Feld Thoughts

JULY 8, 2013

Following is a guest post on DevOps by Gene Kim , Multiple Award-Winning CTO, Researcher, Visible Ops Co-Author, Entrepreneur & Founder of Tripwire. Act I begins with IT Operations, where we’re supporting a large, complex revenue generating application. Our revenue pipeline stopped for two hours.” That moment is now.

Phoenix 175

Phoenix Software Review Technical Review Cofounder 175

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 19, 2017

Instead, I, like many of my colleagues (investors, board members, founders, and CEOs), operated in a state of blissful denial until everything blew up. There’s a special bonus in Mark’s post, which is in the section titled Revenue is Not Revenue is Not Revenue. My reaction was stupid and immature.

Internet 162

Internet Revenue .Net Operations 162

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

Jack Tankersley, a long time mentor of mine, co-founder of Centennial Funds, and co-founder of Meritage Funds, wrote me a very long response. Many people used it as justification for stuff and there were very few critical responses that dug deeper on the history. This isn’t correct either. A good example is Symantec.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 29, 2019

These companies grew collectively to well over $200 million in revenue and had nearly $1 billion in exit value combined. However, he realized that of all the thousands of founders he speaks with each year, almost no one has a grasp on what it means to do “sales” in a startup.

Early Stage 123

Early Stage Austin Sales Venture Capital 123

Feld Thoughts

JULY 7, 2016

Year one revenue – in 1964 – was $8,000. Year two revenue – with one full time employee (not Knight) was $20,000. Year 41 revenue (2015) was $30.6 If you are a founder, this is a must read. He used nights, weekends, and in all the gaps in between to get Nike (the Blue Ribbon Sports) up and running.

.Net 76

.Net Finance Revenue Equity 76

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 4, 2016

Here’s an example from an email exchange I had this morning with the CEO of an early stage company that has growing revenue and a small team. Founder : “So far we’ve raised $1.2mm and our revenues for 2016 will eclipse that. Founder: 1. Founder: Thanks! All software licenses sold, no services).

IPO 70

IPO Early Stage Finance Revenue 70

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 28, 2019

I’ve been doing a three-year future org chart exercise with the CEOs of a number of the companies I’m involved in between $25m and $250m in revenue. It should be done in real time, without preparation, and in front of a small group, which could include co-founders or board members. Do not draw any empty boxes.

Leadership 122

Leadership Cofounder Revenue Equity 122

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 30, 2011

An Inside Look at BigDoor’s Venture Funding is going to be me, Keith Smith ( BigDoor CEO), and Andy Sack ( Lighter Capital , Founder’s Co-op , and the TechStars Seattle Managing Director). Both are good friends of mine and have really interesting philosophies about startup funding.

Cofounder 112

Cofounder Seattle Equity Valuation 112

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

They are growing rapidly, generated over a million dollars in revenue in their first year, and are now looking for an experienced VP of Marketing to join the founders as an integral member of the executive team to lead all aspects of marketing. Sympoz , based in Denver, was founded in May 2010 by an experienced team.

Denver 119

Denver Marketing Revenue Search 119

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013

years it’s a pretty awesome example of a company going from a seed investment with three founders (Matthew Bellows, Cashman Andrus, and Raj Bhargava) to a rapidly growing 40 person company. A few days ago Xconomy wrote a great article about the very first Yesware board meeting on April Fools Day, 2011.

Denver 130

Denver Portfolio Leadership Finance 130

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 3, 2016

As a result, we lose out to other countries as non-US founders start their ventures to countries like Canada, Chile, or Singapore instead of the US, often because it’s impossible for them to get appropriate visas to create their companies while living in the US. Providing sufficient staffing for these companies is another hurdle.

Colorado 70

Colorado Chile Silicon Valley America 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 21, 2015

An easy example from my daily life is the founder who leads off talking about his business by saying “we’ve got a lot of traction.” Founder: “We had $50k of MRR last month.” ” Founder: “$14k” Me: How much MRR did you have the month before?” ” Founder: “Um, ok.”

Silicon Valley 70

Silicon Valley Metrics .Net Founder 70

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

They were typically a couple of smart co-founders with a rough prototype who probably hadn’t even formed their company yet. They range from pre-formation to profitable businesses with real revenue and investment. When TechStars first started in Boulder, most of the applicants were what we like to call “pre-seed&#.

Early Stage 132

Early Stage Cofounder Programming Networking 132

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 31, 2010

Niel Robertson, the CEO of Trada , introduced me to Viglink’s founder Oliver Roup and I agreed to be an alpha tester. As a result, on a going forward basis, I was getting Amazon affiliate revenue (via Viglink) for anyone that clicked through one of my links and bought something on Amazon. I’ve been an early Viglink user for a while.

Affiliate 118

Affiliate Colorado Cofounder Programming 118

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 15, 2015

Many of our portfolio companies are those types of cloud services and the ecosystems that AppDirect powers can help them get to market faster, reach more users, and drive more revenue. That might seem counterintuitive, since everybody knows where to find apps, right?

Finance 70

Finance San Francisco Hiring Silicon Valley 70

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 27, 2014

It went from an idea and a few founders to an almost $10 million revenue company, before growth peaked about a decade ago. I was an early board member, then angel investor, and subsequently VC investor in Terry’s company Gold Systems.

Angel Investor 110

Angel Investor Acquisition Channel Revenue 110

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 25, 2015

But even if you, as the founder, believe it, you are still probably deluding yourself. Imagine being an investor and being approached by a business SaaS company that has raised $5 million, has $100k / month of revenue, has been growing at about 5% per month, and is doing a $10 million round. .” It’s probably b t.

Finance 70

Finance Bootstrapping Acquisition Revenue 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 9, 2017

Jud Valeski, the co-founder of Gnip, wrote a great one a few days ago. On one hand, you want revenue, and if you break/bend the rules, you can get more of it. We firmly believed that breaking/bending the rules would yield an incrementally small amount of revenue, and never actually let the business get as big as it could.

Term Sheet 70

Term Sheet Cofounder Revenue Partner 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 7, 2015

Basically, Harmonix tried to go out of business every year between 1995 and 2005 and just managed to fail at that, always coming up with a new revenue deal or a small amount of financing to stay alive before it became an overnight success in 2005 with the original launch of Guitar Hero. Magazine long form story titled Just Play.

Colorado 70

Colorado Angel Investor Boston Finance 70

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 25, 2012

.” It inspired a book titled Hope Is Not a Strategy: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale and is repeated often by VCs in boardrooms when they are confronted with companies that are flailing, especially when trying to reach their revenue goals. In it Dov has a great punch line.

Revenue 177

Revenue Sales Founder 177

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

It’s a competition for entrepreneurs under 40 with businesses between $100k / year and $1m / year in revenue. In 1993 I was the founder of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization Boston Chapter and member #1.

Boston 120

Boston Entrepreneur Revenue Search 120

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

Andy Sack, who in addition to running TechStars Seattle, also runs Founders Co-op and Revenue Loan , did an incredible job of engaging a broad set of the Seattle entrepreneurial community in TechStars. But what was really remarkable to me was the tone in the room during, around, and after demo day.

Seattle 109

Seattle Cofounder Community Demand 109

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

Some will demonstrate strategically justifiable metrics and have fantastic ‘up round’ exits; others may see liquidation preferences kick in which will negatively impact founders and employees; others may fulfill the adage “IPO is the new down round” , which has been the case for more than half of the public companies on our list.

Liquidation Preference 70

Liquidation Preference Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net 70

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

Sometimes the writer gets this right and links it back to John Underkoffler, the co-founder of Oblong, but many times they don’t. Lest you think this is science fiction, I can assure you that Oblong has several major customers, is generating meaningful revenue, and is poised to enter several mainstream markets with g-speak derived products.

Cofounder 113

Cofounder Revenue Operations Founder 113

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2014

This morning I woke up to an email thread from a founder of a company I’m an investor in. And, is multiple of revenue really the correct long term metric? In it, he talks about how he handles public company stocks that he ends up with either via an IPO or a sale of a company he’s involved in to a public company.

Valuation 143

Valuation Stock Angel Investor IPO 143

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 20, 2015

There’s a fun post from Ben Horowitz in 2010 titled The Revenue of the Fat Guy that weaves in comments from Fred Wilson about product/market fit where Fred argues in his post Being Fat Is Not Healthy. You probably have one or two salespeople and one of your founders – maybe your CEO – is still the head of sales.

Product 70

Product Marketing Valuation Search 70

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

On Wednesday and Thursday I spent two awesome days with my long time friend Martin Babinec (the founder of Trinet), his partner at Upstate Venture Connect – Nasir Ali – and about 1000 members of the Upstate New York entrepreneurial community. Martin and I first met around 1991 when we were both building our first companies.

New York 132

New York Community New York City Silicon Valley 132

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 12, 2011

When we were last with Dick and Jane on Finance Fridays, our fearless entrepreneurs were figuring out how to split up their founders equity and account for an investment from Jane. Revenues and costs should both be based off of a robust set of assumptions. as a C-Corp in Delaware. Build a financial model that forecasts the P&L.

Balance Sheet 136

Balance Sheet Forecast Cap Table Early Stage 136

Feld Thoughts

JULY 31, 2013

Dan Caruso, the co-founder/CEO of Zayo Group , is one of them. Today, Zayo has eclipsed $1.1Bin revenue and $600M in EBITDA, leading to an estimated Enterprise Value in the vicinity of $6B. I first met Dan around a decade ago when Howard Diamond, another incredible contributor to the Boulder startup community, introduced us.

Bandwidth 147

Bandwidth Colorado Startup IRR 147

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 5, 2017

At some point, I realized that Labs was either (a) a random place to put a founder who is no longer working on the core activity of the business or (b) a place to work on a set of things that product can’t make progress on. If (a) random place for a founder, the CEO may not be dealing with an organizational issue around a founder.

Founder 117

Founder Product Development Engineer Revenue 117

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 19, 2013

It was a gathering of 60 entrepreneurs over four days (for three years) who were all under 40 and founders of companies with more than $1m in revenue. It was the first time I discovered my peer group and while I was young (24 years old) and small ($1m in revenue) I felt like I immediately fit in.

Brazil 181

Brazil API Lean Revenue 181

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 14, 2016

The day after the election, Alex Iskold (Techstars NY Managing Director) wrote a great post titled Dear Founders, I Commit to Double My Support For You and Your Startups. Work even more closely with the founders to help them with their financings. Help founders drive up revenue, achieving profitability and independence.

New York City 70

New York City New York Programming Founder 70

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 17, 2016

Instead of a VC, board member, or founder being the shareholder rep (and doing what can turn into a lot of work for free), you can now outsource this to SRS Acquiom. SRS Acquiom gives a portion of their revenue (up to 24 basis points) from the deal to the awesome group of designated charities that support entrepreneurs.

Merger 70

Merger Design Revenue Partner 70

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 27, 2012

The technology LinkSmart’s founder Pete Sheinbaum and his team have assembled is analogous to many of the solutions we’ve seen and invested in for search engine optimization (SEO) such as SEOMoz. LinkSmart has built a system that fixes part of this challenge.

Web 130

Web Stealth SEO HTML 130

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 10, 2013

First, he was the co-founder of Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM – currently valued at $8 billion.) Over the last decade, however, they’ve demonstrated that they have a real business, now valued at $8 billion with Q313 revenue of $396m, Q313 GAAP Net Income of $80m, and cash flow from operations in Q313 of +$158m.

Denver 129

Denver IPO Cofounder 129