Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

If you are early in a platform (Zynga to Facebook, AngryBirds to iOS, Maker Studios to YouTube) you catch a major marketing wave where acquiring customers and growing revenue is exponential. Please read my post on this, “ Why You Should Stop Trying to Catch Lightning in a Bottle.

Technical Review 384

Technical Review Hockey Stick SEM Channel 384

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

But find a way where the bonus program is adjusted for any work that has a higher COGS due to dev work and they’ll sell around it – I promise. That’s the most important thing in your business to get revenues up. ” They’ll throw in extra storage, extra modules, extra freebies. The more, the better.

Sales 382

Sales Startup Technical Review Matching 382

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

Some LPs have privately speculated that later-stage VCs may have a field day in the next 18 months, buying up large positions in firms with strong revenue at attractive prices given the recent squeeze on funding. But both seed investors and LPs alike agree that as long as these programs are managed sensibly, their existence is useful.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital LP Silicon Valley Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

And importantly we’ve had revenue. When I start to see revenue figures I always want to know the details behind the revenue: Who championed the project? Did they do a major training program? I’m paranoid about the evaporation of revenue. It has been a good run. Who is the executive sponsor?

Marketing 354

Marketing Incubator Turkey Metrics 354

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

Nobody is offering to put you on their scout program and pay you to be an angel investor. The company with no revenue and a $150k burn rate that raised $2.5 I often wonder why they didn’t find a way to bring in some revenue to cover costs. You’re out of money. So you take the offer you get. I see this weekly.

Burn Rate 412

Burn Rate Dilution Revenue Valuation 412

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

However, the higher you get within an organization in the sale (and the larger the deal) executives are often looking to “win in the market,” which means growing revenue faster, offering products or services at a lower cost or offering features that their competitors can’t.

PR 150

PR Early Stage Software Naming 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

Invoca is now doing 10s of millions in recurring revenue and is growing > 75% year-over-year but it took the first 3 years to really build out the technology and acquire our initial enterprise clients. I mentioned that we sold our position in Kyriba for > $1 billion but when we invested it had virtually no revenue.

IP 223

IP Intellectual Property IRR Cofounder 223

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I bought a book and I learned how to program macros and build spreadsheets. We had a finance group for all of the bank branches based in San Diego, and I wrote programs to download stuff from the mainframe so we could do analysis three days faster than they could send us the data. So I did that kind of stuff. It was all technical.

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Technical Cofounder San Diego Startup 337

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2010

Plus, we’re all allured by the false sense that our contract with BigCo is going to “make us&# because once they start using us it will spread like wildfire and the revenue will flow in. They negotiate a “master agreement&# to work with your company with some maybe minimum guarantees in terms of revenue.

Warrant 298

Warrant Dilution Startup Stock Options 298

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

But find a way where the bonus program is adjusted for any work that has a higher COGS due to dev work and they’ll sell around it – I promise. That’s the most important thing in your business to get revenues up. &# They’ll throw in extra storage, extra modules, extra freebies. Don’t let them sell futures.

Sales 316

Sales Technical Review Matching Hiring 316

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2012

They spoke of a need to prove out revenues in order to raise capital and a stark contrast to many Silicon Valley firms whose goal is user numbers over revenues. I believe in the Blink perspective where we as humans are really programmed to know whether to trust people by the short amounts of time we spend in person with them.

Houston 364

Houston Dallas Los Angeles Chicago 364

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2010

You have to be selected to present and it is typically reserved for companies that have already raised early-stage capital and are well into revenue growth. Allows customers to select potential inventory through Be the Buyer program. Company generates revenue via premium accounts, targeted ads and transaction commission.

IPO 242

IPO Venture Capital Private Placement Cofounder 242

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 21, 2011

Early TV programs featured people sitting in chairs and reading scripts as though they were on the radio. Mobile: When I think about the current generation of mobile monetization in reminds me of people reading radio programs on TV. Early online newspapers and magazines were merely digital versions of their physical self.

Mobile 329

Mobile Advertising Affiliate Internet 329

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2014

By the time I funded them they were doing 400 million video views a month, had 40 million subscribers and had already become a powerhouse in ad sales / revenue working with marquee advertisers including: P&G, Budweiser, Nestle, Ford, Frito Lay and Honda.

South America 291

South America Colombia Mexico Vertical 291

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

We seed funded a company a few years ago called Parachute Home that has grown 180% CAGR (compounded annually) and is now doing tens of millions of revenue with very little capital raised. And like many modern brands a “give back” program popularized by Tom’s Shoes is also an important part of establishing a strong relationship with customers.

Curation 296

Curation Los Angeles Differentiation Channel 296

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

Think of the Amazon affiliate program where you’re paid if you help Amazon sell books (I think on average Amazon pays about 7% of sales). There are also people like Clicker and OVGuide who are trying to capture the “video portal&# space where they can command referral revenues in the way that Yahoo!

Advertising 284

Advertising Las Vegas Affiliate RSS 284

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2009

I watched the first two of these customers consume significant portions of our internal programming resources. We found that at the low end there wasn’t enough revenue to make it worth our while. I remember working for Salesforce.com and we were bagging elephants relative to our size. I guess it has worked for some companies?

Startup 389

Startup Early Stage Demand Channel 389

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

Sure, the revenue & margin will be significantly lower than traditional TV. One idea I’ve been searching for is a platform that enables the creation of serialized programs with audience participation. You should only worry about this if you’re a large, traditional media company with fat margins.

Video 380

Video Audience Global Distribution 380

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Since that date the S&P 500 is up 2.45% while Accenture stock is up 206% with revenue of $23 billion and a market cap of $32 billion. Investment in training, adherence to process, global knowledge sharing systems, quality control / partner reviews and campus recruitment programs that attracted the right talent.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. He bought a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 (a predecessor to Excel for those youngens) and programmed his own accounting software for his business.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

I’ve seen way too many startups spend all their energy getting channel deals done only to find out that they don’t produce ANY revenue. It’s a sexy title when you can’t design products, program computers or sell! They work on joint spiff programs with the channel partner. Full Stop for you Brits.)

Channel 293

Channel Startup Sales Partner 293

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

This in turn has fueled incubation programs like YCombinator, TechStars, 500 Startups & many more to help early-stage teams launch businesses led by most technical founders who are getting coaching from seasoned management teams. The Explosion in Early-Stage Innovation. They should start “lean.&#

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

In in the early 90′s I was in my early 20′s and I programmed on mainframe computers using COBOL, CICS and DB2. billion in annual subscription revenues not including advertising or eCommerce). There were chat rooms, discussion groups, dating, classified ads – you name it. It isn’t new stuff.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Internet Technical Review 318

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

We will invest pre-revenue and even pre-product if we have discovered the right team in the right kind of market. Some people have more money than time and are willing to pay for the right to have interruption-free programming. In that way, you could say that we are stage agnostic. I run Revolution’s VC investments.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 22, 2011

As far as I know, the revenue in AWS is not publicly broken out but the last rumor I heard was that it had crossed $1 billion per year. It’s no surprise that it has now become one of the most viewed networks of video programming in the world, achieving 500 million video views per month having only raised $3 million in venture capital.

Non-Compete 386

Non-Compete Startup Internet Cost 386

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

Joel moved to Seattle, and worked at Microsoft for three years as a program manager on Excel 4.0 At Microsoft, Joel was responsible for defining the specification for a programming language for Microsoft Excel. Microsoft and Apple have a role of product manager as different from a program manager. His Tenure at Microsoft.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software St. Louis API 285

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2017

billion and revenues likely exceeding $250 million (Wikipedia lists 2015 revenue at $167 million). Jonah said that 50% of BuzzFeed’s revenue now comes from video and the pace of this change really surprised him. The 30-minute interview of Jonah Peretti is here but my summary in the notes below.

Media 210

Media Los Angeles Russia Viral 210