VC Adventure

MAY 5, 2022

I’m observing that IRR is a metric that is becoming an increasing focus in venture, replacing fund return multiple as the key metric of success. I understand the draw of IRR, and – as a fund draws to a close – there’s no question it’s an important metric. management fee). Recycling hurts IRR.

IRR 116

IRR Metrics Valuation LP 116

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 25, 2023

8- Property management Photo Credit: Jaden Oh Property management is a good way to make money, especially if you already know how to run a business or are good at making software for property management. It's just that many homeowners in this city don't have the time to manage multiple properties.

Software Review 118

Software Review Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur 118

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. The market for our product was global, and we had unique advantages in terms of our product and how we distributed it to customers. If the companies in their portfolio don’t have much in common with yours, it’s usually better to look elsewhere. Tailor your pitch deck.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Occam's Razor

JULY 24, 2018

work (collection, processing, reporting, analysis), processes, org structure, governance models, last-mile gaps , metrics ladders of awesomeness , and… so… much… more. Remember, tools, work, processes, org structure, governance models, last-mile gaps, metrics ladders of awesomeness, and… so… much… more. The Implications of Complexity.

Analytics 93

Analytics Framework Metrics Algorithm 93

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

As two fund managers employing Flexible VC, we think it is a healthy addition to the ecosystem and will yield more predictable and stable healthy returns for investors. Too often, investment structures force the management team to make decisions between misaligned growth and investment (return) objectives. Flexible VC 102: Variations.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

To shed some light, I talked with kaChing , a destination that enables individual investors to find outstanding money managers to manage their money. kaChing launched a virtual portfolio management game on Facebook in January 2008 and a similar version shortly thereafter on kaChing.com. The result?

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

What metrics do we use to see if we learned enough in Customer Discovery ? I gave my boilerplate answer, “I’m a product guy and I tend to invest and look at deals that have measurable revenue metrics. Dave McClure has some great metrics…” It was an honest but vaguely unsatisfying answer. It’s an impressive portfolio.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

dominated by a few very large incumbents who control much of the distribution or are you going into a market that is “fragmented” where nobody controls the industry. The metrics were good but we wondered how much better they would be when we expanded our product. ” Are you going into an industry (say, music?)

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Mucker Lab

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Normal distributions do not exist; standard deviations are meaningless. As a result, any public market downturn will immediately impact unrealized returns of the fund they are managing due to the late and growth stage companies in their portfolio. Betting on the wrong horse.

Harvest 60

Harvest Vertical IPO Early Stage 60

Genuine VC

JULY 19, 2010

Portfolio construction favors early-round capital allocation vs. company life-cycle allocation. These results are based on actual usage of product by early users, with resulting operating metrics which more than just validate a hypothesis. Initial investment in a company is among the first non-founder capital raised.

Seed Stage 175

Seed Stage Technical Review Dilution Offshore 175

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 2, 2013

The stories and examples will hopefully help you intelligently approach your own data in these reports and quickly find insights you can action / share with your management team. Like everything in life, you want a balanced portfolio (left). On top of the graph click on Select A Metric and choose Goal Conversion Rate.

Analytics 159

Analytics Search Campaign eCommerce 159

View from Seed

DECEMBER 11, 2019

But even at the Partner-level, the amount of transition in Venture Capital is much more than you perhaps would expect… especially in a business which should have a long term orientation with portfolio investment-hold periods and Partnerships lasting more than a decade. Venture is a field with a power-law distribution of outcomes.

Venture Capital 204

Venture Capital Cap Table Partner LP 204

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Across our portfolio and in my own entrepreneurial experience, I have seen three main sales models work successfully in scaling B2B sales: 1) Enterprise; 2) Telephone; and 3) Developer-driven. To that point, a well-run telesales operation will be super metrics-driven. 3) Developer Driven Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

However, in private markets, there is more room to optimize across all 11 steps of the investing process: firm management , marketing, fundraising , origination , manage relationships, due diligence, negotiation, monitoring, portfolio acceleration , reporting, and. 1) Manage the firm . This is harder than it sounds.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 26, 2022

What guidance for your portfolio companies? I think every company’s portfolio is different, so they’re all different sizes, different stages, different geographies, different cash positions, and different market leadership positions. . I will say the one thing we tell all our portfolio companies is to get fit and lean in.

Partner 132

Partner Cofounder Retention Acquisition 132

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 19, 2015

Below are some key metrics to track when managing accounts receivable and planning to receive payments on invoices: Days Sales Outstanding (DSO). Your customers make up your portfolio of business. With a portfolio, comes credit risk. Sometimes the reactive approach to managing accounts receivable just doesn’t cut it.

Metrics 100

Metrics Software Review Portfolio Software Developers 100

ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

Honeywell CEO Dave Cote also cautions against shortsightedness during economic downturns: I’ve been a leader during three recessions and I’ve never heard a management team talk about how the choices they make during a downturn will affect performance during a recovery. Managing the means of production to fit the circumstances.

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

While a flood of new VCs came into existence during the late 90’s internet boom, many had difficulty raising new funds after the crashes of 2000-2001 and 2008 , and as a result significantly fewer fund managers exist now compared to a decade ago. And of course then there is our own fund, 500 Startups.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Occam's Razor

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

Remember: Engagement is not a metric, its an excuse. ]. The ideal metrics for this desired outcome are Visitor Loyalty & Visitor Recency. You can accomplish these goals: ~ Get an optimal understanding of what kind of people you ended up attracting to your website (look at primary purpose & distribution). Share of Search.

Campaign 128

Campaign Analytics Metrics Search 128

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Have an effective distribution strategy. Even though he was pursued by a detective, he managed to stay ahead every time because the detective didn’t follow his pattern of thinking. All these metrics show whether a website you’re analyzing is following a shifty link building strategy or not. Create high-quality content.

SEO 157

SEO Metrics Acquisition Email 157

Occam's Razor

OCTOBER 21, 2013

The reason I love the above view is that for each channel, I'm able to present our management team a simple, yet powerful, understanding of the contribution of our marketing channels – including search. So from the perspective of reporting organic search performance to senior management, you are all set.

Search 154

Search SEO Analytics Engineer 154

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. My own metric is that you need experience >= 1.5 What Do VC’s Do? The boom in Internet startups would last 4½ years until it came crashing down to earth in March 2000.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Start Up Blog

AUGUST 15, 2019

Sorry about that Snow & Weather Channels… Thanks for the stats AFL… Introducing the Google travel agency… Instagram influencers lose their ‘ influence ‘: The latest change to remove the likes count on Instagram has hurt so called influences who get paid on this metric. How to manage the Platform Predicament?

Channel 48

Channel Portfolio Metrics Search 48

www.readwriteweb.com

MARCH 7, 2011

The opposite approach of index investing is an actively managed or concentrated investing approach. alone and would rather take time to find companies that he can actively manage and leverage his competitive advantage with. Most indices are cap-weighted - more in line with a concentrated portfolio (i.e.

Technical Review 50

Technical Review Due Diligence Startup Angel Investor 50

Hunter Walker

MAY 18, 2015

They provide assistance to Californians in building a vibrant, successful and inclusive society, distributing more than $1.5b Anne Dinneen: Nothing has contributed more to the growth of the Irvine endowment over the years than our venture portfolio. And what leads to adding or removing a fund from Irvine’s portfolio?

LP 48

LP Portfolio Early Stage Institutional Investors 48

Haystack

DECEMBER 26, 2018

Home prices are moving in lock-step with higher salaries, to the point where many investors are hunting for deals outside the area, where teams are now starting off distributed or with a plurality of offices to locate some functions outside of the Bay Area costly square footage.

IPO 76

IPO Private Equity Valuation Acquisition 76

Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

Management has the wrong pedigree, is geographically undesirable, competes in the wrong industry, and/or has a business model that lacks "scalability credibility" with the venture community. It is driven by the following: • The Best Metric for the Health of a Company is Cash Flow. There are a lot of dark, hard days.

Angel Investor 112

Angel Investor Venture Capital Sweat Equity Cram Down 112

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 12, 2013

But how do we distribute credit for the conversions across all those channels? The outcome in either scenario is a restructuring of the organization that is exquisitely geared towards taking advantage of portfolio optimization. At this point you should educate your management team on this specificity. " So on, and so forth.

Channel 161

Channel Analytics Campaign Conversion 161

K9 Ventures

APRIL 9, 2014

Most of these funds are <$100M, with the majority of them being clustered around the $40M mark (that’s the point where the fund economics start to work in terms of management fee and ability to take a meaningful stake in portfolio companies). Top engineering talent today has a bimodal distribution.

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 25, 2018

The fattest part of the market often demands more education, more handholding, more social proof through case studies & references, and a relationship with a salesperson or account manager to feel comfortable with the purchase. Create and distribute content to those segments. An email manager adds it to a newsletter.

Demand 132

Demand Vertical Campaign Channel 132

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 9, 2016

Along the way I'll share some of my favourite metrics and analytics best practices that should accelerate your path to becoming a true Analysis Ninja. At this point you'll be a little confused about some metric or the other. Go, read one of the best pages in the Analytics help center: Understanding Dimensions and Metrics.

Analytics 60

Analytics Metrics eCommerce PPC 60

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

Where in your area will you find land or a building with the right zoning, size, facilities, and access for bringing in raw materials, attracting customers, and/or shipping out finished beer for distribution? How wide do you want to grow production and distribution, or do you want to focus on selling over your own bar?

Oregon 60

Oregon Jordan SBA Cofounder 60

Occam's Razor

MAY 19, 2014

But the problem is that single golden metrics hide valuable insights and, more often than not, drive bad behavior. Here's my proposal: If you are pushed to have a single golden metric, give it a partner. The BFF metric you find should not be one that is very far away. So, great metric. Honestly, who can blame them.

Metrics 159

Metrics Analytics SEC Acquisition 159

Occam's Razor

AUGUST 13, 2012

That means: All of these metrics are off. Start with models like Time Decay and Position Based to understand what the conversion portfolio might look like (last two columns above) and create hypotheses about what a better budget allocation might look like. Rinse and repeat. Pretty cool right?

Analytics 124

Analytics Channel Metrics Web 124

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Most board meetings are “update meetings” where management downloads its status to a group of investors. This is hardly ideal and some simple changes could help management avoid both issues. I’d want to maximize the amount of time these outsiders could spar with management on the key issues in my business.

Advisory Board 337

Advisory Board Valuation Stock Options Seed Money 337

Up and Running

MAY 15, 2019

These products will be distributed to remote yet extremely viable areas, where the market is appreciative of readily-available, good-quality brew. With this money, they plan to expand its distribution to selected metro areas within the state of Oregon. Initial plans are to produce three main lines of beer. Martin Cove Brewing Company.

Oregon 24

Oregon Jordan Software Review Distribution 24

VC Cafe

AUGUST 17, 2023

The process taught me the value of differentiation, client relationships, time management, and personal responsibility. Remagine continued to invest in AI (represented in about half of their portfolio companies ) and established itself as the prominent VC investing in Israeli genAI.

Generative AI 78

Generative AI Venture Capital ChatGPT 78