Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

At least later stage investors. This could have an impact on later-stage valuations. The one thing that has become clear to me over the last couple of months is the skepticism that many late-stage VCs (and LPs) have had about late-stage valuations. I have to assume other investors feel the way I do.

Stock 150

Stock Finance Marketing Valuation 150

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 22, 2014

In other words, how much of the business is financed with equity (owner’s money) or debt (borrowed money). Marketing plans that worked during the early life cycle of your business might have to change during later stages based on a number of variables, such as the economy, your competition, and new products or services.

CPA 160

CPA Technical Review Later Stage Equity 160

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

When you are raising a large, later-stage round given by this time you’ve likely got a fairly large business to run. Your skills are much appreciated later in our business. I would gladly work with you on a $50 million late-stage, complex financing. International money.

Early Stage 361

Early Stage Deal Flow Investment Bankers Technical Review 361

Genuine VC

NOVEMBER 12, 2012

Dharmesh Shah had a great post up last week about the lessons learned from raising a mezzanine round of financing. However, there was one gem of a small section in there with a more widely acceptable takeaway: “It turns out that the terms from your Series A are most often cut and pasted into your later round deals.

Finance 128

Finance Mezzanine Valuation Seed Stage 128

thebarefootvc

JANUARY 27, 2014

I think that later stage valuations are frothy (for reasons I explain below) while earlier stage valuations are starting to stabilize from previous highs (with the exception of the superstar serial entrepreneur) - turns out scaling in a sea of competition (both startup and entrenched) is not so easy. The answer is yes and yes.

Technical Review 63

Technical Review Valuation Venture Capital Investment Bankers 63

VC Adventure

AUGUST 15, 2018

These reports are generally quite lengthy and not always particularly comprehensible to non-finance professionals. A number of factors go into the calculation and I assumed that the FMV of common as a % of preferred would vary both by company stage and by the time between the valuation and the last financing round. I was wrong.

Valuation 48

Valuation Common Stock Cap Table Software Review 48

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. I would say the norm for many early-stage companies is somewhere between 6-10 in-person meetings per year. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

When you are raising a large, later-stage round given by this time you’ve likely got a fairly large business to run. Your skills are much appreciated later in our business. I would gladly work with you on a $50 million late-stage, complex financing. International money.

Deal Flow 347

Deal Flow Early Stage Investment Bankers Technical Review 347

View from Seed

JUNE 7, 2016

Just to discuss a few benefits more in-depth… First and foremost, getting into a regular cadence readies the company to think and operate more professionally for later rounds of financing. She wanted to receive feedback early and get into the practice in anticipation of later rounds and later-stage problems and opportunities.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Founder Seed Capital Institutional Investors 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2021

We’ve had two companies where we had to bridge finance them several times before they eventually IPO’d We had a portfolio company turn-down a $350 million acquisition because they wanted at least $400 million. Consider: When GOAT started it was a restaurant reservation booking app called GrubWithUs … it’s now worth $3.7

Bankruptcy 294

Bankruptcy Bridge Financing Portfolio Angel Investor 294

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 19, 2017

Venture capital fundraising can be divided into three stages: seed, early stage, and later stage. According to the same report by KPMG, the median deal size is the largest for later-stage funding, at $26 million. The constant innovation thus drives development in technology throughout the region.

Venture Capital 196

Venture Capital Asia Artificial Inteligence Later Stage 196

VC Adventure

MARCH 17, 2022

With the markets down significantly, financings (at least at the later stages) slowing down, and inflation and interest rates on the rise, perhaps now is a good time to talk about your burn rate. Hopefully, you took advantage of the robust financing markets of the past few years to put some money on your balance sheet.

Balance Sheet 121

Balance Sheet Burn Rate Valuation Metrics 121

David Teten

MAY 9, 2012

We are in the midst of two great disruptions to American business: the internet’s ongoing disruption of most traditional industries: finance, healthcare, retail, finance, fashion, etc. Founded in 1970, NAIC firms invest in venture (early stage/later stage) and private equity (growth/buyout/mezzanine/distressed/secondary funds).

Venture Capital 154

Venture Capital Programming Accredited Investor New York 154

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

David's firm most recently participated in the $77 million second round financing of SoFi, a one year old startup focusing on student loans. I suppose, more specifically, the bubble ended in the last two weeks of September--right after this financing. The other entrepreneur quoted in the story is from a guy pitching a Pinterest clone.

Venture Capital 114

Venture Capital Marketing Term Sheet Software Review 114

Gust

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

How to finance a new seed-stage startup? ” Ressi in particular seems to be passionate about removing the “debt” component from convertible debt seed financing transactions. .” I won’t rehash all of the customary convertible note financing deal terms and points of negotiation here. (For

Finance 134

Finance Convertible Security Equity Seed Stage 134

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

We both agree that the later-stage valuations are being driven up to a point that feels irrationally priced [he uses b-round SaaS valuations as an example and I am willing to be even more broad based]. He said that a16z prefers to invest earlier stage in these types of businesses. And we ended.

Valuation 309

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Later Stage Non-Compete 309

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 10, 2014

So – I’ll start with that – this is not a prediction, rather it’s a hypothesis, which is as long as there isn’t a cataclysmic macro event, Q115 financing activity is going to be insane. The number of large, “later stage” financings are remarkable – both in size and velocity.

Later Stage 142

Later Stage Syndicate Syndication Portfolio 142

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

The second wave of technology investors were Chinese banks, who provided the majority of the later stage investments in the Torch Program. By 1991, 70% of the Torch funded startups were getting bank financing for expansion and later stages of the new ventures, with local governments acting as guarantors.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 271

View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

It seemed like every other TechCrunch post was announcing a startups’s new seed financing round. Seed stage companies just aren’t announcing their rounds anymore. The biggest challenge for most seed stage startups isn’t that the world is going to be paying too much attention to it, it’s that nobody is. What’s going on?

Seed Stage 201

Seed Stage Stealth Seed Capital Later Stage 201

Berkonomics

AUGUST 3, 2023

Some businesses require very little capital and the founder can self-finance the enterprise and retain 100% of its ownership and control from ignition through liquidity event (startup through sale). And even with the significant cost of credit card debt, many entrepreneurs aggressively use existing cards to finance a startup.

Private Equity 118

Private Equity Valuation Cap Table Accredited Investor 118

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 19, 2020

Financial freedom is gaining ownership of your own life and finances. May it be traveling, being free of any debt, finance plays a role at the care center. Loans with lower levels of interest can be kept for a later stage, but high-interest loans should be considered as an emergency and should be paid off as soon as possible.

Later Stage 90

Later Stage Finance .Net Design 90

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 24, 2017

In general, these investments were rarely competitive at the time of their first financing. We know many firms that build portfolios with great logos by buying into companies at later stages and higher valuations. FC’s portfolio is made up exclusively of seed stage investments at seed valuations.

Founder 75

Founder LP Technical Review Seed Stage 75

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Analytics vs. Finance?—?what’s In reality, these two domains require quite different skill sets (more on this later). Finance is about reporting on historical performance and future planning through the lens of financial metrics. This is a bit of an oversimplification as there are many sub-disciplines within finance?—?accounting/controller,

Analytics 149

Analytics Hiring SQL Forecast 149

Feld Thoughts

JULY 13, 2014

But I’ve also invested in a number of companies that have had exits between $100m and $1b that resulted in much larger returns for me, both on an absolute basis as well as a relative basis, than unicorns have for their later stage investors. Financing Entrepreneurship fundraising unicorn VC'

Later Stage 195

Later Stage Early Stage Valuation Seed Stage 195

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 9, 2017

by Tina Hay, founder and CEO of Napkin Finance. One of the most important factors in becoming a successful entrepreneur is managing finances. Whether early or later-stage, the growth of every company most often depends on how much capital is available to fund its growth.

Burn Rate 100

Burn Rate B2C Finance Later Stage 100

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 4, 2016

.” There are a lot of data points that one can observer to get a sense of the venture capital markets – both LP fundings into venture and VC financings of startups. They point to some widely known facts: financings & valuations are up massively over the past 7 years and non-VC money has entered the system.

LP 150

LP Valuation Burn Rate Pre-Money Valuation 150

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 9, 2021

But I knew that there was a ton of work to be done to scale the business into multiple business lines, and that we would be better off with a CEO who was a grand master of organizational growth and had the product vision to serve as a later-stage co-founder. But for some companies the secret sauce might be engineering or finance.

Leadership 42

Leadership Technical Review Cofounder Later Stage 42

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 9, 2022

It was super hard to get any kind of financing before, and it will remain so. That being said, it’s not going to come down that much because so many VCs got funded, and the best later-stage deals have a little more consensus in the market based on their data—so you’re still going to get VC competition. You should be all good.

Stock 97

Stock Marketing Valuation Later Stage 97

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Like many established finance & media companies, GLG knows that the tech startup sector is a growing part of the economy. For example, if you’re an early stage company dealing with complex regulation (think Uber in transportation, Oscar in healthcare, LendingClub in finance), we have people who can help.

New York 114

New York Technical Review Networking Advisory Board 114

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

The earlier you invest the higher the chances the company won’t work out and thus you pay a lower price than later-stage investors. That’s the deal you get when you’re raising in a good market for startup financing. So how exactly are prices determined? There is no great science to it. That’s fine.

Pre-Money Valuation 336

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Stock 336

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

I wonder, for example, if our portfolio company, Codecademy , would have avoided its latest financing round and instead created “CodeCoin” in order to incent contributors to software development lesson plans and a marketplace for coding content? In short, token sales allow early stage companies to skip the series B round and beyond.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

I wonder, for example, if our portfolio company, Codecademy , would have avoided its latest financing round and instead created “CodeCoin” in order to incent contributors to software development lesson plans and a marketplace for coding content? In short, token sales allow early stage companies to skip the series B round and beyond.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

The second wave of technology investors were Chinese banks, who provided the majority of the later stage investments in the Torch Program. By 1991, 70% of the Torch funded startups were getting bank financing for expansion and later stages of the new ventures, with local governments acting as guarantors.

Venture Capital 163

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 163

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

This post is intended to be a dynamic document, and I will attempt to update it from time to time with new questions that may arise or as financing trends evolve. Q: What amount of financing is considered Pre-Seed? It’s a legitimate stage of financing in the venture eco-system as of this writing (October 2017).

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2016

I spend hours thinking about the products, competitors, market opportunities, recruiting and financing of these businesses. Early stage. How else can I begin this multi-year journey if I’m not in love? Maybe some people can be dispassionate financial investors. I feel personally committed and engaged.

Early Stage 254

Early Stage Non-Compete LP Later Stage 254

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2018

He was in a later-stage financing round and was talking with many investors. I was recently with an entrepreneur and talking with him about his fund raising process. Some started asking him for very specific analyses to be completed on his data and wanted his company to crunch the numbers.

Term Sheet 217

Term Sheet Later Stage Demand Email 217

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 8, 2018

I have served on the boards of several companies with just such VC talent at the table, partners in firms that made subsequent investments in companies where I either made early investments or led a group of fellow investors in early rounds of finance.

Covenant 97

Covenant Angel Investor Valuation Later Stage 97