View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

Free Template for Great Startup Pitch Decks, Direct from VCs. What Are Your Valuation Expectations? ’ like all startups have to, but also “why invest now?'” Seed stage startups are now graded on a curve.” Your pitch deck is central to fundraising success. ” (Rob Go). ” (Lee Hower).

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Just look at the disruptive challenges that businesses face today– globalization, China as a manufacturer, China as a consumer, the Internet, and a steady stream of new startups. Perhaps that’s because where established companies might see risks or threats, startups see opportunity.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

And the loosening of federal monetary policies, particularly in the US, has pushed more dollars into the venture ecosystems at every stage of financing. What Has Changed in Financing? On the one hand, you’re over paying for every investment and valuations aren’t rational. even before the pandemic itself has been fully tamed.

Pre-Money Valuation 471

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

VC Adventure

AUGUST 31, 2017

If you read my blog regularly you know I love (LOVE) metrics. So no surprise that when River Cities Capital released an overview of SaaS operating and valuation benchmarks, I hung on every juicy detail. They took the 92 public SaaS companies and analyzed their key operating metrics. The valuation metrics show this clearly.

IPO 113

IPO Vertical Balance Sheet Valuation 113

Tim Keane

JANUARY 12, 2010

Startups and angels: Along the way to success. Term-sheets and Valuations: Thinking about Negotiations. The Valuation Question. When companies seeking their first round of serious funding are good enough to receive a term-sheet from an investor, the first issue that always arises is valuation. Let’s start at the end.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Valuation Dividend Liquidation Preference 68

Altgate

DECEMBER 15, 2010

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← No one wants to tell you your baby is ugly More on Liquidation Preferences → Pre-Money Valuation vs Number of Founders Posted on December 15, 2010 by admin Here’s a chart of the day worth sharing.

Pre-Money Valuation 66

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Cofounder Founder 66

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have enough resources to bootstrap our own startups, so we are completely dependent on investors to help turn great ideas into great businesses. They need to believe your valuation, based on current revenue and intellectual property, and feel the equity offered gives them a real return for the risk.

Intellectual Property 352

Intellectual Property Equity Bootstrapping Valuation 352

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. This structure allows for alignment on the front end, and real-time flexibility for performance metrics,” says Samira Salman , a family office investor and advisor. . Yes, via conversion rights at a valuation cap. Of the Inc.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

It’s like we need a finance 101 course for entrepreneurs. There were no metrics. Him: On metrics. Me: There is no rational explanation for valuations of A round companies by ANY objective financial measure. If we priced it based on any metrics your company would likely be worth less than 7 figures at your A round.

Venture Capital 417

Venture Capital Liquidation Preference Valuation Term Sheet 417

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Here’s the punchline: if you run your company as if you have closed a VC equity financing round even though you actually closed a convertible debt round, you’ll be in much better shape when it comes time to raise your Series A financing. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 27, 2014

George Deeb is the Managing Partner at Chicago-based Red Rocket Ventures , a startup consulting and financial advisory firm based in Chicago. One of the questions I get, more often than not, is what is the appropriate valuation of my business. This is typically in conjunction with an upcoming financing or pending takeover offer.

Valuation 167

Valuation Forecast Seed Stage .Net 167

Genuine VC

JULY 19, 2010

In the sector of internet-enabled services where a majority of the Micro VC investment has transpired, startups can fundamentally do more with less. These results are based on actual usage of product by early users, with resulting operating metrics which more than just validate a hypothesis. That’s no secret.

Seed Stage 175

Seed Stage Technical Review Dilution Offshore 175

View from Seed

JUNE 10, 2020

of teams’ online pitch decks and recorded videos, as well as loved the dozens of second-round video conversations which we had with Founders working on quite compelling startups. When the culmination of an accelerator is a Demo Day show, then that is what teams prepare for and the resulting metrics by which they’re measured.

Cofounder 177

Cofounder Syndicate Syndication Alabama 177

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Over the summer, based on feedback from our portfolio and the broader startup community, NextView created pre-formatted board deck templates for seed-stage startups — part of our Growth Guides series. Finance is mission critical, for instance – it just appears on a recurring basis. The seed stage is all about traction.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

Growthink Blog

APRIL 15, 2015

Now given that the company has yet to even come close to breaking even, this can be viewed as either a great validation of Domo''s business model, or as more evidence of the “Bubble Mania” of the current technology financing landscape and a screaming signal to get out while you still can.

Valuation 48

Valuation Venture Capital Finance Acquisition 48

The Startup Magazine

APRIL 24, 2020

Whether you’re interested in selling a website you built from scratch, or want to sell your Amazon-based B2C brand, there are many different baseline factors that go into determining an appropriate website valuation number. While it’s true that valuations can get quite technical, the basics are relatively easy to understand.

eCommerce 91

eCommerce Valuation B2C Revenue 91

Genuine VC

MAY 29, 2014

Not all startups are the same. Seed stage” startups raising $1M-$2M rounds of pre-Series A capital come in very different flavors. Some are pre-product, while all the way on the other side of the spectrum, some have meaningful revenue and clear up-and-to-the-right metrics. Better to be safe than sorry.

Syndicate 166

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Valuation 166

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 20, 2018

Finance is one of the biggest areas in which the entrepreneurs lack knowledge. Valuation of finance metrics shall certainly give you an edge in the field. You must do your own research and find out that is talking what about you on your back before blindly trusting them.

Cofounder 178

Cofounder Valuation Finance Metrics 178

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

In fact, 90% of the top grossing apps are subscription based across all categories: education, fitness, dating, music, wellness, personal finance, etc. Many startups are hoping to be the next name on that list. The landscape of consumer subscription startups is growing: Consumer SaaS landscape (Source: GP Bullhound ).

B2C 187

B2C Cloud Valuation Acquisition 187

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 12, 2017

Securing adequate financing for any new venture nowadays is an exceptionally difficult proposition, which is why angel investors are considered so valuable to the startup ecosystem. Investors need to be fully aware of the risks they are exposing themselves to when making an investment in any early stage startup.

Angel Investor 100

Angel Investor South America Early Stage Africa 100

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

I was browsing yesterday when I picked up this post by Alyson Shontell of Business Insider on LearnVest, a finance tools and information site for women, founded by a 27-year-old woman and funded very quickly by major venture capital. Here are some points I found especially interesting: I hate the unequal representation of women in startups.

Valuation 67

Valuation Venture Capital Startup Metrics 67

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Entrepreneurs and investors who have spent any time dealing with convertible debt seed financing transactions are likely to have encountered the subject of valuation caps. Valuation caps can come into play in settings other than seed-stage convertible note financing rounds. Read on for a fuller explanation.

Valuation 98

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Merger Vesting 98

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

Low supply of companies with traction drove the valuations and deal sizes up. So while the infrastructure cost and startup costs may have declined, the operating costs have increased. In that presentation, I said that Seed is not the first round of financing any more and that K9’s investments were mostly “pre-seed”.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

Hunter Walker

JUNE 22, 2014

I was excited to recently see YC President Sam Altman evangelize for adding an investor or outside Director to a seed stage startup. With larger seed financings these days, your next investors are expecting more polished companies come A Round.

Seed Stage 93

Seed Stage Early Stage Metrics Startup 93

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

A few potential slides which can be included in the Appendix: Exit Analysis: Not always as important during the early startup stage since an exit event is presumably in the distance away. Other Questions: Every startup is different. But the real significance of these figures is the exercise behind it.

Seed Stage 166

Seed Stage Retention Restful Valuation 166

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

It’s no coincidence we designed 500 Startups with these evolutions in mind, altho none of the required strategies have been easy to execute and we are still refining our approach. In short, we were a lot more geeky than the previous generation of fund managers , and we started blogging a lot about tech startups and best practices.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. The world of building profitable startups as the primary goal of Venture Capital would end in 1995.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 29, 2015

Now that everyone is overly focused on unicorns, the headline number on the valuation (e.g. Company X raised Y at a valuation of Z from A, B, and C) has crept into the story on big rounds. No understanding of the human dynamics behind the financing. No underlying metrics that drive the financing.

Atlanta 70

Atlanta Valuation Term Sheet Finance 70

Up and Running

JULY 22, 2019

A lack of market need is the number one reason startups fail , suggesting that companies need a better way of evaluating the state of the market before launching their business within it. To help investors get an insider view on company growth, it’s important to share meaningful metrics consistently. Start early. Do not be greedy.

Canada 78

Canada Early Stage Valuation Finance 78

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 21, 2016

Bill Gurley wrote an incredible post yesterday titled On the Road to Recap: Why the unicorn financing market just became dangerous … for all involved. Anything that hints of a down round brings questions about the success metrics that have already been “booked.” It’s long but worth reading every word slowly.

Marketing 70

Marketing Down Round Startup IRR 70

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

The Equity Kicker

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Mahesh Vellanki from Redpoint put up an interesting post yesterday about ecommerce valuations. revenue multiple because it’s strong on both these metrics. For ecommerce startups assuming that if the business is successful the revenue exit multiple will be in the region of 1-2x is the way to go. Fitbit enjoys a 3.3x

Forecast 60

Forecast eCommerce Net Present Value Revenue 60

Haystack

DECEMBER 26, 2018

” “Multiples and valuations are out of control!” Much of this can trickle down into the startup ecosystem. TechCrunch’s Kate Clark has done a round-up of the largest “private VC” rounds of 2018, and there’s a whole other list for just $100M+ financings led by Softbank’s Vision Fund.

IPO 76

IPO Private Equity Valuation Acquisition 76

cdixon.org

AUGUST 3, 2012

Entrepreneurs and investors have been enamored with consumer internet startups for the last few years. Some consequences: - For consumer startups with non-transactional models (ad-based or unknown business models), you need something closer to 10 million users versus 1 million users to get Series A funded. -

Bridge Financing 86

Bridge Financing Early Stage Valuation Later Stage 86

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

Revenue multiples, profit multiples, premium over the previous financing — these are metrics used by sellers to help determine a minimum acceptable price. Startups shouldn’t act smug about this. Even for startups, it takes years for a new product to become good enough to demand many millions of dollars in revenue.).

Balance Sheet 242

Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

In startup-land, people seem to think raising money is a signal that their business is sound and they should start scaling as soon as possible. The main challenge, as we’ll discuss below, is that startups need to internalize two conflicting attitudes. Weaknesses inside the founder team kill startups. The wrong reason to spend.

Metrics 136

Metrics Cofounder Cram Down Liquidity Event 136

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 17, 2020

OH in South Park, San Francisco (or on Zoom from Big Sky, Montana): “OMG, crazy – that firm just paid 100x revenue to invest in [insert hot startup here] – what could they be thinking?” How valuation multiples work Why did multiples become a shortcut-heuristic for estimating valuations in the first place?

Valuation 36

Valuation Balance Sheet Cofounder Forecast 36