View from Seed

MAY 11, 2016

This is driven by either boredom or fatigue around the areas where they’ve built a business in the past, or else the founder knows too much about the market they are coming from. Knowing all the challenges and warts of a market or problem makes it hard to dive back in that second time. 3: Re-calibrating to a new stage and time.

Founder 159

Founder Cofounder CTO Hire Early Stage 159

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

In addition, I’ve noted a few multi-product lending firms, e.g., Kapitus and United Capital Source , which provide RBI as one of many structural options to companies seeking capital. . We have a special program if you are pre-seed and need product development. We’re also regularly following-on for existing portfolio companies.”.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. VCs crave the ability to help portfolio companies. You may have an opinion on your market-entry strategy for Europe. Always seek input.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

The “more traction&# feedback is a very typical scenario is a down market economy like the one we’re in. But many Series A firms tell people they have a “revenue rule&# and then you look at their portfolio and see many exceptions. It’s marketing 101 for tech companies in terms of how you market to customers.

Technical Review 309

Technical Review Term Sheet Venture Capital Revenue 309

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing launched a virtual portfolio management game on Facebook in January 2008 and a similar version shortly thereafter on kaChing.com. Because kaChing prefers its portfolio managers to have a long track record, the marketplace launch (i.e., A portfolio manager’s entire track record & holdings had to be disclosed.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Austin Startup

APRIL 8, 2019

I’m not sure if they are “good” per se, but my investors regularly ask for a redacted version to share with another startup in their portfolio which needs an example of a good update. Then I put those thoughts and facts into an email to 25+ people and my entire company. Hopefully, it is helpful. Dear Shareholder, Happy Monday from Austin!

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Balance Sheet Startup Austin 48

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 15, 2018

Corporate accelerators are one of the best ways for startups to access capital, advice, and markets. The 10-week programme gives start-ups the opportunity to trial their products at scale and work closely with senior management and experts across the Group. Product development input. World class mentors.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Due Diligence Startup Analytics 60

VC Adventure

MARCH 17, 2022

With the markets down significantly, financings (at least at the later stages) slowing down, and inflation and interest rates on the rise, perhaps now is a good time to talk about your burn rate. Hopefully, you took advantage of the robust financing markets of the past few years to put some money on your balance sheet.

Balance Sheet 121

Balance Sheet Burn Rate Valuation Metrics 121

Version One Ventures

JULY 1, 2020

And while these past three months have been far from typical, there was a lot of activity across our portfolio. The funding will be used for product development and to continue their geographic expansion (more in Europe and eventually Asia). Scanwell continues to work on bringing a Covid-19 antibody test to market.

North Carolina 148

North Carolina Raleigh Stealth Seattle 148

Version One Ventures

NOVEMBER 28, 2018

At V1, we have had the privilege to sit on many of our portfolio companies’ boards from (pre-)seed to Series B (and beyond). We actively help each portfolio company manage their changing priorities as they grow. Priority = product-market fit . The seed round is all about finding product-market fit.

Seed Stage 163

Seed Stage Portfolio Metrics Hiring 163

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Recently, we looked at our own portfolio at NextView Ventures to dig a little deeper on how startups actually raise that next round of financing. in our portfolio. Foster product development and marketing which creates organic (or somewhat organic) user traction. The mean Series A size was $5.2M. They are: 1.

Syndicate 333

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Startup 333

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

Near-term product development and commercial traction are still important goals, but being profligate with capital or time early on or being inconsistent about your vision & strategy makes it harder to be a meaningful force in a market in the years to come as that market grows and matures.

Chicago 156

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 156

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2009

When they promise to help you with marketing, sales, distribution, integrated product development, etc. But the venture guys don’t make the calls on what the product / business guys do. You’re not their core business – their interest will swing more wildly with the markets. it sure is tempting.

Strategic Investors 279

Strategic Investors Venture Capital Due Diligence Early Stage 279

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

But startups require money upfront for product development and later to scale. VC’s raise money from their investors (limited partners like pension funds) and then spread their risk by investing in a number of startups (called a portfolio). Or as with consumer deals, is the value is ascribed by the market? The Good News.

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

Near-term product development and commercial traction are still important goals, but being profligate with capital or time early on or being inconsistent about your vision & strategy makes it harder to be a meaningful force in a market in the years to come as that market grows and matures.

Chicago 136

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 136

SVPG

JULY 24, 2011

If your company is one that still allocates product development funds based on approval of projects, then you still have the old “project-based funding model.” This is just one of the important dimensions of product portfolio planning. Unfortunately it’s a very bad model.

Portfolio 71

Portfolio Revenue Finance Product Development 71

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 28, 2012

In the late year of 1995, IBM acquired Lotus Development, makers of the Lotus 123 spreadsheet and a proprietary Internet predecessor, Lotus Notes, for $3.5B—more more than the combined market capitalizations of Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo, Netscape and the entire Internet sector. But to have such a birth, we must first have a funeral.

Romania 77

Romania Software Review Cloud Mobile 77

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Dave’s a great guy with a good sense of humor and a broad knowledge of the market, which is why I was excited that he could be on the show. It is a platform to help brands building viral marketing campaigns. They focus on trying to drive engagbranded social media marketing campaigns (e.g. Enter ShoeDazzle.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

VC Adventure

JANUARY 24, 2013

At the risk of overgeneralizing (although to be fair as a VC that’s pretty much my job description) and understanding that there’s plenty of grey area here, I’ve really been noticing recently just how challenging it can be for organizations to move from being product focused to sales and marketing focused.

Sales 102

Sales Product Marketing Acquisition 102

David Teten

MAY 1, 2013

However, they remain key to your email identity, and fundamental to your marketing and even capital-raising. The ff Venture Capital portfolio is evidence of how much we believe this, e.g., our companies Alerts.com , Gobbler.com , Identified.com , Patents.com , Phone.com , and Plated.com. “The

Naming 114

Naming Semantic Venture Capital Startup 114

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Both venture firms sought my advice for their portfolio companies. I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems. It was a long way from Ellis Island.) Surprisingly, I enjoyed seeing other startups from an outsider’s perspective.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 25, 2022

Over time, you’ll start building up more and more sophisticated ways of tracking and your reports will start to subdivide into functional areas like marketing, product development, and financials (when you have dedicated investor money or a limited pool of your own capital you’ve decided to invest).

Equity 118

Equity Metrics Widget Bandwidth 118

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 24, 2017

In addition, we were lucky enough to finally find reliable partners, thus adding a few more services to our portfolio – like Locksmith and Childcare. I’ve been helping clients with digital marketing (mostly Facebook ads) since early 2016, but this year was able to quit my job to do that full-time. 3- Quitting my day job.

Las Vegas 84

Las Vegas Entrepreneur Software Review Community 84

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 20, 2018

Some startups require lots of brainstorming sessions, networking, marketing, writing code, and product development in a race against time to be the first to the market. Make your money work for you in the financial markets. Freelance on the side if you have outsourceable skills.

eCommerce 100

eCommerce Social Media SEO Portfolio 100

Genuine VC

MARCH 24, 2014

The five conditions for a Series A financing which he enumerated are: a core team ready to scale, demonstrable market size, repeatable cost effective customer acquisition, metric momentum, and plausible monetization. The strategy here is to foster product development and marketing which creates overall (semi-)organic user momentum.

Seed Capital 212

Seed Capital Metrics Cofounder Revenue 212

Hunter Walker

JUNE 14, 2018

Information, relationships, pattern matching for marketplaces, SaaS, financial services, agriculture, media, etc etc – our backgrounds and/or portfolio suggest that we might have ability to help the founders move faster and with greater accuracy in testing their market hypotheses.

Cap Table 81

Cap Table Portfolio Vertical Reputation 81

NZ Entrepreneur

AUGUST 12, 2020

While many large companies invest millions to protect their intellectual property portfolio, startups in their early stages can forget to look into their intellectual property altogether or make decisions that have a negative impact later on when the business develops. i) Assuming your intellectual property is not important.

Intellectual Property 91

Intellectual Property New Zealand Startup Early Stage 91

SiliconHills

JULY 13, 2017

The company plans to use the money on product development, customer support and marketing. “We We are thrilled to bring Telestax into our portfolio of promising companies. Telestax announced this week it has raised $4.7 million in funding. Austin-based LiveOak Venture Partners led the funding round.

Austin 48

Austin Portfolio Partner Product Development 48

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

That’s the mission driving products like Hemafuse , one of 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2020. Because of a global donor blood shortage, particularly in emerging markets, clinicians and patients don’t have enough access to donor blood. Our top goal is to break into new markets and add new products to our portfolio.

Baltimore 62

Baltimore Africa South Africa Michigan 62

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Over the summer, based on feedback from our portfolio and the broader startup community, NextView created pre-formatted board deck templates for seed-stage startups — part of our Growth Guides series. In doing so, a few core metrics inevitably emerge depending on the product and the model.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

Canary , a portfolio company of mine, takes advantage of this in the security space. Perhaps this is a common theme in my portfolio. SocialSignIn , software that turns wifi into an engaging social marketing channel, operates on the same premise. Snap it on and then--just do what you normally do. Walk, eat, sleep, done.

Bandwidth 112

Bandwidth Venture Capital Portfolio Hosting 112

VC Adventure

JANUARY 24, 2013

At the risk of overgeneralizing (although to be fair as a VC that’s pretty much my job description) and understanding that there’s plenty of grey area here, I’ve really been noticing recently just how challenging it can be for organizations to move from being product focused to sales and marketing focused.

Sales 48

Sales Product Marketing Acquisition 48

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 14, 2010

At today's roundtable we had some intensive discussions around market sizing and its impact on financing. You have heard, I am sure, that venture capitalists only invest in very large market opportunities - $500 million to $1 billion. I asked him several times what exactly is his TAM (Total Available Market). 30 million market?

Bootstrapping 114

Bootstrapping Marketing Angel Investor Silicon Valley 114

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

Today one of our portfolio companies BigDoor announced the acquisition of San Francisco-based OneTrueFan , a community and web check-in company. Recently the market demand has been outpacing their ability to keep up, so they turned to OneTrueFan as a means of accelerating their product development and overall growth.

San Francisco 115

San Francisco Acquisition Cofounder IPO 115

Venture Chronicles

JUNE 29, 2010

It was a good hook but one that opened up a whole new dimension that I don’t think they anticipated, but one which led to a really interesting conversation with Christine Crandall, SVP of Marketing for the company. Requirements: Product manager that builds product plans and optimizes execution across multiple teams.

Software 34

Software Portfolio Agile Retention 34

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2020

Every good VC looks for the same three things: a great team, a great product, and a large and attractive market. Other VCs will say that of the three key criteria – team, product and market – at the early stage, team is by far the most important. That’s still true in some markets.

Partner 68

Partner Early Stage Portfolio Metrics 68

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 1, 2020

As we wanted a direct path to the user to ensure we would be providing the best user experience, we decided to go for a freemium model to lower the bar for developers to get started. million developers using our product. Developers have no barrier to getting started with Snyk. Today, we have around 1.5

Early Stage 62

Early Stage Open Source Development Team Review Security 62