuations). pre-money valuation you certainly would want to exercise your right to continue investing if you had prorata rights. 15 years ago we were at the peak of Internet hype with the launch of many over-capitalized businesses with a market size & opportunity was limited.

Technical Review 398

Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 398

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” How much is NewCo worth to investors at this point (pre-money valuation)? This is the most concrete valuation element, usually called the asset approach.

Valuation 270

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation NPV Intellectual Property 270

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

In today’s fast moving market, the basic product development cost and time are critical to survival. They come at the early stage while a startup has no revenue or valuation, so professional investors are hard to find. Low-cost design and fabrication tools are extremely valuable.

Startup 397

Startup Cofounder Incubator Early Stage 397

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2012

Just don’t quit your day job before your new company is producing revenue. After bootstrapping, friends and family are the most common funding sources for early-stage startups. Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Friends and family. Loans or line-of-credit.

Technical Review 257

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 257

ReadWriteStart

JULY 15, 2020

New talk of capital efficiency is gratifying, but there was another lesson from pre-COVID-19 valuation struggles. Venture capitalists and early-stage investors have told all of us, founders are critical to a startup’s valuation. Morality matters. These investors also tell you the founder’s role cuts both ways.

Valuation 91

Valuation South Carolina San Jose Balance Sheet 91

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

Proposed private equity deal: Eventually, this business will require private equity to provide sufficient funding to develop some of the more robust aspects of the technology that will attract Fortune 500 clients. That is to say, they’d want to be able to control costs and revenues at a high level. His first capital raise was a $2.75

Private Equity 94

Private Equity Pre-Money Valuation Equity Startup 94

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 5, 2023

The right investor also changes as you move through the different startup stages. Friends and family are key at the idea and early development stages, when you have minimal business valuation. Looking in the right place for the wrong investor won’t help you.

Angel Investor 246

Angel Investor Stealth Bootstrapping Early Stage 246

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Snyk was founded with the mission to help developers make their code secure, providing a platform to automatically assess and remediate open source vulnerabilities. The company’s success has been largely driven by its developer-led freemium model, going from Series A funding to a valuation of $2.6B in just 30 months.

Early Stage 62

Early Stage Open Source Development Team Review Security 62

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As an early-stage VC I love this phase. Throughout the first year we made many fixes and saw our revenue base in these markets accelerate so we felt we were ready to attack Los Angeles, amongst the most important storage markets in the country.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 14, 2020

Getting investors to trust you with their money is always a challenge, and it’s even more difficult in the early stages, where you don’t have a significant revenue stream, a few customers, or maybe even a product yet. At these stages, it’s all about you, and your ability to communicate and execute effectively.

Due Diligence 308

Due Diligence Intellectual Property Preferred Stock Seed Stage 308

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

In product business it is often measured over multiple purchases and assumptions are made about the repeat rates and in the enterprise or services world LTV can be based on churn rates, which are notoriously hard to predict in an early-stage business. In SaaS (or any recurring revenue business) this is also a very difficult task.

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 22, 2020

The right investor also changes as you move through the different startup stages. Friends and family are key at the idea and early development stages, when you have minimal business valuation. Looking in the right place for the wrong investor won’t help you.

Stealth 434

Stealth Startup Angel Investor Bootstrapping 434

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2011

Just don’t quit your day job before your new company is producing revenue. After bootstrapping, friends and family are the most common funding sources for early-stage startups. Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Friends and family. Loans or line-of-credit.

Technical Review 233

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Venture Capital 233

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 6, 2010

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” How much is NewCo worth to investors at this point (pre-money valuation)? This is the most concrete valuation element, usually called the asset approach.

Valuation 234

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation NPV Startup 234

Gust

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” How much is NewCo worth to investors at this point (pre-money valuation)? This is the most concrete valuation element, usually called the asset approach.

Valuation 187

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation NPV Intellectual Property 187

Berkonomics

MARCH 5, 2020

So, it is important for the entrepreneur to identify, address and mitigate each of these in order to increase valuation and decrease the risk of ultimate loss of the business. Reduction or elimination of one or more of these risks increases the valuation of the company and certainly improves its chances of survival and growth.

Valuation 62

Valuation Down Round Early Stage Demand 62

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Greycroft is an early-stage VC. Founded in November 2007 in New York City by Alexis Maybank and Kevin Ryan (co-founder of DoubleClick); CEO is Susan Lyne (ex-CEO Marta Stewart Living Omnimedia) Revenue estimates: $50mm in 2008; $170mm in 2009 (versus budget of $150mm); $450mm forecasted for 2010. OTHER DEALS: 1.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 13, 2013

Many Asian entrepreneurs tell me that they want to raise funds from Silicon Valley firms because they perceive the valuations to be higher. But the problem with this is that most VCs in the Valley, especially early stage ones, only like to invest in companies that are within driving distance from their offices.

Asia 132

Asia Silicon Valley India Term Sheet 132

Gust

JUNE 17, 2012

Just don’t quit your day job before your new company is producing revenue. After bootstrapping, friends and family are the most common funding sources for early-stage startups. Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Friends and family. Loans or line-of-credit.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 164

Version One Ventures

DECEMBER 14, 2016

forward revenue in February 2016 (the low), they appreciated by 6% each month for the following six months. In other words, any correction in public valuations happened quickly and has now stabilized. From Series A and onwards, fundraising takes longer and valuations are typically below the expectations and benchmarks of 2015.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Early Stage Portfolio Valuation 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading. produced this analysis of engineering representation within VC firms: Selected VCs with Highest Representation of Developers in Workforce.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 1, 2010

Just don’t quit your day job before your new company is producing revenue. After bootstrapping, friends and family are the most common funding sources for early-stage startups. Use this approach before you have a real valuation, a real product, or any real customers. Friends and family. Loans or line-of-credit.

Technical Review 149

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Venture Capital 149

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

There were massive late stage rounds because all the big funds wanted companies which already had traction. Low supply of companies with traction drove the valuations and deal sizes up. Seed stage was super tough. As it happens almost every few years there was a new normal developing. Valuations are rising to match.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

especially if the startup already has a product and revenue? Pre-seed tends to be about developing an MVP and generating early traction. In smaller funds, ticket sizes tend to be lower, so pre-seed is the only stage where micro funds are able to secure their minimum equity targets.

Valuation 186

Valuation Software Review Generative AI Technical Review 186

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 13, 2019

At this point, we had already developed the first phase of the platform by bootstrapping. Some came from angel investors, but we also sought out industry experts to be early contributors in this stage, which leads me to tip number three. We got back on our feet and successfully pivoted the business.

Strategic Investors 49

Strategic Investors Austin Angel Investor Bootstrapping 49

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

In another we decended into a debate about our 5 year forecasts (I built the models so fielded most of these questions), and it became clear they probably weren’t the best fit for our Series A round (this group is no longer in the early-stage VC business). It was a pretty good valuation for the time. It was a $4.7M

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Gust

OCTOBER 12, 2011

During the summer of 2010, I developed a workshop, A New ACEF Valuation Workshop for Angels and Entrepreneurs. To provide some reference points, I surveyed thirteen angels groups in North American to determine their recent experience in negotiating the pre-money valuation of pre-revenue companies. Current Average.

Angel Groups 125

Angel Groups Valuation Pre-Money Valuation St. Louis 125

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

Especially in the early stages, so much about the company may change in how they think about product or go-to-market — and change multiple times — before raising an institutional round. NVV: Let’s talk about the seed stage specifically. Traction and revenue? Business model? Previous capital raised?

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 4, 2016

Originally created in the mid 1990’s to help with the imprecise problem of how to value early stage companies, especially those in technology, I developed what soon became known as “The Berkus Method” when published in the popular book, “Winning Angels” by Harvard’s Amis and Stevenson with my permission in 2001.

Valuation 48

Valuation North Carolina Oklahoma City Silicon Valley 48

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” How much is NewCo worth to investors at this point (pre-money valuation)? This is the most concrete valuation element, usually called the asset approach.

Pre-Money Valuation 246

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation NPV Intellectual Property 246

Rob Go

JUNE 16, 2014

A few notable excerpts: Kyle Alspach’s commentary on seed and series A at BetaBoston; Brad Feld’s tweet a few weeks ago that “$100k MRR [monthly recurring revenue] used to be interesting. On top of that, investors from other geographies definitely do invest in early-stage companies that are not in their backyard.

Early Stage 67

Early Stage Boston Portfolio Venture Capital 67