YoungUpstarts

MAY 24, 2019

The first post drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. At Wildcat, we recommend benchmarking your startup against the four core architectural pillars of the Traction Gap Framework: product , revenue , team and systems. What does this mean for their early stage investors?

Framework 113

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 113

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 15, 2022

Client work serves as an additional source of revenue to form new startups. This outside work provides a valuable source of revenue able to be used to fund operations. Over time, this revenue reduces the dependency on outside venture capital sources. It also provides critical domain experience in a variety of business sectors.

Incubator 188

Incubator Startup Software Developers Software Development 188

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 3, 2021

Still, you need to find some way to pull your company out of this early-stage quicksand. First, we need to address the core challenges of developing effective early-stage growth strategies for new businesses. Many new businesses have a small customer base, limited revenue, and a finite amount of funding to work with.

Early Stage 125

Early Stage PPC Retention Churn Rate 125

Eric Friedman

JULY 19, 2019

Many early stage investors look for financial models for 3+ years from founders to make an investment. Even if it’s too early, you are pre-revenue, or just at the idea stage I think its ok to hold your nose and go through the OpEx exercise. In fact, for early stage companies you are usually wildly wrong.

Early Stage 114

Early Stage Startup Framework Revenue 114

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. It always reduces risk to plan your business first. Set expectations accordingly.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 283

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. It always reduces risk to plan your business first. Set expectations accordingly.

Product Development 177

Product Development Cost Developer Product 177

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. It always reduces risk to plan your business first. Set expectations accordingly.

Intellectual Property 309

Intellectual Property Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 309

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Kevin Federline Search Engine Just saw a post - Sleep with a pop star, get your own branded search engine. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh. talking about Prodeges Search with Kevin Site - [link]. in Computer Science.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Search Engineer 150

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. It always reduces risk to plan your business first. Solicit funds from friends and family.

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

techcrunch.com

AUGUST 12, 2012

Zachary Bogue And Matt Ocko Launch Data Collective, An Early Stage Fund For Big Data Startups. Data Collective has already made 46 investments from its first fund, which it calls “comparable with other seed and early stage funds” (Ocko and Bogue wouldn’t reveal fund size.). Headphones. CrunchBase.

Early Stage 70

Early Stage San Francisco Los Angeles Southern California 70

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 27, 2022

Running a business will likely mean simultaneously juggling between different projects, especially during the early stages. After all, good digital marketing campaigns are crucial for reaching a wider audience, beating your competition, and increasing your revenue. Project planning. Web development. Leadership skills.

Startup 114

Startup Australia Web Development Forecast 114

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As an early-stage VC I love this phase. what your product & engineering thought they cared about and you adapt your offering. So with operations in four key cities and recurring revenue now firmly above $10 million per year and with 10,000+ customers we realized that we needed a proper CFO to guide our growth.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In his tenure as CEO of DataSift we have never missed a monthly revenue figure. He has grown our US operations from 1 employee (him) to a global organization of 75 employees that will finish the year with 8-digit revenues (90+% recurring) and more than 350% year-over-year growth. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

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. Money in Exchange for Control. Focus on Product Development First.

Early Stage 85

Early Stage Venture Capital Bootstrapping Pre-Money Valuation 85

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. It always reduces risk to plan your business first. Solicit funds from friends and family.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 120

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2019

In the first post , we drilled down into the often-overlooked notion of “market-engineering” and why it’s so critical. This is a key part of the market-engineering process — although strictly speaking it’s part of the go-to-product phase. As you develop your product, you must concurrently invest in market-engineering tasks.

Cleveland 150

Cleveland Framework Marketing Early Stage 150

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

As an early stage investor in the world of gaming and metaverse technology at Remagine Ventures, I find these companies have the potential to set the agenda, become the potential platforms for developers building in this space and future acquirers/consolidators of startups building the next generation of the Internet.

IP 206

IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Hopefully, by bringing on strong partners early, you will get great advice and support to minimize your overall dilution down the road. They find weak pre-seed investors or angels who are almost predatory in their early stage pricing and add no value. Experienced founders: Consumer.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

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

SoCal CTO

APRIL 18, 2012

You then make selections around aspects like Founder Status, Job Title, Headcount, Revenue, Development Stage, Capital Raised, Funding Round, etc. What I had not realized is that this had translated into escalating salaries for CTOs and VP Engineering. You can also enter salary and equity data to see where you stand.

CTO Hire 294

CTO Hire Salary Equity Los Angeles 294

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

It occurred to me that although we mentioned our new thematic approach when we raised our last fund in 2017, we haven’t really shared a broader manifesto about how we are approaching the early stage market. It’s been an interesting several years in the early stage venture eco-system, and the sands have shifted considerably.

North America 120

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 120

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

Want to Know Difference Between a CTO and a VP of Engineering? This time I thought I’d try and address engineering talent. Often I’m asked by startup CEO’s about how to best build an engineering team. The VP Engineering aspires to manage teams. Raising Venture Capital. Angel Topics. Entrepreneur DNA.

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

Rather than focus the university inward on research, Terman took the radical step of encouraging Stanford professors and graduate students to start companies applying engineering to pressing military problems. Urgency and risk-taking in a startup are integral parts of the culture, felt by 100 percent of early-stage employees.

Government 308

Government Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley North Korea 308

OnlyOnce

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

Selling from a White Board means that you are essentially working with an interested potential customer on a custom and conceptual sale; selling from PowerPoint means that you are selling tailored solutions—you’re no longer at the discovery stage. If your board asks you if you’re ready to step on the gas and scale your revenue engine (e.g.,

Revenue 62

Revenue Hiring Forecast Early Stage 62

ConversionXL

MARCH 17, 2021

And while this was a good start, a significant position of these companies were early-stage startups. After analysing our case studies and CRM, we saw that 73% of total revenue came from these two segments. Customers with the lowest revenue received automated nuturusing sequences that required significantly less effort up front.

B2B 150

B2B Sales Cycle Belgium IP 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

So if your costs are $500,000 per month and you have $350,000 per month in revenue then your net burn (500-350) is equal to $150,000. Plus, most early-stage M&A fails so this isn’t likely a good use of capital for a young company). Gross burn is the total amount of money you are spending per month.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

The functions of an early-stage board are pretty obvious and well understood: Providing introductions to customers, biz dev partners, recruits, the press, other investors, etc. Brett was formerly SVP of the Marketing Cloud at Salesforce with an enormous organization of sales, marketing, implementation, sales engineers, etc.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

I recently wrote a post about why I didn’t think early-stage startups should have COOs. Still, I’ll bet that functionally you divide areas of competence like sales & marketing, product, engineering, biz dev, etc. In summary, tons of early-stage M&A is driven by only one thing: CEO ego.

Operations 292

Operations CTO Hire Startup Early Stage 292

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 8, 2021

They want to open new offices, generate more revenue, and ultimately, secure higher profitability. . And the revenue from your existing customers alone may not be enough to cut it. . In the early stages of your business’s development, you’re going to notice dead weight. You could put together a client referral program.

Startup 127

Startup Retention Acquisition Agile 127

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2015

Organizational debt is all the people/culture compromises made to “just get it done” in the early stages of a startup. I had lunch last week with Tom, the CEO of a startup that was quickly becoming a large company – last year’s revenue was $40M, this year likely to be $80M maybe even $100 million in ad revenue.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Salary Early Stage Software Review 120

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 16, 2018

Apps popularly started out as a means for communication (call, SMS), which then evolved to a platform for content consumption in the early stages of data (news, MMS and YouTube), and finally to what we now define as demand services (food delivery, transport and e-commerce). The Need for Faster Communication. What’s next?

SMS 164

SMS Japan Asia China 164

Eric Friedman

MAY 9, 2019

In any early stage environment there are typically limited development cycles, budgets, and overall resources to get things done. In this constant struggle, I learned (definitely the hard way) that Revenue = Resources. This was in 2010 and certainly early in the life cycle of network growth and sales.

Revenue 60

Revenue Warrant Early Stage Cofounder 60

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

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 7, 2017

Longer, costlier cycles drain cash on hand while delaying the onset of crucial revenue streams. These five strategies are proven to work for early-stage companies in a variety of industries — including, perhaps, yours. They quite literally can’t afford to wait.

Cost 100

Cost Developer Small Business Administration Marketing 100

The Startup Magazine

MAY 22, 2018

Don’t let your engineers find workarounds that will be fixed again later on. Early stage. At this stage, the hiring of employees who are customer focused is paramount. You can start by tracking the quality and volume of requests coming in, together with revenue related metrics e.g

Customer 81

Customer Early Stage Churn Rate Startup 81

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. Exchanging equity for services is worth negotiating with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people. Friends and family.

Technical Review 257

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 257

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015

Working with our summer fellows recently on a “preparing a fundraising pitch” exercise, I had them define success for the next 18 months by setting milestones in three broad categories: product/engineering functionality, customer/user numbers, and, if applicable, sales (revenue) targets.

Valuation 100

Valuation Dilution Chicago Technical Review 100