Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 14, 2018

” Or, we won’t hire anyone new, other than replacing attrition, until after we have revenue of $X / person.” For example, “We won’t have a month of negative EBITDA.” ” Or, “well never have negative cash flow of more than $500,000.”

Acquisition 145

Acquisition IPO Metrics Finance 145

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 15, 2014

This role is one of our most crucial hires this year. Seed is the new Series A. (~$2M used get for building product, establishing product-market fit and early revenue). 6M-$15M used to scale customer acquisition and revenue). Series A is the new Series B. (~6M-$15M Series B is the new Series C. Series C/D is the new Mezzanine.

Stock 114

Stock Mezzanine Acquisition Revenue 114

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 16, 2019

The budgets also have huge variability after financings, when suddenly the budget gets recast given the new money in the bank, or the constraints against hiring are removed and costs increase suddenly, even if this is only to “catch up” with the budget that was underhired to. Or, the opposite.

Government 70

Government Finance Revenue Management 70

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 7, 2016

If you are the CEO of a VC or angel backed company, will need to raise more money in the future, are doing more than $100,000 of revenue a month, and are growing more than 25% a year, then this post if for you. If you aren’t going to make your revenue plan, it’s unlikely you’ll make your EBITDA or Net Income plan.

Revenue 70

Revenue .Net Metrics Restful 70

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 10, 2011

My friends at Fitbit are hiring a director of marketing. There is a ton of hiring going on in our portfolio right now at all levels. We have a bunch of companies that are growing head count 100%+ in 2011 – much of it driven by revenue growth (vs. just a new financing). just a new financing).

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Marketing Portfolio Finance 128

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 28, 2017

Use the root cause analysis to lower your costs and increase your revenue so that you beat your plan. Or in 2015 you had raised a bunch of money, hired a lot of people, and assumed it was all going to just work out according to the spreadsheet model you used to build headcount and revenue expectations based on the headcount.

Forecast 70

Forecast Revenue Hiring Management 70

Feld Thoughts

MAY 7, 2010

Our friends at the BLS need to hire Edward Tufte to get some help with their data presentation skills. Occasionally I’ll run into a company that does this – usually around revenue vs. gross margin dynamics, or bookings vs. revenue, or GAAP accounting vs. actual cash flows (where what really matters is cash flows.)

Government 142

Government New York Revenue Search 142

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. A long conversation ensued which resulted in me pondering this illusion and trying to put some parameters around it.

Product 70

Product Marketing Valuation Search 70

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 7, 2017

We had each hired friends, bought companies from people we knew (and had gotten to know), and spent late nights doing unnatural acts to get the company to the point where, in 2000, it was doing $50 million of revenue a quarter and seemed to be a very successful Internet business.

SEC 148

SEC New York Venture Capital Partner 148