Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

buy out an entire company for its revenue and profits. In response, venture capital firms like Sequoia and Andreessen/Horowitz are hiring new partners just to work with their portfolio companies and match them to corporations. The founding team is testing for the right combination of product, market, revenue, costs, etc.

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 3, 2021

Operating a competitive business and turning a significant profit is even more challenging. Despite the odds against new business success, Lazarus started and operated four businesses by the time he was 25 years old. This is how he came to start and operate Luke Lazarus Consulting in Sydney more than two decades ago.

United States 167

United States Entrepreneur Angel Investor Social Media 167

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

billion revenue in 2021 for Epic Games and was played by 83.3 monthly active end-users who are engaging with content created or operated by Unity solutions in 2020. billion revenue in 2021, a 107% increase year-on-year. billion revenue in 2021, the second year in a row it made over $1 billion. Fortnite generated $5.8

IP 206

IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. Looking ahead at the next decade I am excited by what I believe will be viewed as one of the best and most rational investment periods for venture capital due to seven discrete factors: 1. The Exit Problem.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

Up and Running

AUGUST 18, 2014

Apart from having different ways of thinking about ‘growth’, startups seek financial investment differently than most small business operations. Startups tend to rely on capital that comes via angel investors or venture capital firms while small business operations may rely on loans and grants.

Small Business 154

Small Business Exit Strategy Cofounder Angel Investor 154

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

Ah, but today’s Internet companies have real revenue! And this is happening in mezzanine (pre-IPO) deals as well. And post IPO deals, although these tend to correct more quickly. And as you probably guessed the data aren’t any better on IPOs with less than 20 / year average for the past 10 years. and profits!

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

BeyondVC

APRIL 4, 2018

Look at the Dropbox IPO which priced above its initial value and came out white hot at the end of one of the worst weeks in stock market performance. Couple that with Mulesoft being bought for 21x TTM revenue ( see Tomasz Tunguz analysis ) at $6.5 Their growth to over $509mm of revenue from $281mm 2 years ago is a case in point.

Cloud 60

Cloud Agile Architecture Azure 60

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

70–80% of the costs of most startups are employee costs so what you’re really talking about when a company is unprofitable is that they are growing their staff ahead of their revenue. Revenue When I look at an income statement I start by focusing on the revenue line. You need to understand the “quality” of the revenue.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

Austin Startup

MAY 10, 2021

It’s a massive opportunity to have an impact in the operations of businesses world-wide. a full 60x trailing twelve month revenues. Companies have increasingly digitized operations, but in silos, said lead director Rich Wong, a partner at Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Accel, an early investor in UiPath.

Silicon Valley 113

Silicon Valley IPO Venture Capital Valuation 113

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Operating experience (Helped run parts of CitySearch & UrbanSpoon, tons of product management experience, Board of Hatch Labs which helped spawn Tinder). Helped merge company with Seedling – on track to do $20 million combined revenue in 2015 – will now become Chairman). billion IPO), Envestnet (Chicago, $1.25

Partner 408

Partner Las Vegas Los Angeles Baltimore 408

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability. VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Haystack

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

Last night, SAP bought the company before it could IPO. By all accounts, the Utah-HQ’d company did everything the right way, was an overnight success 16 years in the making, and only raised venture capital as a growth company after years of bootstrapping. Qualtrics focuses on experience data, SAP focuses on operational data.

Acquisition 105

Acquisition Utah IPO Venture Capital 105

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. Electron-based Venture Capital. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. Here’s why.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 25, 2023

IPO – public company initial public stock offering. According to National Venture Capital Association statistics , only 16% of venture-backed startups recently used this alternative, due to high liability concerns, demanding shareholders, and high costs. Yet it is an opportunity for you and your investors to cash out.

Exit Strategy 264

Exit Strategy Private Equity Equity Technical Review 264

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 25, 2020

IPO – public company initial public stock offering. According to National Venture Capital Association statistics , only 16% of venture-backed startups recently used this alternative, due to high liability concerns, demanding shareholders, and high costs. Yet it is an opportunity for you and your investors to cash out.

Exit Strategy 376

Exit Strategy Startup Private Equity Equity 376

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

They’ll tell you all about their strategy, the order of operations of who and how they pitched, the magic slides, the timing of the raise itself, etc. Or that venture capital is a meritocracy? We know what the racial and gender wealth disparity looks like: This is a lesson taught to be by Jewel from Collab Capital.

Venture Capital 162

Venture Capital Cofounder Deal Flow Later Stage 162

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

— Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm. In the 20th century tech companies and their investors made money through an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Steve Blank

JUNE 17, 2011

They helped build these struggling ventures into the Facebooks’, Twitters’, and Zyngas’ before anyone else appreciated these companies could have hundreds of millions of users with off-the-chart revenue and profits. billion dollars while admitting it will have operating losses through the end of fiscal 2012.)

Investment Bankers 310

Investment Bankers Stock Valuation Venture Capital 310

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

We’re at 70 people, and we’ll do $40 million in revenue this year and should get to cash flow breakeven this quarter. ” Venture-backed startups will often have a Series C or D or later rounds during this phase. Operating execs hired by investors used the tools they learned in business school or larger corporations.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 19, 2012

I don’t know exactly when the agency to product transfer happened at Buddy, or at what point you can start calling yourself a software company (when service revenues dip below subscription/license revs?), They try to move more of their revenues to be recurring streams than to be hourly charges to a client.

Software 105

Software Media Social Media Advertising 105

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

And from a financial perspective, any investor would be better off buying stock in Amazon than buying and share of a corner bookshop; if you invested $100 in Amazon’s 1997 initial public offering (IPO), those shares would have been worth about $120,000 in 2018. The second is a lack of operational scalability.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

ReadWriteStart

JULY 15, 2020

WeWork’s founder was been accused of self-dealing, which in turn has thrown the company’s IPO into question. As Marie Ekeland, founder of venture capital firm Daphni has suggested, it matters if a company represents what you want the future to look like. The founder stepped aside.

Valuation 91

Valuation South Carolina San Jose Balance Sheet 91

K9 Ventures

APRIL 9, 2014

Yes, almost everyone who was operating as a Super Angel, went on to raise a venture fund. Threshold for an IPO is higher Ten years ago, if you had $20M in revenue you were ready to go public. If you have <$100M in revenue, you’re probably going to stay private. Welcome to the new venture landscape!

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 14, 2021

Fast forward to today; since we founded Taxfyle in 2015, it has earned the support and investment of numerous venture capitalists and is one of the fastest-growing companies in any sector in the U.S. 5000 list , which lists private American companies based on three-year revenue growth between 2016 and 2019. Magazine’ Inc.

CPA 136

CPA Founder Vertical Cofounder 136

Haystack

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

venture capital to date (more on this in a separate post), unfortunately relegating billion-dollar exits as “ho-hum” events to the technology crowd. 4/ The Big Winners: Cylance raised around ~$280M in financing, with large equity stakeholders being Khosla Ventures, Fairhaven, and Blackstone. 1/ Cash Is King: The $1.4B

Acquisition 62

Acquisition Artificial Inteligence Balance Sheet Cofounder 62

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

IPO – public company initial public stock offering. According to recent National Venture Capital Association statistics , only 20% of venture-backed startups now use this alternative, due to high liability concerns, demanding shareholders, and high costs. entrepreneur exit IPO lifestyle m&a startup' Marty Zwilling.

Exit Strategy 289

Exit Strategy Entrepreneur IPO Startup 289

Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

With this seed capital – more often than not totaling between $100,000 and $1,000,000 - the company accomplishes a number of key technical milestones, gets a beta customer or two, and then goes on a "road show" to venture capitalists around the country for capital to “scale” the business. There are a lot of dark, hard days.

Angel Investor 112

Angel Investor Venture Capital Sweat Equity Cram Down 112

abovethecrowd.com

JULY 10, 2014

Because of the magical ordering system and the ability to efficiently organize a distributed set of drivers, Uber can operate effectively in markets where it simply didn’t make sense to have a dense supply of taxis. You would end up with dramatically more rides – and that is exactly what is happening. New Use Cases. Use in less urban areas.

San Francisco 111

San Francisco San Jose Marketing Technical Review 111

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 30, 2015

Because most internet business concepts were not capable of productively employing tens of millions of dollars of venture capital does not mean they were bad ideas." Because companies today have way more revenues than the companies that went public or had huge up rounds back then. Each month, they''d tick up just a little bit.

Hockey Stick 60

Hockey Stick Valuation Startup Maryland 60

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

You see, Dan knows more about venture than most people; and if Dan isn’t aware that “pre-seed is a thing,” then I haven’t done a good enough job of explaining to the world what I and K9 do! Seed is the new Series A. (~$2M used get for building product, establishing product-market fit and early revenue). Series A is the new Series B. (~6M-$15M

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Growthink Blog

MAY 21, 2014

There were some great responses to my post last week as to the poor returns experienced by venture capital fund investors. Now Berkshire Model companies, as entities with fundamentally investment vs. operating mindsets more naturally position, language, and network their businesses in finance contexts.

San Diego 72

San Diego Warrant IRR Investment Bankers 72

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

For instance, if a consultant proposes to help you with public relations, pay them a commission equivalent to the greater of a flat fee per story placed or a percentage of revenue generated from the PR coverage. Thus, as your startup matures, many of your operational functions can be successfully outsourced.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 17, 2013

In a casino, the term “rake” refers to the commission that the house earns for operating a poker game. With each hand, a small percentage of the pot is scraped off by the dealer, which in essence becomes the “revenue” for the casino. As an example, eBay’s 2011 marketplace revenues were approximately $6.6B

Europe 101

Europe Social Network Technical Review IPO 101

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

Every successful technology company raises money throughout its lifecycle, perhaps starting with a seed investment and progressing through Series A, B, C, late-stage investments, and, for the most successful companies, an IPO. Lost in this conversation are the dramatic differences between a high priced private round and an IPO.

IPO 40

IPO Liquidation Preference Valuation Technical Review 40

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 27, 2016

IPO – public company initial public stock offering. According to recent National Venture Capital Association statistics , only 16% of venture-backed startups now use this alternative, due to high liability concerns, demanding shareholders, and high costs. Yet it is an opportunity for you and your investors to cash out.

Equity 120

Equity Exit Strategy Private Equity Startup 120

online.wsj.com

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

SIGNIFICANCE PROMINENT. --> The Venture Capital Secret: 3 Out of 4 Start-Ups Fail. An entrepreneur with a hot technology and venture-capital funding becomes a billionaire in his 20s. The National Venture Capital Association estimates that 25% to 30% of venture-backed businesses fail. NAME David Cowan.

Venture Capital 107

Venture Capital Software Review Rhode Island North Dakota 107