YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

EBITDA is the most important profitability metric to consider as many valuations are based on a multiple of this metric. That being said, it makes sense that when business is booming, your valuation will be higher. A diversified customer base can reduce cash flow risks and greatly increase your company’s value.

Exit Strategy 246

Exit Strategy Intellectual Property Valuation Metrics 246

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

In this comprehensive template and guide we break down each of the nine core sections in the deck: intro , team , what do you do , is it working , why does it matter (market) , can you be the best in the world (product, growth, financial metrics) , where are you going , what do you want (the ask) , and appendix. ” (Rob Go).

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Jeff Katzenberg has a great track record – head of the studio at Paramount, chairman of Disney Studios, co-founder of DreamWorks and now chairman of NewTV. He just hired Meg Whitman. Startups wrote business plans, generated expansive 5-year forecasts and executed (hired, spent and built) to the plan. The result?

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Hire a professional marketing and public relations agency once you have a good revenue stream but you don’t need them to start a free blog, establish Facebook and Twitter accounts with initial content and complete the basics of search engine optimization.

Burn Rate 223

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As a startup in this phase you often raise capital, get press, hire staff and everything feels possible. As the idea went from innovating on software & systems to launching a company to rolling it out in the field brought on Rahul Gandhi as his co-founder to physically launch the company. As an early-stage VC I love this phase.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

VC Cafe

JANUARY 14, 2022

Many of the companies that went public via SPACs saw their valuations dramatically reduce in the months that followed post IPO. Anecdotally, one founder complained to me that this has shorten his runway by 30%. Several discussions on social media have founders asking if they should hedge their FOREX risk. Global tech correction.

Technical Review 158

Technical Review Lock-up Period South Korea 158

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

In a new book, “ The Leadership Capital Index ,” Dave Ulrich, a best-selling author, business consultant, and business school professor, provides some real insights and metrics on what makes up the elements of goodwill in the minds of top valuation experts. I have paraphrased his key points here as follows: Leader personal impact.

Leadership 120

Leadership Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation 120

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Cashflow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Hire a professional marketing and public relations agency once you have a good revenue stream but you don’t need them to start a free blog, establish Facebook and Twitter accounts with initial content and complete the basics of search engine optimization.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Austin Startup

MAY 19, 2018

As Bryan stated below, there are no shortage of “How to pitch” or “How to behave” articles by VCs but really very little advice for VCs by founders. Anyone notice there's a ton of VCs giving founder advice, and almost no founder advice for VCs? Lines Not Dots Raising money from a fund is a process, most founders get that.

Founder 75

Founder Early Stage Software Review Deal Flow 75

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

What most founders don’t realize is: Every stage of a startup requires a different set of metrics and milestones and founder skills. Knowing these will help a founder position her pitch to get investors’ attention. Founders need to keep their eye on the prize — not just the next funding round. Business Model.

Cofounder 431

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

I’m over-paying for every check I write into the VC ecosystem and valuations are being pushed up to absurd levels and many of these valuations and companies won’t hold in the long term. On the one hand, you’re over paying for every investment and valuations aren’t rational. two founders in a garage?—?(HP

Pre-Money Valuation 471

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

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 never ends well.

Private Equity 328

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 328

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2: As expected at least one person accused me of writing this post because I want to see lower valuations. I’ve decided to take all of my private conversations and subjective points-of-view on the topic and make them public in a keynote speech at the Founder Showcase in San Francisco on June 15th. That’s stupid.

Pre-Money Valuation 336

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Stock 336

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Hire a professional marketing and public relations agency once you have a good revenue stream but you don’t need them to start a free blog, establish Facebook and Twitter accounts with initial content and complete the basics of search engine optimization.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Tim Friedman, Founder, PE Stack , said, “If I could offer one piece of advice to today’s managers, it would be to take the time to understand the demands of the modern institutional LP. Russell Rothstein, Founder and CEO, IT Central Station , a product review site, said, “We see VCs on our site very often. 3) Raise capital.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Convertible debt financings have become an increasingly attractive approach for seed rounds because it delays the valuation discussion, costs less from a legal standpoint, and is an easier financial instrument to “keep raising more small amounts of money” on. The investors, founders, and “community” are all super excited about ASC.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Plus, it bothers me that it gives the impression that, if you’re a female founder and you become the face of your company, you’ll inevitably get taken down—that anything short of unimpeachable success means becoming a target and getting kicked to the curb in a spectacularly disastrous fashion. Did it solve gender equality?

Cofounder 140

Cofounder Venture Capital Community PR 140

View from Seed

MAY 31, 2019

Our investment team here frequently actively discusses what qualities make a founder a top.01% Another positive attribute of some founders which we’ve been discussing more recently is one’s ability to “defy gravity.” Gravity is a just given fact of our reality. Some might argue that what goes up must come down.

Valuation 149

Valuation Portfolio Metrics Founder 149

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

What are the new financial metrics? If it’s just three-months, (looking more unlikely by the day) then an immediate freeze on variable spending (hires, marketing, travel, etc.) They triage their deals – first worrying about liquidity of their late stage deals which have the highest valuations. How do you know?

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

crowdSPRING Blog

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Help the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs: Hire One | Small Biz Daily – [link]. Don’t Hire Entrepreneurs; Hire Entrepreneurial Spirit | HBR – [link]. Hire the Right Type of VP Marketing — Or You’ll Just End Up With a Bunch of Blue Pens with Your Logo – [link]. What is Product Management?

Social Media 106

Social Media Small Business Technical Review Design 106

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Other than starting to build, hire, and take over the world, there are a bunch of mundane things to do right away. The following is a first pass at a checklist of items for Founder CEOs to take care of in the first couple weeks after they’ve closed their initial round of seed funding. You’ve just closed your seed round.

Founder 156

Founder Cap Table Stock Options PR 156

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 16, 2014

Was there any startup founder who didn’t feel depressed when that happened? Another collective sigh shudders through the ranks of startup founders, as we grumble over our trifling grindstones. What does it actually mean that metric X is better than average and metric Y is below? Yes, depressed. They’re next!

Metrics 246

Metrics Early Stage Retention Revenue 246

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

Low supply of companies with traction drove the valuations and deal sizes up. In addition, the competition for and the cost of hiring people, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, has gone up dramatically. Valuations are rising to match. Implications for Founders. Seed stage was super tough. The Epilogue.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 1, 2013

Good whitepaper on advertising measurement metrics | by Ben Kunz – crowdspring.co/HsVIMR. Hire for potential, says Jason Fried of 37signals - crowdspring.co/1aHHrTp. Good whitepaper on advertising measurement metrics | by Ben Kunz – crowdspring.co/HsVIMR. Hire for potential - crowdspring.co/1aHHrTp.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

So, rather than try and fill time unnecessarily and create a lengthy deck just because you’re “supposed to,” Rob — and we’d guess many other VCs as well — will often suggest that a founder create a simple one-sheeter that might start small and build over time. However, these are important updates for your board to know.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 21, 2012

What Job Are Your Customers Hiring Your Products To Perform? B t Metrics – [link]. What Job Are Your Customers Hiring Your Products To Perform? 10 Lessons I’ve Learned During My First Three Months As a Founder (by Len Kendall) | Technori - [link]. Hire For Cultural Fit Over Competence - [link].

Social Media 100

Social Media Small Business Design Media 100

A Crowded Space

SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

JSV is focused on leading deals in SaaS and marketplace companies in the 5-30M valuation range. We love founders that are down to earth, quietly confident, and focused on execution. We are active investors and love working closely with the founders we back. The 4 big winners are out of just 43 total investments.

Hiring 60

Hiring San Francisco Angel Investor Early Stage 60

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

When we pivoted from fabulis to Fab, we pivoted towards building a business around the unique tastemaker talents of one of our founders, Bradford Shellhammer. Have amazing co-founders who are better at what they do than you could ever be. Founders need to personally own something big themselves. It’s that important.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

An investor had few hard metrics other than the actual financials, and little technology to make the process scaleable. Over the past few decades, better metrics became available, and investors could take a more analytical, data-driven approach. ” Historically, investing was a manual, artisan process. Pitchbot.vc

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

I gained nearly 20 pounds during those two years, in part because of the growing frustration I felt when I would leave yet another meeting with VCs who I felt didn’t genuinely listen to, understand, or value my experience as a black founder and CEO. startups with billion-dollar valuations) in recent years.

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley Technical Review Venture Capital San Francisco 48

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

For starters let me use “CEO” as a proxy to include her “inner circle” which might mean co-founders or might just mean senior execs of the business. The Mind of the Founder. The mind of a founder is wired differently than most people. The startup CEO was not the original founder. It was not.

Startup 417

Startup Dilution San Diego Stock Options 417

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

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 20, 2016

One key to this population growth has been the remarkable ease of the Unicorn fundraising process: Pick a new valuation well above your last one, put together a presentation deck, solicit offers, and watch the hundreds of million of dollars flow into your bank account. By January of 2016, that number had ballooned to 229.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 26, 2022

So, think of the typical two founders with a pitch book in a garage. Instead, that’s the sort of pre-series-A investment where companies or founders have visions of where they think there are underserved market needs, and they’re coming up with something super excited to try to solve that. . We’re a crossover fund.

Partner 132

Partner Cofounder Retention Acquisition 132

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

However after Sequoia and Ron Conway announced their investment in YC in 2009 , and after YC alumni DropBox and AirBnb raised capital on billion-dollar valuations in 2010-11, the program quickly became the gold standard among early-stage startup incubators. They are operators, through and through.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2012

In a startup, that needs to be the founder or CEO, and that person has to be regularly and personally involved. Longer-term, enhanced product value begets superior company valuation through your organization’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio. This is an imperative. No risk, no innovation. Not every idea can, or will, be a winner.

Intellectual Property 247

Intellectual Property IP Valuation .Net 247