YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015

What’s critical for entrepreneurs to understand is that valuations for startups do not increase at a linear rate; they increase geometrically based on achieving the right milestones. The best entrepreneurs raise enough money to achieve a set of interim milestones and then raise capital again at a significantly increased valuation.

Valuation 100

Valuation Dilution Chicago Technical Review 100

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

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Max entered Stanford in the fall of 2010 as a freshman, took as many of the engineering entrepreneurship classes as he could and independent study with me. (He Max and his partners interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. longer to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of 2 and they are 2.3x

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

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. While early-stage companies have all of their engineers working on product innovation, companies that want to scale realize that you also have to build systems to help with organizational scaling.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

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

Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

These lost startups land higher valuations, have larger teams, outsource more product development and spend more money on customer acquisition than their peers. Until you have product-market fit, hire builders: engineers, designers, and growth and product people. Honestly, we don’t know.”? Be trigger shy about hiring.

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

Do you work as a civil engineer on water projects and have great access to wealthy project developers? Make sure these people understand the nature of early-stage angel investing. I think it stands for those people who have money but not the sophistication to understand the world of early-stage tech funding.

Silicon Valley 291

Silicon Valley Ireland Technical Review Valuation 291

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2012

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

Technical Review 257

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 257

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. While he kept bringing the conversation back to their big valuation I tried to steer the conversation back to how they were going to deal with: training the influx of new hires – in both culture and job specific tasks.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Salary Early Stage Software Review 120

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

Yes, via conversion rights at a valuation cap. Yes, via conversion rights at a valuation cap. Seed-stage compatible: Like traditional equity VC investors, Flexible VCs accomodate early-stage investment risk within their portfolios better than a traditional RBI funder. Flexible VC: Compensation-based.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 16, 2012

As search engines get smarter and start working in more relevant social influence paramaters (+1′s, Facebook Likes, Klout , etc.), While it’s still early-stage, I’m excited to continue following this space. Valuations Aren’t Going Away. Derek Shanahan , Foodtree. Social Influence.

API 157

API Social Media Mobile Valuation 157

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

My colleagues Sebastian Soler , Steven Greenberg and I recently launched a new online community, PEVCTech.com , exclusively for PE/VC investors; engineers who work at PE/VC funds; and other technologists who specialize in working on this problem. The Pocket Negotiator is very early-stage attempt to aid in the negotiating process itself. .

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Version One Ventures

DECEMBER 14, 2016

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. This can set up a perfect storm if early-stage companies don’t manage their expectations and reality properly.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Early Stage Portfolio Valuation 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. Poorly calculated LTVs can become BVs (bankruptcy values).

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2011

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

Technical Review 233

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Venture Capital 233

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

The key reason for the explosion in capital flowing into the industry, and therefore the large increase in practitioners, had nothing to do with 1970’s performance, early stage investing, or technology. Some were Silicon Valley early stage companies, such as Apple, Quantum, and Masstor Systems.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

Gust

JUNE 17, 2012

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

Technical Review 164

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 164

www.entrepreneur.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

When you're getting started, sweat equity is often a critical component of your negotiating leverage with co-founders, early stage employees and others who aren't paid market wages to help you grow your business. Sweat equity is just one component of early-stage valuation.

Sweat Equity 55

Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. One of the key benefits of doing this early on is that when it comes time to raise that next round, the people you’ll need the most help from are already involved and engaged. This may seem counterintuitive, even even a pain in the ass.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 1, 2010

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

Technical Review 149

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Venture Capital 149

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Early stage startups have to survive one day at a time and are often presented with limited choices of the moment that enable them to continue. At early stages you probably don’t have an assembly line and can’t clearly define any particular job. Keep the valuations consistent with company progress.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 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

David Teten

DECEMBER 12, 2017

As a globally focused LP in early stage VC funds, we at Blue Future Partners have observed a growing trend of firms investing substantially in software tools, whether developing proprietary solutions or adopting off the shelf tools. But what tools are they using themselves to automate their own processes?

Early Stage 60

Early Stage Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 60

Hippoland

JULY 24, 2016

Valuation is a nebulous topic amongst early stage startups, so I thought I’d really spell it out in detail. In short: Valuations for seed stage companies are fairly arbitrary and driven solely by supply and demand. Your startup’s valuation is not based on a proforma of your revenue.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Valuation Vertical Demand 48

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

For the past 5 years or so Google, Facebook and a handful of tech industry giants have been quietly buying scores of early-stage startups for their talent. Many buying companies price these deals on the basis of $1 million per engineer on the team for an early-stage deal. has now employed the same strategy.

Liquidation Preference 357

Liquidation Preference Early Stage Retention Lock-up Period 357

techcrunch.com

APRIL 26, 2013

In December, AngelList , a service that matches early-stage startups with investors, debuted the ability to allow accredited investors to actually invest in startups on the platform with as little as $1,000. No wonder the platform is rumored to be raising a round at a $150 million valuation or more. → Learn More.

SEC 61

SEC Accredited Investor San Diego New York City 61

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 30, 2017

Valuations are always astronomical for other companies (i.e., If your venture continually has too little of it, you either are spending too much time looking for it, your valuation is stupid, your management team is inept, your venture is not worthy, or more likely all of the above. There is lots of it available in the market.

Warrant 179

Warrant Valuation Metrics Startup 179

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2015

In the old days VCs funded off of a “pre-money” valuation. If you add the pre-money valuation (let’s say $8 million) to the amount of money you’re raising (let’s say $2 million) you get the post-money valuation. So how DOES a VC think about financings at early stages?

Pre-Money Valuation 150

Pre-Money Valuation Option Pool Post-Money Valuation Dilution 150

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

However after Sequoia and Ron Conway announced their investment in YC in 2009 , and after YC alumni DropBox and AirBnb raised capital on billion-dollar valuations in 2010-11, the program quickly became the gold standard among early-stage startup incubators. and no, we didn’t.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

Why not go further, develop more valuation, customer experience, and really, deeply validate the business? As far as customer acquisition is concerned, we discussed, again the power of organic search engine optimization. So, in Gio's situation, it is clear to me that he is able to get customers to buy.

Cloud 115

Cloud Silicon Valley Incubator Finance 115

Austin Startup

JUNE 27, 2017

Valuations in startups increased dramatically during the Dot Com boom and then both valuations and the availability of investment capital nationally collapsed in 2001 with the Dot Com bust and 9/11. Entrepreneurs with early stage companies typically look for local funding before going out of region to pursue other funding sources.

Venture Capital 54

Venture Capital Austin Texas Private Equity 54

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

From the public markets to the private markets, everyone is feeling valuations and optimism contract. In other words, while lots of things floated up with increasing frothiness they are going to be harder to drive down quickly the same way valuations and invested capital has collapsed in the last three months.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage San Francisco Startup Valuation 120

Berkonomics

MARCH 21, 2019

Email readers, continue here…] Most VC’s look for a 10x opportunity – that is – a ten times increase in the valuation from investment to liquidity event. It is also a factor that early stage investors don’t want a controlling interest in your company. Here’s a valuation example for you based on amount to be raised.

Hockey Stick 63

Hockey Stick Liquidity Event Valuation Balance Sheet 63

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 20, 2019

There is additional encouraging news for aspiring entrepreneurs on many fronts, just in case you are thinking about joining the existing ranks: Valuations of successful startups have hit an all-time high. Funding for early-stage startups is more available than ever. The median deal size is back over $100 million.

North America 320

North America Incubator Initial Public Offering Exit Strategy 320

Up and Running

JUNE 14, 2017

Early stage idea validation can be accomplished without building an application. No matter how complex the idea, there is always a way to serve customers manually behind the scenes or by re-engineering existing tools to come up with the closest experience of our future scalable product.

Technical Review 96

Technical Review Distribution Redemption Demand 96

Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

Now as SVP of Engineering at Box, he’s had the chance to scale their engineering team and help take the cloud collaboration company public. Earlier this month, I was at an event where Sam mentioned he writes a letter to his Box engineering team every Sunday. What do you look for in a “Box engineer?”

Engineer 48

Engineer Liquidation Preference AJAX IPO 48