Steve Blank

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What Founders Need to Know: You Were Funded for a Liquidity Event – Start Looking

Steve Blank

While you might be interested in building a company that changes the world, regardless of how long it takes, your investors are interested in funding a company that changes the world so they can have a liquidity event within the life of their fund ~7-10 years. (A You’ve been funded to get to a liquidity event.

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Why good people leave large tech companies

Steve Blank

The belief then was that most founders couldn’t acquire the HR, finance, sales, and board governance skills rapidly enough to steer the company to a liquidity event, so they hired professional managers. These new CEOs would also act as a brake to temper the founder’s excesses.

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How Do You Want to Spend Your Next 4 Years of Your Life?

Steve Blank

Or is it something that can grow to a size that will result in an acquisition or some liquidity event? Is it a small business that hits $4 million in revenue in four years and $8 million in ten years? You need to decide what your personal goal is and how it matches what you think this business can grow into.

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Early-stage Regional Venture Funds–part 2 of 3 of Bigger in Bend

Steve Blank

The reality is that the super vast majority of liquidity events are M&A and the majority of those are in the under $100M range. The percentage of VC backed startups that go public is very small, so counting on those exits in a regional fund would not be prudent (nice if it happens but don’t build the model to rely on it).

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The New Deal – A Founding CEOs Value is Non Linear

Steve Blank

Where’s My Liquidity Event. Some VC’s feel that if a startup has grown past the founder’s ability to manage and scale (and hasn’t had a liquidity event,) they should be able to remove the founding CEO and (at best) walk them out the door with only the stock they vested to that day.

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Welcome to the Lost Decade (for Entrepreneurs, IPO’s and VC’s)

Steve Blank

Number of Venture Backed Liquidity Events 1991-2000. Number of Venture Backed Liquidity Events 2000-2010. During the decade between 1991 and 2000, nearly 2000 venture backed companies went public. Take a look at the chart below. (It It includes venture funded startups in all industries, from software to biotech.

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Intel Disrupted: Why large companies find it difficult to innovate, and what they can do about it

Steve Blank

Capital is returned to these investors through liquidity events (originally public offerings, but today mostly acquisitions). But starting in the last quarter of that century and accelerating in this one, a new form of financing – risk capital (angel and venture capital) — emerged.