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ESADE Business School Commencement Speech

Steve Blank

Metrics like Return on Net Assets, Return on Capital and Internal Rate of Return are the guiding stars of the board and CEO. As Harvard professor Clayton Christensen noted, these efficiency metrics provided wise guidance for times when capital was scarce and raising money was hard. This is the kind most of us are familiar with.

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Why Companies are Not Startups

Steve Blank

But now, as the business model is repeatable and scalable, most employees take the business model as a given, and instead focus on the execution of the model – what is it they are supposed to do every day when they come to work. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

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Intel Disrupted: Why large companies find it difficult to innovate, and what they can do about it

Steve Blank

As a consequence, corporations used metrics like return on net assets (RONA), return on capital deployed, and internal rate of return (IRR) to measure efficiency. These metrics make it difficult for a company that wants to invest in long-term innovation.

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Term-sheets and Valuations: Thinking about Negotiations - Startups.

Tim Keane

If you look at the spreadsheet, you will see that the “Required Rate of Return” is expressed as an IRR.   Internal Rates of Return naturally compound, so a 50% IRR is 7.59   (If you plug in an IRR of 58.5%   Internal Rates of Return naturally compound, so a 50% IRR is 7.59 times at 5 years and 11.39

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Current Startup Market Emotional Biases

Feld Thoughts

Also, they have a strong belief that any sign of weakness (such as a down round) will have a catastrophic impact on their culture, hiring process, and ability to retain employees. Anything that hints of a down round brings questions about the success metrics that have already been “booked.” Long term is not a year.

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On the Road to Recap:

abovethecrowd.com

All Unicorn participants — founders, company employees, venture investors and their limited partners (LPs) — are seeing their fortunes put at risk from the very nature of the Unicorn phenomenon itself. Anything that hints of a down round brings questions about the success metrics that have already been “booked.”

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