Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

Because it can be hard to define or agree company objectives at an early stage I believe most people avoid them. Usually you have a catch-all bucket for “direct” or similar that often came through PR or word-of-mouth. Revenue Metrics. I like to think of revenue drivers.

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

Let’s start out with the basic functions of a tech company: 1) Engineering 2) Marketing 3) Sales 4) Business development 5) PR 6) Design 7) Product Management 8) HR 9) Operations 10) Finance Ok, that's just overwhelming. If you think about it, these things are all of the goals of another function on the list--PR.

PR 144

PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 144

View from Seed

JULY 22, 2020

Early stage companies often debate what they ought to be prioritizing in the early days. Early stage investors ask themselves a similar question. PR or partnership opportunities that may not have been available at one stage can become much more accessible once you are bigger and better known.

Early Stage 254

Early Stage Retention PR Founder 254

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies. It’s the easiest way to justify losing deals, put pressure on your to build the features they want and they always believe a competitors PR more than the reality they see inside your business. My first startup was no different. Talk personally to customers.

Sales 382

Sales Startup Technical Review Matching 382

View from Seed

JULY 24, 2015

Wayfair got to $250M revenue (7 yrs) without a very good idea which products were in supplier inventory and which weren’t. “As an early stage investor I focus on whether the founders can build something that delights 100s of millions of people” @bijan #BostonB2C — Andy Cook (@AndyGCook) July 21, 2015.

Boston 120

Boston Cofounder B2C PR 120

Up and Running

DECEMBER 16, 2014

To grow a business, most entrepreneurs know that they should be implementing PR strategies. For this webinar, we were joined by Jennefer Witter, CEO and founder of the Boreland Group, and author of the new book, “The Little Book of Big PR: 100+ Quick Tips to Get Your Small Business Noticed.” They mix it up with advertising.

Public Relations 117

Public Relations Small Business PR Entrepreneur 117

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

Hmmm, “so who runs the company on a daily basis?&# “Oh,&# he responded, “we have a COO.&# The company had sub $1 million in revenue and was burning $850k / month. One of the large parts of the burn was PR, Marketing and attending conferences. I gave one of the cheekiest responses I have given in my 2.5

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Cofounder Early Stage 286

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading. The Pocket Negotiator is very early-stage attempt to aid in the negotiating process itself. . Accompany focuses on this use case.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

VC Cafe

JULY 15, 2021

According to Statista, revenue generated from apps (paid downloads and in-app advertising) will reach $935 billion by 2023, and that doesn’t doesn’t include the many trillions of dollars transacted via apps in the last decade alone (think Amazon, Uber, games, etc). Worldwide mobile app revenues in 2014 to 2023 (in billion U.S.

Mobile 190

Mobile Social Media Distribution PR 190

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies. It’s the easiest way to justify losing deals, put pressure on your to build the features they want and they always believe a competitors PR more than the reality they see inside your business. My first startup was no different. Talk personally to customers.

Sales 316

Sales Technical Review Matching Hiring 316

OnlyOnce

MARCH 14, 2011

We all knew if the feature or function that the client was asking for was within the realm of the possible. • We were very, very focused on creating customers and revenue —We were a startup. If we drove revenue above costs, we got to take home a salary. This team worked as a team, not as individuals.

Software Review 67

Software Review Development Team Review Later Stage Technical Review 67

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

This is because excessive capital becomes toxic for an early stage company. If you really don’t want to raise another round, then prove that to me based on what really matters: Revenue. The VC focus on quick growth is not without reason. Despite the best intentions even the most principled founders fall into this trap.

Venture Capital 117

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 117

Altgate

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

The presentation was on outsourcing generally, not just software engineering and the audience was very early stage companies (some yet to be founded). But did you know that founder Markus Frind has just 3 employees for his $10MM+ revenue business? Unfortunately they will be very expensive (30-50% or more of gross revenue).

Software Review 65

Software Review Offshore Startup Boston 65

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

Understanding “The Funding Angle” I sit at enough board meetings to hear conflicting advice given to entrepreneurs about how to handle PR and announcements at startups. In stead of doing my typical big long post with 10 PR tips (like I did there), I’m going to break them up into individual (I hope more digestible) chunks.

Startup 355

Startup PR Dividend Merger 355

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

For instance, if a consultant proposes to help you with public relations, pay them a commission equivalent to the greater of a flat fee per story placed or a percentage of revenue generated from the PR coverage. Such positions include: PR, Sales, Product Development, Lead Generation, Strategic Planning, Fund Raising, etc.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

This is because excessive capital becomes toxic for an early stage company. If you really don’t want to raise another round, then prove that to me based on what really matters: Revenue. The VC focus on quick growth is not without reason. Despite the best intentions even the most principled founders fall into this trap.

Venture Capital 105

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 105

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 20, 2020

As we enter year three, we are excited to announce that both accelerator programs in Austin and Houston will run simultaneously which gives us the ability to support up to 200 early-stage startups, and help connect them to Texas’ innovation communities. WHO SHOULD APPLY MassChallenge works with early stage startups.

Texas 62

Texas Programming Houston Early Stage 62

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2022

If you suffer a security breach , if you’re going to miss a deadline, or if your company is about to deal with a massive PR incident, try to address the bad news proactively. Your company will make mistakes, especially in your early stages of growth. Address bad news proactively to build greater trust.

Affiliate 138

Affiliate Startup Reputation Leadership 138

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 8, 2011

Surely--but then I realize how difficult it is to be an early stage VC in NYC. I've never been at a company that is scaling up to $20 million in revenue, so I'm not about to tell someone how to do that. What did I do? Do I also worry about being overexposed? 4) Companies should have a balanced set of investors and advisors.

Venture Capital 110

Venture Capital PR Hiring Networking 110

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

new features need to be rolled into PR strategies and competitor analyses. - My company never became Google but at $14 million in recurring revenue and $36 million in backlog revenue we certainly had enough big clients to necessitate a very solid program management function. He focuses on early-stage technology companies.

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2010

As startup entrepreneurs we all want to work with them because having their name as reference clients makes it so much easier for marketing, PR, selling to other customers, fund raising and even recruiting. They negotiate a “master agreement&# to work with your company with some maybe minimum guarantees in terms of revenue.

Warrant 298

Warrant Dilution Startup Stock Options 298

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

There’s no reason why any company shouldn’t have 50 potential business development partners in their pipeline, maybe 100, and be actively working the phones, inboxes, and pounding the pavement to get the deals you need to get—be it for distribution, revenue, PR, or just to outflank a competitor. The latter is totally underutilized.

Early Stage 120

Early Stage Developer Technical Review Widget 120

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

But with the help of Grahams company, which specializes in creating tech systems for start-ups, Jumpstart grew to more than $50 million in revenue--enough to make it an attractive acquisition for media conglomerate Hachette Filipacchi. Arizona Bay has also blended equity payments with revenue-sharing deals. Will yours be next?

Arizona 40

Arizona Equity Iowa Venture Capital 40

ConversionXL

JUNE 25, 2021

We’ll also share when to transition to the growth stage in the product lifecycle so you can drive conversions and revenue off your momentum. Your goal here is to sustain revenue and your position in the market. Decline: New user sign-ups and revenue begins to decrease. X demos booked in introduction, X revenue in growth).

Product 96

Product Social Media Audience Software Review 96

Eric Friedman

JUNE 11, 2019

Partnership Forcing Functions can be tricky because they typically don’t involve revenue, which drives most business decisions, but there are other reasons to do the deal. Here are a few I have seen work: PR Opportunity – for the LargeCo. Typically a startup wants a POC with a LargeCo. and they move at a glacial pace.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Stock Options Early Stage Agile 68

socialmatchbox.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

These days sales, marketing and PR people seem to grow on trees. If you post up an ad to an online job board asking for someone to join your very high risk early stage startup company the odds of getting someone who decent are slim to none. What sweat equity is not good for is for people who you don’t know at all.

Part-Time VPE 41

Part-Time VPE Sweat Equity DC Washington 41

View from Seed

MARCH 22, 2016

This is for the early-stage companies — the entrepreneurs with great ideas and tireless work ethics who feel like they’ve emailed half of the country’s news outlets with nothing but the rare “thanks, but not interested” reply to show for it. This one is tricker in the pre-revenue stage. The irony hurts. Pitch late.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage San Francisco Startup CTO Hire 120

Start Up Blog

APRIL 2, 2010

If you’re planning a Corporate Escape or are an early stage entrepreneur. For a very simple reason: It’ll save you many thousands in getting your idea to market and real revenue quicker. PR – Getting on TV, radio and in newspapers (all of which I’ve done before – see [link] ). Idea validation. - Art of bootstrapping.

Bootstrapping 63

Bootstrapping Early Stage PR Social Media 63

View from Seed

JANUARY 24, 2018

But whether you are trying to build daily, habitual products for business users like Slack or InVision or trying to reach truly mass market consumers like Wayfair, Jet, or Chewy, there is someone in the Guild who has faced this challenge at the early stages of a business and at scale. Back to Top).

Operations 176

Operations Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 176

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 14, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year. This is her core market.

Bootstrapping 114

Bootstrapping Marketing Angel Investor Silicon Valley 114

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2016

From Aspiration to Hero For companies that do have that moment of success where everything seems to come together: funding, hiring, customers, PR, product releases and so forth — you have a “hero” moment where you feel invincible. Or some teams who start driving revenue paper over the fact that they aren’t acquiring customers profitably.

Churn Rate 150

Churn Rate Vesting Dilution Europe 150

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Since that date the S&P 500 is up 2.45% while Accenture stock is up 206% with revenue of $23 billion and a market cap of $32 billion. Avoid the latest fads, trends or PR announcements. Accenture opened massive operations in India & China and continued its industry dominance. The things that always differentiated Accenture?

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

This is true for early stage funding as well as venture capital funding. Furthermore, when faced with adversity only great teams can respond to competitors, markets, funding environments, staff departures, PR disasters and the like. Early Stage. Having too many co-founders will only lead to your eventual dilution.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Far more common is a need to acquire customers through a series of steps like SEO, SEM, PR, Social Marketing, direct sales, channel sales, etc. It appears that LTV should be about 3 x CAC for a viable SaaS or other form of recurring revenue model. For more on the topic of Viral Growth, refer to my blog post on that topic here.)

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

Scalable Startup

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

San Francisco, over 50 universities and trillions of dollars in revenue. Via Stanford, Berkeley, Facebook, Google, recruiting Harvard and MIT undergrads, their wonderful PR machine, advertising free meals, free car washes, free dry cleaning, free day care. It has spread way beyond to the east bay. 150,000 salary right out of college.

Silicon Valley 22

Silicon Valley San Francisco Angel Investor Hawaii 22

Transformify

AUGUST 27, 2017

However, you can’t utilize their time as you are still at an early stage. A startup needs marketing, business development, branding, PR, IT, and a myriad of other experts as there is no single answer to the question ‘’How to start a business and do it right?’’ Hire full-time employees.

Hiring 64

Hiring Software Review Burn Rate Startup 64

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74