Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 16, 2011

It has been at least a decade since going public via an Initial Public Offering (IPO) has been considered a credible exit strategy for startups. Usually a small company can sell about 20 percent of its stock in an IPO. In 1999, there were 486 IPOs nationwide; just 10 years later, in 2009, there were only 63. How’s the timing?

IPO 223

IPO Social Media Media Exit Strategy 223

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In theory when you went public, everyone’s shares were now tradable on the stock exchange, but usually the underwriters required a six month “lockup” when company insiders (employees and investors) couldn’t sell. While there was an occasional bad apple, the public markets rewarded companies with revenue growth and sustainable profits.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. GoTo.com went on to ink huge distribution deals with Microsoft, AOL & Yahoo! In 1995 Netscape IPO’d and browsers started to become more prevalent.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 15, 2019

Too many choices confuse all customers, and make your job in marketing, distribution, and support much more difficult. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. Revenue and competitive position followed. Less is more.

Social Media 218

Social Media India Acquisition China 218

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 14, 2017

Too many choices confuse all customers, and make your job in marketing, distribution, and support much more difficult. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. Revenue and competitive position followed. Less is more.

Social Media 163

Social Media India Acquisition China 163

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 20, 2016

All Unicorn participants — founders, company employees, venture investors and their limited partners (LPs) — are seeing their fortunes put at risk from the very nature of the Unicorn phenomenon itself. A high performing, high-growth SAAS company that may have been worth 10 or more times revenue was suddenly worth 4-7 times revenue.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40

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

Up and Running

MAY 1, 2014

You’ll end up with a long, generic statement about how your company is serving its customers, employees, etc. The company history section can provide new employees with background on the company so that they have better context for the work that they are doing and where the company has come from over the years. Distribution.

Business Plan 163

Business Plan Forecast Balance Sheet Distribution 163

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

So starting as an LLC allows you to build your company, and even raise some early capital, while letting things develop to see if you’re really building a business that needs conventional venture capital (and then convert to a C-Corp), or if you’re building one that may instead become profitable and distribute profits to investors (stay an LLC).

Delaware 48

Delaware LLC Startup Silicon Valley 48

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2010

For entrepreneurs who want to learn about how to work with investment banks, how to position yourself to be acquired and what the IPO markets look like this is the episode to watch. You have to be selected to present and it is typically reserved for companies that have already raised early-stage capital and are well into revenue growth.

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IPO Venture Capital Private Placement Cofounder 242

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

But in today’s world, speed-to-scale entrepreneurship is what we need to improve society, transform industries, and create massive value for customers, employees, and investors. When the market conditions are right, you should blitzscale for the benefit of all stakeholders: customers, employees, investors, and society.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Agile VC

JUNE 17, 2015

My first startup job was as an early employee at PayPal, where I took a job at the end of ‘1999 and started a few months later in 2000. We were a profitable company at that point with nearly $200M annualized revenue, one of the first tech companies to IPO after the dot-com bubble.

Startup 188

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 188

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 13, 2020

The average revenue multiple is now 17x+, close to 10 times higher than during the 2008 crisis! On the IPO front, the one word that comes to mind is “supersize”. Their average employee growth in the past 12 months was north of 40% and they’ve raised $6.7 Is the sky the limit for Cloud public stocks? billion of combined funding.

Europe 71

Europe Cloud Silicon Valley 71

Tim Keane

JANUARY 12, 2010

Next, they carefully consider the range of multiples being used today to value companies being acquired or doing IPOs in the market that the business is in. So, after having built a working business model with a bottom up projection, let’s assume the five year number in this example is $91MM in revenue. times the investment.).

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Valuation Dividend Liquidation Preference 68

View from Seed

JUNE 17, 2015

My first startup job was as an early employee at PayPal, where I took a job at the end of ‘1999 and started a few months later in 2000. We were a profitable company at that point with nearly $200M annualized revenue, one of the first tech companies to IPO after the dot-com bubble.

Startup 120

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 120

online.wsj.com

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com. At its peak, in 2010, Goodmail had roughly 40 employees. Both studies counted only incorporated companies with employees. Semiconductors. 15 hrs ago.

Venture Capital 107

Venture Capital Software Review Rhode Island North Dakota 107

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Meanwhile, the rash of early liquidity and recent IPOs — unsatisfying as they were — gave liquidity to thousands of employees at large companies, and a subset of those made very real money. This time around, there has been an explosion at the early stages, and the very late pre-IPO growth stages. November 29, 2012.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93

Agile VC

JUNE 17, 2015

My first startup job was as an early employee at PayPal, where I took a job at the end of ‘1999 and started a few months later in 2000. We were a profitable company at that point with nearly $200M annualized revenue, one of the first tech companies to IPO after the dot-com bubble.

Startup 100

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 100

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

In 2014, for example, 18 IPOs raised a record-breaking $9.8 To answer these questions, we built a database of 112 Israeli companies founded between 1996 and 2013 that have met or exceeded $20 million in revenue. billion, compared to just $1.2 billion in 2013. So how do Israeli ventures scale up? Place one founder on each continent.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 3, 2012

Incorporated in 1998 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company’s network of over 100,000 globally distributed servers provides an infrastructure layer that accelerates the distribution and delivery of content, media and applications. billion in revenue, over $1 billion in gross profit and $500 million in EBITDA. Founding Akamai.

Distribution 49

Distribution Lean Massachusetts Cofounder 49

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Not even if its generating revenue. But they have no clue about how to design, make, distribute and service products that enable them to have experience, that's the company's competence. The videos are Steve explaining the company's path forward to Next employees. As you've pointed out, Jobs totally gets that.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

infochachkie.com

DECEMBER 5, 2011

At the time of its launch, the name “cisco” was also confusingly similar to SYSCO, the $20B food distribution company. Your company name will also impact your employees’ email addresses. If we had named the product BuddyHelp, we probably would have generated a comparable amount of revenue. John is a CPA and holds an M.B.A.

Naming 40

Naming Technical Review Product Product Name 40

Up and Running

APRIL 28, 2015

Slide 5: Revenue model. Having an IPO and going public is a viable option for some high-growth startups, while other businesses are more likely to be bought by larger players in your market. Try and keep your pitch deck focused with this format and you’ll tell a better story. Showing is nearly always better than telling. Partnerships.

Forecast 60

Forecast Hockey Stick Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. And when you have employees who really believe they are deserving of such, you are building a bad product. So we felt confident that removing them wouldn’t have too big an impact.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158