A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 19, 2010

Time to learn: "Cash-Basis" accounting means you only count revenue and expenses that you actually have. Accural-Basis" accounting means you count pledged revenue and expenses. Revenue-versus-expenses is important for every business at every stage of its life; no duh. Never heard of either of these?

Revenue 232

Revenue Startup Forecast Finance 232

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 23, 2012

After I sold Smart Bear, that division has increased revenue and profit every year, for five years, even through the 2008/2009 economic disaster. GroupOn’s engine that turned capital into revenue growth was a form of force-feeding rather than building a product). But really, are all those acquirers so stupid? Surely not.

IPO 240

IPO Flash Bootstrapping Private Equity 240

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. Even for startups, it takes years for a new product to become good enough to demand many millions of dollars in revenue.). Yet mobile advertising revenues were paltry.

Balance Sheet 242

Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

There’s also an armed globally-dispersed Sales and Support teams, so we’re selling to our 70,000 existing customers as well as thousands of new customers per month, which means we’ll end up adding more new revenue in one month than a small company will take in over a whole year. The tradeoff, however, is predictability.

Government 223

Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 21, 2011

This might be a good method for computing compensation for employee #10, but hire #1 ought to also be able to substantially affect your chance of success, by changing the slope on the revenue curve, by adding expertise or skill you didn’t have before, by opening new markets, etc.

Equity 276

Equity Salary Hiring Institutional Investors 276

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2011

If it’s just a matter of pouring more marketing dollars in the top so you can crank out more revenue in the bottom, that’s a machine investors like to power. But if your business requires the modern “tell-your-friends&# social-media-style punditry to succeed, you’ll have to do that without money. And so forth.

Startup 283

Startup Social Media Salary Lean 283

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 28, 2011

In other words, we’re always so focused on top-line revenue the BITA, that we forget like, but if you’re making a good living and you’re happy every day, isn’t that the point? Jason: Right. And it’s not fun. Typically if you love writing code, then you love writing code probably more than everything else.

Cofounder 223

Cofounder New York Conversion Entrepreneur 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

Maybe you should be spending your time getting revenue instead of ruminating on the philosophy of startups with strangers in the comment section of some blog. Of course as you improve your profitability — hopefully through more revenue but possibly through lower expenses — this date will change. Maybe you could get v1.0

Exit Strategy 247

Exit Strategy Startup Bandwidth Revenue 247

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Totally automate all that so it doesn’t bring me down all the time and instead I can sign all the revenue, because that’s fun. But a lot of people are very apprehensive and we’ve seen a lot of failures with companies like Blippy who tried to make finances and money with social. Patrick: How close did he get?

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2012

All you’ve proven is that you can make $200 a month in revenue off of some basic websites. If you did that, now you’ve got something like one or $2,000 a month of revenue, proving that this is interesting. Jason: In revenue. Jared: That takes revenue that I don’t have yet. Let’s say they all do it.

API 220

API Software Review Hosting Technical Review 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

You have your general management meeting and in your general management meeting you talk about product development, about marketing and about finance. How do you split revenue? And then the final thing is just getting the revenue up. Jason: A lot of things are solved with revenue. It’s bundled in different groups.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 27, 2011

ME: Of course getting tied up with that might distract you from other growth opportunities, and sometimes buyers don’t like that you’re dependent on another company for revenue. HIM: That's true, and besides we're talking to [big company] about a potential partnership that would really launch us.

Sales 235

Sales Term Sheet Stock Deal Structure 235

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 20, 2011

They’ve heard rules of thumb like “A growing software company is worth 5 times their trailing 12-months revenue.&# Even narrowing the field as much as feasible, revenue multiples varied between 1.2x The “Multiples&# argument does work well in industries where company’s growth and revenue is highly predictable.

Sales 260

Sales Channel Cofounder Valuation 260