Haystack

DECEMBER 29, 2018

More and more angels will be minted as the 2019 IPO class emerges. Also during this time, the underlying metrics in that business can change positively, potentially trapping companies to accept the initially-agreed upon valuation. 1/ Social Network Interference. Hundreds of new micro funds somehow keep getting into the market.

Technical Review 165

Technical Review Venture Capital Russia China 165

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 10, 2018

You’ll find exceptions to this rule, like Snapchat, which was operating at a loss at its IPO, when it experienced high initial trading prices due to its huge popularity and untapped monetization capabilities. Another important metric is churn. This the first and foremost way to begin evaluating the sellability of your company.

Valuation 145

Valuation Technical Review Exit Strategy Metrics 145

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

Square filed its S-1 several weeks ago and is now in the middle of its IPO road show process. A bunch of articles came out saying that Square had “priced” their IPO below last round and this was something terrible ranging from the bursting of a tech bubble to the coming of the apocalypse. excluding Starbucks deal).

IPO 165

IPO .Net Revenue Acquisition 165

NZ Entrepreneur

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

Generating liquidity usually entails either selling the venture or an IPO. Agenda items will focus on key metrics illustrating value creation, particularly in software as a service companies. Access your local angel network or club. Check out New Zealand’s Angel networks on the Angel Association NZ website.

Technical Review 89

Technical Review Software Review New Zealand Due Diligence 89

Cracking the Code

JULY 6, 2007

SaaS business metrics: why are they different? I was surprised today when I went through the NetSuite IPO filling (S1) to see that it looked very much like any Enterprise software document - not a single mention of churn or % of recurring revenues. Different models require different performance metrics. Friday, July 06, 2007.

Software Review 66

Software Review Metrics Valuation Technical Review 66

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

To do this they have to accomplish five things; 1) get deal flow – via networking and legwork, they identify likely industries, companies and teams with the potential for rapid growth (less than 10 years), 2) evaluate those companies and teams on the basis of technology, market opportunity, and team.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” An ad network (the middleman) might sell $500,000 in ads. The advertiser who bought the ads might pay the ad network in 60 days.

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 15, 2019

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. A focus on looking good as an acquisition or IPO candidate has undermined many startups. Less is more.

Social Media 218

Social Media India Acquisition China 218

crowdSPRING Blog

JANUARY 18, 2013

Thanks To Facebook, Strongest Year For IPOs Since 2000 With $21.5 The 6 Marketing Metrics Your CEO Actually Cares About [Cheat Sheet] | Hubspot Blog - [link]. The 6 Marketing Metrics Your CEO Actually Cares About [Cheat Sheet] | Hubspot Blog - [link]. Why You Should Give Yourself Permission to Screw Up - [link].

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

Reid Hoffman

DECEMBER 10, 2020

With Airbnb’s IPO, I thought the time was right to take a look back at the past decade (Greylock led Airbnb’s Series A in November 2010) and reflect on what I learned from the journey. The other reason I could decide so quickly is that I really know networks and marketplaces. HOW GREYLOCK INVESTED IN AIRBNB.

Hosting 69

Hosting Hockey Stick IPO Silicon Valley 69

Mucker Lab

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Out of hundreds of social networks launched, only one changed the world. Why should a public market downturn determine an investment in a startup that has seven to 10 years to go before it can even think about an IPO? Normal distributions do not exist; standard deviations are meaningless.

Harvest 60

Harvest Vertical IPO Early Stage 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 4, 2021

It was one of the year's most successful IPOs so far, and has been heralded as a "landmark moment" for cryptocurrency's entrance into mainstream investing. Just before the IPO, I had a far-reaching conversation with co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong as he approached this major milestone for the company he co-founded back in 2012.

IPO 113

IPO Cofounder Technical Review Government 113

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

I greatly leveraged my eCommerce and broad Shop.org network to do so. I intentionally waited until we were 12 months old and had our first million in annual client bookings to hire our first VP of Sales, Michael Osborne, because I wanted to run with my network first and get the business model right before we added too much fuel to the fire.

Bootstrapping 52

Bootstrapping IPO Business Model Software Review 52

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). Online social networking is a concept still being evangelized even in Silicon Valley… Friendster is in private beta (wasn’t until Oct 2003 they received Google acquisition offer which they turned down for Kleiner/Benchmark round). We’ve been lucky.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

This structure allows for alignment on the front end, and real-time flexibility for performance metrics,” says Samira Salman , a family office investor and advisor. . Flexible VCs have created structures based on other company performance metrics than revenues, such as profits or founder salaries. Flexible VC 102: Variations.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

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

View from Seed

MARCH 3, 2015

Ellie Mirman was the first marketer hired by the CMO of HubSpot, the Boston-based marketing software startup that IPOed in 2014. NextView Ventures: Thinking back to before anyone knew HubSpot or the company was headed towards an IPO, where did you even start to market the company? Interestingly, HubSpot isn’t unique in this respect.

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 17, 2014

Use LinkedIn and your network to find people who worked with him or her. One way to suss this out – ask the co-workers about the metrics or key performance indicators they owned. Put in the time to understand the employee’s actual contributions and role by checking references (and not just those provided to you.)

IPO 86

IPO Cofounder Hiring Reputation 86

Cracking the Code

MAY 25, 2010

The golf was followed by cocktail, dinner and poker: a very fun start to prepare the full day of content and networking on May 12th at the Rosewood SandHill. ipo process. SaaS business metrics: why are they different? Feedburner Network. Paperblog network. You really did a great job on that! Happy New Year 2008!

Software Review 74

Software Review Cloud IPO Jordan 74

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 14, 2017

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. A focus on looking good as an acquisition or IPO candidate has undermined many startups. Less is more.

Social Media 163

Social Media India Acquisition China 163

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

This gave me an idea: I could help many more entrepreneurs by making the deck available not just to the Greylock network of entrepreneurs, but to everyone. Friendster’s valuation set the tone for the entire social networking space. The graphic we chose emphasizes that it is a network of people. Why is it valuable?

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

While poised with a limited number of transactions this year, the world of public Cloud Computing and SaaS companies has been marked by two events in the past few months: the acquisition of Omniture by Adobe and the high profile IPO of LogMeIn, a leading provider of PC remote access and support with a very interesting freemium model.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review IPO Cloud 48

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 7, 2013

They’re using metrics that are often unworkable in the current business environment, causing growing businesses to look elsewhere for capital and increasingly towards alternative forms of financing. Case in point: It took Amazon six years to earn a dime, during which it consumed huge amounts of venture funding and issued an IPO.

Advisory Board 249

Advisory Board Entrepreneur Portland Oregon 249

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. The only reason we learned the art of metrics-based decision making at IMVU was out of necessity. that justify decisions already made. I think it was $350 the next, and so on.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 13, 2021

He said, “outside of investing in companies with proven network effects, what are some of your recent investment theses?”. So let’s see, generally speaking, obviously, I tend to orient towards things with network effects in the background. Let’s think about a network of biases, one you’ve said something about before.

Incubator 36

Incubator IPO Networking Cofounder 36

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process. How They Do It: Build email list of consumers interested in local deals (mainly via paid search & social network ads), sell coupon programs to merchants via telesales. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. June 5, 2011.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Ben's Blog

MARCH 24, 2011

To find out whether or not today’s public technology companies have hit bubble valuations, let’s compare some companies that survived the great bubble with their bubble era valuations: The Enterprise Value-to-Revenue multiple (EV/Rev) and Price-to-Earnings multiple (PE) are commonly used metrics to tell the valuation:value story.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Database 78

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. Even if it shows improvement in some micro metric, does that invalidate the overall design? That was evident in the metrics and in the in-person usability tests. Let me illustrate.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

For example, one angel investor reportedly invested in several hundred social networking ventures employing this philosophy. ► 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.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2012

In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. Many people seem to use the social network advertising model for revenue, but forget it assumes at least 100M users and $50M investment. Financial forecast and metrics.

Business Plan 283

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 283

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Customers found it confusing and it turned out to be at odds with our fundamental value proposition (which really requires an independant IM network). Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2011

In fact, a business plan is needed more by you than investors, as the blueprint for your company, team communication, and progress metrics. Many people seem to use the social network advertising model for revenue, but forget it assumes at least 100M users and $50M investment. Financial forecast and metrics.

Business Plan 290

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 290

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Ive spoken in some detail about a specific pivot that we went through at IMVU , when we decided to abandon the instant messaging add-on concept, and switch to a standalone instant messaging network. We went through another pivot when we switched again from instant messaging to social networking. It was painful.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 4, 2008

2007 was a turning point for the SaaS industry with the successful IPOs of NetSuite, SuccessFactors, DemandTec, Salary.com, Aprimo and Constant Contact. What metrics should I be using to drive a saas business? or What do I need to do to get ready for an IPO. Save Asia for post-IPO. “Bookings” is for suckers.

Software Review 48

Software Review South Korea IPO Portfolio 48

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And they expose the startups to a vast network of mentors, none of whom get paid for their involvement. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. They dont invest a lot of money; just enough to keep them going through the summer. Some of the mentors are based in Boulder, but many are not.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

Spray files across cheap disks on your network. ► 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. MogileFS - "Distributed (meta) file system. Pay less for storage.

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

When we became a standalone network, it didnt matter how easy it was to add new networks, since we never did. Worse of all, the plaintext codes we were used to sending were considered non-authoritative, since they could be pulled off a third-party network. It had a pretty good technical design.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87