Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 2, 2014

Over the next two years, I made 40 angel investments with the money I made from the sale of the company. I vaguely remember a fun, energetic chat as we met a few people at Yoyodyne, ran through the products, and talked about how amazing the Internet and email was going to be as a marketing tool.

San Francisco 159

San Francisco Boston Venture Capital Angel Investor 159

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

The people on the sales side don’t feel they can charge for it yet because who’s going to take out their wallet for something that isn’t perfect. Real Product and Market Focus – This company lost 3-6 months of execution because they got lost building towards a high level vision. There is $350k left in the bank.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 4, 2014

On Monday we had a Foundry Group portfolio company sales summit. We are fortunate in that we’ve got a bunch of amazing sales execs in our portfolio, including several CEOs like Howard Diamond of MobileDay and Matthew Bellows of Yesware who have long histories selling and building sales organizations. Sales ROI yesware'

Software 140

Software Portfolio Sales Cofounder 140

Feld Thoughts

MAY 26, 2021

The thing is, the categories were things like “Existentialism” and “Philosophy Reference” where overall sales are lower – they are applicable to the book as categories, but not really our target market (for the record, the book is selling nicely in “Entrepreneurial Management”, where it was briefly #2.).

New York 91

New York Lean Reputation Email 91

Feld Thoughts

MAY 11, 2017

And, instead of ARR thresholds ($10m ARR, $25m ARR, $50m ARR, $100m ARR), I like to use MRR thresholds, which I talked about extensively in a post from 2015 titled The Illusion of Product/Market Fit for SaaS Companies. If you can blast through the $500k MRR mark and march to $1m MRR, you’ve found product/market fit.

IPO 171

IPO Portfolio Channel Revenue 171

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 29, 2015

I’m not talking about a sales situation – separate that out – but rather a long-term business partnership, joint development, or technology partnership. For a while, I carried around a purist thought of mutual innovation. In these cases, the large company puts up no money, but people engage to work with the small company.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital Reputation Affiliate Conversion 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 13, 2017

” While this can apply to any size company, it’s particularly relevant to a company that is in the market with its first product, or a company that is now scaling rapidly with a set of products. The focus of each person is on a specific functional area (finance, marketing, sales) and traditionally scoped.

Leadership 70

Leadership Engineer Finance Sales 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 29, 2014

AWS sales are off slightly. Second quarter net sales of AWS — or at least the category in which it is embedded– were off about 3 percent sequentially to $1.168 billion from $1.204 billion for the first quarter. ” Could Amazon’s nature be catching up with it, or is it just operating in a more competitive market?

Cloud 176

Cloud Partner Hosting Cost 176

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Part lifestyle choice, part time management, part promotion and marketing, and part entrepreneurship, the book advocates minimizing the time invested in traditional jobs. Here’s how to calculate break-even point in sales.”. Purpose: Free up time and increase effectiveness. Have you considered X? Telecommute.

Technical Review 195

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Software Review Cofounder 195

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 26, 2014

Specifically, at FG Press the author gets 50% royalty on all books sold (up from the traditional 15%) and we employ the latest technologies, promotions, and marketing efforts to help the author build a personal audience who they have a direct relationship with. But what about sales and distribution? generate more revenue.

Distribution 155

Distribution Viral Audience Revenue 155

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 26, 2014

Specifically, at FG Press the author gets 50% royalty on all books sold (up from the traditional 15%) and we employ the latest technologies, promotions, and marketing efforts to help the author build a personal audience who they have a direct relationship with. But what about sales and distribution? generate more revenue.

Distribution 133

Distribution Viral Audience Revenue 133

Feld Thoughts

JULY 7, 2011

Today it is a profitable, 250 person company that is growing quickly, dominates its market segment, and is an awesome place to work. For example, ask a sales person to do a presentation. We’ve axed many sales people because they fell apart during the presentation. Give you candidate something to do.

Bandwidth 134

Bandwidth Leadership Hiring Sales 134

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 10, 2014

They are maddening to mature CEOs who have built real companies that dominate their market segment but are in either an out of favor segment or using an approach (e.g. enterprise software license sales) that is no longer trendy. In our world, none of this matters that much to us. We aren’t momentum investors.

Later Stage 142

Later Stage Syndicate Syndication Portfolio 142

Feld Thoughts

MAY 4, 2016

I expect over the next year there will be 174 VC-based content marketing posts about how to build a successful hardware business. Maybe they’ll even include information at different scale points of the business and tie the metrics to marketing and sales expense.

Metrics 70

Metrics Equity Channel Software 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 19, 2011

I’ve watched the workflow, even from very disciplined sales people, and shaken my head in total bafflement at the lack of integration and the perverse contortions the sales person goes through to try to make the two systems work together. ” The seed round was an ample amount of money for them to go for at least a year.

Email 130

Email Boston Channel Finance 130

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 14, 2011

Many of the companies that we invest in are the leaders in their respective markets. Often they create the market. And sometimes they are in a brutal fight every day with another company or two for market leadership. If you never call it, you’ll one day find yourself no longer the market leader.

Leadership 129

Leadership Operations Employee Marketing 129

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2014

In it, he talks about how he handles public company stocks that he ends up with either via an IPO or a sale of a company he’s involved in to a public company. Granted Rule 157 says that you need to mark it to market every quarter, but that’s a different messed up issue.

Valuation 143

Valuation Stock Angel Investor IPO 143

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

Not only can these farmers now finally produce enough vegetables to meet their own families’ nutritional needs, they become micro-entrepreneurs by growing additional crops to sell in local markets, substantially raising their incomes. But Driptech’s contribution to poverty eradication doesn’t end there.

India 128

India China Internet Cost 128

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 28, 2011

In the middle of the day, Paul Ford (the VP of Marketing at Softlayer ) chauffeured me to Clear Channel and back. I remember 14001 North Dallas Parkway really well – we were on the seventh floor and I felt like a real grownup sitting in my office coding for $10 per hour and a 5% royalty on all sales of the two products I wrote.

Dallas 105

Dallas Cofounder Channel Programming 105

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

The idea was fine although I could tell within 15 seconds that it wasn’t something we’d invest in given the market he was going after. The great entrepreneurs (and sales people) “show”. The video I watched today was a two minute segment of the entrepreneur looking into the camera and describing his business idea.

Video 131

Video Email Entrepreneur Sales 131

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 29, 2013

I use Yesware in Gmail to help track messages and automate responses when I send company-related marketing/sales emails. Extending functionality of services by authorizing plug-ins to gain access to your data can be really useful as well.

Oauth 151

Oauth Security Cofounder API 151

Feld Thoughts

JULY 21, 2015

.” Me: “You realize that’s not MRR, but that’s Gross Sales?” ” Founder: “5% – we are trying to grow market share.” ” Founder: “What’s the difference?” ” Me: “What percentage of each transaction do you keep in your marketplace?”

Silicon Valley 70

Silicon Valley Metrics .Net Founder 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 31, 2013

Over the last decade, I’ve gotten to know Dan, watched as he’s built an incredible $6 billion market cap company headquartered in Boulder, while contributing relentlessly to the Boulder startup community. In the sale to LVLT, we kept a portion of this office. It’s great – and follows.

Bandwidth 147

Bandwidth Colorado Startup IRR 147

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

Once again, as we find ourselves in the middle of a significant public market correction, especially around technology stocks, there’s an enormous amount of noise in the system, as there always is. I suffered through the next financing after implementing a complex structure, or a sale of the company, or a liquidation.

Cap Table 70

Cap Table Down Round Liquidation Preference Founder 70

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 22, 2015

Behind the stories of most first-time venture-backed CEOs building startups and attacking markets at breakneck speed, there is usually a tight network of mentors and peers showing them the ropes of company building. I took notes, asked questions, and tried to fit in.

NDA 70

NDA Portfolio Operations Management 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 23, 2015

In addition to getting paid $10 / hour (which quickly taught me that if I worked more hours, I got paid more money) I received a 5% royalty on gross sales of the two products I wrote (PC Log and PC Economics). In December, 1985, Saudi Arabia flooded the market for oil and by the end of 1986 the price of a barrel of oil was around $10.

Saudi Arabia 70

Saudi Arabia Dallas Coder Denmark 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 23, 2012

.” If you look at the Foundry Group portfolio , you’ll notice a lot of market leaders. After that there is a category of companies who might be market leaders, but it’s too early to tell as they are still very young. While some of them created entirely new markets, others entered into existing markets.

Venture Capital 138

Venture Capital Portfolio Distribution Channel 138

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 19, 2014

I’m not sure where that rule comes from, but by that measure, we should see the first self driving cars on sale in 2017. in the late 2020s, just following the mass-market production of fully autonomous cars. From a cost perspective, we’ve already seen that lidar is likely to drop from $70,000 to $250. What about cost?

Artificial Inteligence 183

Artificial Inteligence Government Nevada Cost 183