Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

The IMF just raised its global growth forecast from 2.5% Bad stock markets mean less IPO’s and lower prices for M&A. Please do not read that I think an early-stage company with limited product and only beta customers should go straight for a $5 million fund raising.

Technical Review 269

Technical Review Stock Hawaii Early Stage 269

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

Goldman Sachs (an investor in our company) told us we’d IPO within 18 months for $1 billion so not to take any offers. Our product releases took longer to ship than we had hoped. Our sales forecasts were revised downward – many times. Don’t obsess with product releases of competitors or biz dev deals.

PR 331

PR Software Review Ireland Germany 331

crowdSPRING Blog

JANUARY 18, 2013

The Science of Productivity: How To Get More Done In Less Time - [link]. The Science of Productivity: How To Get More Done In Less Time – [link]. Thanks To Facebook, Strongest Year For IPOs Since 2000 With $21.5 Creative Forecast: How Marketing Will Change In 2013 | Co.Create – [link].

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

Kedrosky: "In the 90's I was an analyst through all this [tech investment and IPO] madness. Think about it that way, filling up their shelves with product. You want to build your own IPO and exit. I look for a smart ass team, building a kick ass product, in a big ass market," he said. You in this room are the inventory.

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 28, 2013

Lessons Learned from Bill Gross’ 35 IPOs/Exits and 40 Failures – [link]. Revenue Traction Doesn’t Mean Product Market Fit – [link]. Forecasting Fox | NYTimes – [link]. Lead Or Follow, But Keep Your Eyes On The Crowd – [link]. 3 Things I Did Wrong with My Last Startup – [link].

Social Media 107

Social Media Small Business Design Media 107

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). Yes… he was a very successful PayPal exec and previously co-founder & VP Product of SocialNet. Not long after the product launch we began the initial conversations with VCs for a Series A round. is the leading consumer internet company with Terry Semel as CEO.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

YoungUpstarts

MAY 16, 2018

There, he would be showered in venture capital, build a team of similarly brilliant twenty-somethings, acquire millions of customers seemingly overnight, and steer his startup to an IPO and himself to the cover of Inc magazine well before his 30th birthday. People in big companies see innovation through the lens of new product development.

Silicon Valley 157

Silicon Valley Forecast Venture Capital Business Plan 157

crowdSPRING Blog

JANUARY 5, 2012

The ideal product manager – [link]. Some Thoughts On The IPO Market For Web Companies (by @fredwilson) – [link]. The ideal product manager – [link]. CEC’s Startup Forecast – “Never been a better time to start a company in Chicago” – [link].

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

The Equity Kicker

AUGUST 19, 2013

The article lists four things, three of which relate to being a great company (multiple growth vectors, a product that gets better as it gets bigger, deep competitive advantage). As you can see from the chart below the latest projections for 2013 revenues are 2x what they promised in their 2011 IPO, and EBITDA is forecast at over 2x.

IPO 94

IPO Forecast Revenue Media 94

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries. Is it possible to build?

Silicon Valley 266

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 266

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

Investors are looking for a concise description of your product or service without technical jargon or fuzzy marketing terms with value quantified in customer terms. Since investors are buying a part of your company (not your product), this is the most important question, and is one often not answered.

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Advisory Board Liquidity Event Startup 120

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

In all these cases, capital is provided to fuel forecasted growth without creating a commitment to a particular vision for future funding rounds, exit goals, and associated blitzscaling. The value ascribed by subsequent investors (in a secondary); buyers (acquisition); or the public markets (IPO). The State of Flexible VC.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

www.entrepreneur.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Entrepreneur Homepage Startups Starting a Business Home How-To Guides Startup Basics Business Ideas Business Planning Startup Financing Success Stories Home-Based Business Starting a Business Play Video How to Take a New Product from Just an Idea to a Business (Video). How to Take a New Product from Just an Idea to a Business.

Sweat Equity 55

Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2012

Every plan must start with the problem you are solving, not a description of your company and product. This is not the place for a detailed product specification, but an explanation of how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Financial forecast and metrics. Solution and benefits.

Business Plan 283

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 283

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 13, 2008 Five Whys Taiichi Ohno was one of the inventors of the Toyota Production System. His book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production is a fascinating read, even though its decidedly non-practical. Each five whys email is a teaching document. and so forth.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

The Equity Kicker

OCTOBER 10, 2012

HR software business Workday has just upped the proposed share price in its coming IPO to $24-26, taking its valuation over $4bn. That’s 30x this years forecast revenues of $134m.

Valuation 108

Valuation Acquisition Forecast IPO 108

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

IPOs and M&A have returned – and with them the investment bankers have staged a rebound. There have been a number of high profile tech IPO s in the recent months including companies such as OpenTable and more recently LogMeIn. – IPO-able in any normal market. but I’ll save that for post 3/3).

IPO 255

IPO Investment Bankers Venture Capital Marketing 255

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2011

Every plan must start with the problem you are solving, not a description of your company and product. This is not the place for a detailed product specification, but an explanation of how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Financial forecast and metrics. Solution and benefits.

Business Plan 290

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 290

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 13, 2020

On the IPO front, the one word that comes to mind is “supersize”. While the number of IPOs in 2020 is close to 2019, the average valuation has doubled compared to last year, driven in particular by the massive IPO of Snowflake, which reached a $70 billion market cap on its first trading day.

Europe 71

Europe Cloud Silicon Valley 71

VC Cafe

JUNE 19, 2020

This will be the trigger to change everything, and will happen out of necessity, he believes, especially thanks to technology, which will also allow the most effective measurement of product impact. Tech products and services command a high profit margin of 12.4%. The Forecasted 2016 to 2026 job growth stands at 120%.

Venture Capital 174

Venture Capital Global South Africa 174

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If the CEO wants to completely change the product in order to serve a new customer segment, you need someone in the room who can digest the needs of the new (proposed) business, and lay out the costs of each possible approach. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said. Have you worked with or for a great CTO?

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

www.mint.com

MARCH 9, 2010

If the answer to the question centers around “We will achieve revenue soon so our net will improve and give us more runway,” it means the company is in trouble because no product ever ships on time nor achieves the company’s “conservative forecast.” Life is challenging for a company that has undistinguished products and services.

Software Review 68

Software Review Startup Post-Money Valuation Technical Review 68

abovethecrowd.com

JULY 10, 2014

In other words, the arrival of a product or service like Uber will have zero impact on the overall market size of the car-for-hire transportation market. As Uber becomes more established in a market, pick-up times continue to fall, and the product continues to improve. There are multiple reasons why this is a flawed assumption.

San Francisco 111

San Francisco San Jose Marketing Technical Review 111

Gust

AUGUST 5, 2012

Every plan must start with the problem you are solving, not a description of your company and product. This is not the place for a detailed product specification, but an explanation of how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Financial forecast and metrics. Solution and benefits.

Business Plan 182

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 182

Up and Running

APRIL 28, 2015

If it makes sense for your business, you’ll want to divide your market into segments that you will address with different types of marketing and perhaps different types of product offerings. Finally, you get to dive into describing your product or service. Now your product or service is coming to the rescue to help solve that problem.

Forecast 60

Forecast Hockey Stick Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 60

Tim Keane

MARCH 9, 2011

How to prepare a sales forecast for a business plan » March 09, 2011. John the cabinet maker has decided to expand to several cities within several hundred miles of his location, to develop several standard lines of custom products, and to seek growth at annual double digit rates.  « Leaving a Trail | Main. |

Finance 83

Finance Bootstrapping Startup Equity 83

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

You’ve got the perfect product. There are these great big companies that have large sales departments looking to supplement their existing products so when they’re with clients they can increase their average order size. Sort of amortizing the costs of their sales reps over more products. A Channel Love Story.

Channel 293

Channel Startup Sales Partner 293

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

As an investor myself, I look for a balanced story focused on the major elements that drive profitability, including the following: A 5-year financial forecast achieving a positive cash flow early. They are looking for solutions that will reduce their costs by 20%, or double productivity, or cut traffic accidents by a third.

Intellectual Property 48

Intellectual Property Initial Public Offering Merger Acquisition 48

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned. Imagine a general manager that has read The Innovator’s Dilemma and related books, and is therefore trying hard to help her organization make a transition to a new product category via disruptive innovation.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Cracking the Code

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Deutsche Bank report has a very interesting chart on the topic presenting the Free Cash Flow margins vs. the revenue growth four years post IPO for select software leaders: As you can see, with 20% Free Cash Flow margin and a 50% growth rate, Salesforce is well positioned in the pack! He accidentally funded the CRM product and Netsuite.

Software Review 48

Software Review Software Technical Review Cloud 48

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2010

Every plan must start with the problem you are solving, not a description of your company and product. This is not the place for a detailed product specification, but an explanation of how and why it works, including a customer-centric quantification of the benefits. Financial forecast and metrics. Solution and benefits.

Business Plan 186

Business Plan Exit Strategy Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 186

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 17, 2020

But, accurately forecasting the size, timing, and risk of cash flow over many years can be incredibly challenging, so many investors often rely on valuation multiples as a proxy for determining what a company is worth. cash flows beyond that forecast period). It starts with the complexity involved in valuing companies in general.

Valuation 36

Valuation Balance Sheet Cofounder Forecast 36

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2020

This was supposed to be Airbnb's biggest year by many measures, including its IPO, which was one of the most anticipated since the 2008 financial crisis. What if you get product market fit beyond your wildest dreams? And suddenly, a good product was no longer a product that sold. What if it works? 6,000, 7,000 employees.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Hosting Cofounder Employee 60

Seeing Both Sides

JANUARY 7, 2013

And the so-called BRIC countries are forecasting tepid growth (we could rename them "ICK" if we added in Borat's home of Kazakhstan and dropped Brazil and Russia.). When slogging through a tough year -- such as a new product that just won't ship cleanly, or a fundraise that just won't get traction -- remember to create options for yourself.

Kazakhstan 42

Kazakhstan Turkey Brazil Russia 42

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Get 18 months or more of cash (runway) in the business against a conservative forecast. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Act now, act with speed. Use Google Apps.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 3, 2012

But once the company has honed in on a strong value proposition and found initial product-market fit, what is the best approach to scaling it? In 2012, analysts forecast the company will achieve nearly $1.5 The company quickly realized that its initial commercial product was in huge demand – they had reached product-market fit nirvana.

Distribution 49

Distribution Lean Massachusetts Cofounder 49

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. That year, right before the IPO, those months mattered a great deal in terms of financial outcomes. All my products and ideas focus on early cash and a business model that works from the first day. Ultimately your product must be useful. About spot trends.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94