Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” They’re putting money into web services/business – most without early revenue. End of theory.&#

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Austin Startup

MARCH 15, 2017

By the time Silicon Valley white privilege culture, tech magazines that promote only white faces, Ethereum/Bitcoin fanboys, sellout black tech wannabees and globalists promoting their blockchain consortium get a hold of this article, it’s already too late and the game already ended a while ago.

Technical Review 54

Technical Review Silicon Valley Software Review XML 54

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

LPs have been feeling great about venture capital due to holding valuable paper positions in companies like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Dropbox, all of which they feel confident will drive large cash distributions in the future. Without some cash distributions, eventually LPs will become stretched.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital LP Silicon Valley Marketing 150

Hippoland

JULY 6, 2018

From that perspective, things have been mostly rosy in the Silicon Valley for startups! except for 2008-2009, which is another story) But, I think we’re in trouble, Silicon Valley. This is probably just after the series A in my opinion – where you’re doing perhaps $300k-$1m per month in revenue.

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley San Francisco Portugal Ireland 48

Hippoland

JULY 6, 2018

From that perspective, things have been mostly rosy in the Silicon Valley for startups! except for 2008-2009, which is another story) But, I think we’re in trouble, Silicon Valley. This is probably just after the series A in my opinion – where you’re doing perhaps $300k-$1m per month in revenue.

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley San Francisco Portugal Ireland 48

David Teten

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Andreas Rothe, CFO, Fragomen , observed, “One of the reasons for a budget is to align the various resources of the firm to projected revenues from clients and company objectives. Peter Nesbitt, VP of Finance at Teampay , said, “Forecasting is exceptionally challenging in practice, especially as end users drive an era of distributed spending.

Agile 60

Agile Management Forecast Silicon Valley 60

The Next Web

OCTOBER 26, 2013

On the enterprise side of our business, we’ve seen the increasing demand from traditional large corporate buyers looking for ways to manage a more distribute workforce,” Cooper said. “In Enterprise clients for whom Private Workplace was introduced are a minority at oDesk, but this minority brings the bigger part of the revenues.

Russia 151

Russia Ukraine Latvia Lithuania 151

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. There was now a public market for companies with no revenue, no profit and big claims.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 9, 2011

And the third was a discussion on Silicon Valley: The Next Decade. We went through a set of lead generation mechanisms and discussed the distribution of roles and responsibilities between the company and the channel partner. Silicon Valley: The Next Decade. Silicon Valley photo by Revol Web.

Silicon Valley 113

Silicon Valley New Jersey Entrepreneur Massachusetts 113

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

How They Make Money: Majority of Kayak’s revenue actually comes from advertising on their site (55%), not lead generation or referral fees to travel suppliers as you might think (more on this below). Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $170 million. Revenue growth: 51% YoY (2010), 1% YoY (2009), 131% YoY (2008).

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

The entrepreneur who founded and grew the largest startup in the world to $10 billion in revenue and got fired is someone you have probably never heard of. But the spirit of Billy Durant would rise again in what would become Silicon Valley. A version of this article appeared in the Harvard Business Review.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Where Airbnb recognized the value in another platform, Dropbox doubled down on the strength of its product as a distribution channel. Once you’ve established your ideal customer, you can better focus your growth hacker marketing efforts to improve revenue and ROI. This helped grow revenue by 637%. The result? Image source.

Retention 113

Retention Marketing Acquisition Channel 113

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 25, 2011

What excited me was that they had an immensely talented team that understood how to produce & distribute low-cost videos, initially via YouTube. They know this model of YouTube production & distribution better than anybody else that I’ve met in my 5 years in Los Angeles. Sound familiar?

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Los Angeles Distribution Internet 291

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

customers aren’t buying it, the cost of distribution is too high, etc.) Was the sales revenue model based on actually testing the hypotheses outside the building? Greg Boutin Founder, Growthroute Ventures, [link] Reply TO REVENUE » Talking on Techie-Biz Divide at Communitech Guelph on Sept. The products sold themselves.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Distributed Ledgers The current stagnation with Ethereum to Hyperledger to Corda and everyone else pretending they have a distributed ledger solution for fintech is distributed ledgers actually transcend the concept of financial technology.

Technical Review 54

Technical Review Technology Artificial Inteligence Software Review 54

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 17, 2011

In Silicon Valley, we've had access to the tribal knowledge, but no one has tried to capture it, derive a methodology out of it, and package it in a way that entrepreneurs around the world can benefit from this knowledge and expertise. With that, let's look at the two entrepreneurs who pitched today from Costa Rica.

Costa Rica 114

Costa Rica America Silicon Valley Entrepreneur 114

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

In Silicon Valley, Technology Talent Gap Threatens G.O.P. Special Report: Silicon Valley’s dirty secret – age bias | Reuters – [link]. How PRWeb Helps Distribute Crap Into Google & News Sites – [link]. Red All Over: Newspaper Revenues Fall In Q3 – [link].

Social Media 100

Social Media Small Business Central African Republic Design 100

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

For the deputy secretary, such a dialogue in Silicon Valley is not a matter of charity, but necessity. At the same time, it’s a chance to expose some career State Department employees to Silicon Valley thinking. They tested this updated MVP with refugees and made some surprising discoveries.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

For the deputy secretary, such a dialogue in Silicon Valley is not a matter of charity, but necessity. At the same time, it’s a chance to expose some career State Department employees to Silicon Valley thinking. They tested this updated MVP with refugees and made some surprising discoveries.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

While developers can now spin up applications faster than ever before, one of the downsides is the complexity of managing these distributed applications and technologies. Year of HQ2 and Distributed Teams: It was a banner year for non-Silicon Valley cities as NYC and Northern Virginia were selected as Amazon’s HQ2.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

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. Note that these are “gross” revenue numbers. Total raised: $29.5mm.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 15, 2017

What seems to be the best way to create customers and revenue may result in a business model that is out of vogue with the investment world and shortchanges you on enterprise valuation. If you bill for your technology services on a percentage of ad spend, you are guaranteed to look like an agency that deserves a revenue multiple of 1–2X.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Nevada Silicon Valley 48

Transformify

APRIL 21, 2017

We have arguably the largest distributed workforce in the world. We really wanted to build a network of top tier talent, similar to the caliber of talent that’s working in-house at top Silicon Valley tech companies. That’s Toptal in a nutshell -- the best talent, from all over the world, accessible and ready to work.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Silicon Valley Software Review Cofounder 40

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. What’s been missing from regions outside of Silicon Valley is a “playbook.” With 317 million people the U.S. It doesn’t. Born Global or Die Local.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 26, 2020

…suddenly, nearly all technical jobs are remote-jobs, all dev-teams are distributed teams, and virtually all hiring is remote hiring. Fully remote distributed companies used to be a rarity. In an instant, remote work went from a small Silicon Valley trend to a ubiquitous element of daily life. E – Execution.

Silicon Valley 198

Silicon Valley Distribution Engineer Technical Review 198

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 1, 2011

The company has distribution through about 50 retailers in Chennai, and is looking for ways to market their product through online channels. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant, she writes the blog Sramana Mitra On Strategy , and is author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series and Vision India 2020.

India 119

India Guerilla Entrepreneur New Zealand 119

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. Worry about the sales results. Order Here.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Growthink Blog

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

revenues from internet video services spanning user-generated content to television shows and movies will exceed $7 billion this year. In 1999, Lee joined the Silicon Valley new media content contingent as an Internet-company CEO, and has since founded two innovative Los Angeles media companies. How about Internet Video?

Los Angeles 85

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Technical Review Distribution 85

Lightspeed Venture Partners

OCTOBER 7, 2012

I’ve been writing up reviews of this season’s Shark Tank pitches from a silicon valley VCs perspective. He had been at it for 6 months and had no sales or distribution lined up yet. They won a design award at a trade show, but have no revenue and no orders. BACK 9 DIPS.

Technical Review 110

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 110

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 6, 2021

Although the media has been full of inspiring stories about start-ups in Silicon Valley, the reality is that the rate at which Americans have been starting companies has been in decline for a long time. Without them, you cannot earn any revenue. That changed with the pandemic. This idea extends to the people you work with.

Limited Liability Company 163

Limited Liability Company Silicon Valley Business Model Stock Options 163

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. Carpe Diem. Breathtaking Scale.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Gust

OCTOBER 16, 2012

This summer I conducted our third annual survey of the pre-money valuation of pre-revenue companies recently funded by angel groups in North America. For the first time, we asked for data from specific business sectors, as follows: All pre-revenue deals. Pre-revenue life Science, biotech and medical device deals. Number: 30.

Angel Groups 169

Angel Groups Valuation Pre-Money Valuation North Dakota 169

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. At Stanford, Ann Miura-Ko and I have been working on a simplified Silicon Valley version of this model. What’s the distribution channel. When revenue, users, traffic, etc.,

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. VC’s invested in things that ran on electrons: hardware, software and silicon. But these VC’s aren’t Lean because they fund startups with web-based distribution models. Here’s why. Electron-based Venture Capital.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

YouTube takes too high of a revenue split (45% vs. 30% that Apple and many other distribution companies take – FWIW, YouTube argues this is because their costs are much higher since they host and stream the video). YouTube is a distribution and marketing channel like any other. You can’t build a brand on YouTube.

SEM 150

SEM Los Angeles Silicon Valley Acquisition 150

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

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

One is explaining the world as it used to work: the importance of gatekeepers, the scarcity implied by limited distribution, and the resulting quality bar that the industry is so proud of. Mostly it is the time and expense required to create the means of distribution for that industry. It’s just taking some longer than others.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113