A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 16, 2014

” It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about valuations , growth rates , retention rates , NPS scores, early-stage uncertainty , ratio of revenue to employee, CAC , cash-burn, LTV , gross margin, or selling your company. “It’s not fair,” we all said to ourselves.

Metrics 246

Metrics Early Stage Retention Revenue 246

Tim Keane

MARCH 9, 2011

How to prepare a sales forecast for a business plan » March 09, 2011.   His entire income is based on his personal output and he’d like to hire several woodworkers, expand his sales to existing customers, and generate a profit in addition to his contributed labor.  Startups and angels: Along the way to success.

Finance 83

Finance Bootstrapping Startup Equity 83

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Compensation decisions obviously affect hiring and retention. Of all your hires, if you have commissioned sales people, those will give you the most problems if they’re not all given an equal chance to make their quotas and achieve their personal earnings goals. Keep the valuations consistent with company progress. Not really.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

The Equity Kicker

FEBRUARY 27, 2014

That contrasts with previous eras where great sales and marketing capabilities and great engineering were often more important than product (think about the great enterprise software success stories of the 1990s…). They process 50bn messages per day with 99.9% uptime and a service so good that 72% of active users come back daily.

Product 123

Product Valuation Retention Acquisition 123

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

Something standard like a SaaS company where the exits scenarios and valuations are well-understood may not need a slide here, but the more non-traditional or unique the venture is, the more information which a Founder can fill in the blanks of “what could be” are helpful. Other Questions: Every startup is different.

Seed Stage 166

Seed Stage Retention Restful Valuation 166

Cracking the Code

DECEMBER 1, 2009

Labels: Cloud Computing , SaaS , sales and marketing. Detailed SaaS Spreadsheet (Valuation and CAC benchmark). SaaS 13 Index Valuation. sales and marketing. (10). Impact of the recession on SaaS Sales&Marketing pr. Building Your SaaS Sales Compensation Plan. Posted by Philippe Botteri. at 12:41 PM.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Cloud Europe 48

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2017

Advantages for your business include a stable revenue stream, customer retention, and increasing customer investment over time. This is another popular model for platforms, e-commerce, and affiliates, where you as the transaction or product provider get a small percentage or royalty on every ultimate sale to customers by others.

Revenue 166

Revenue Affiliate Advertising Retention 166

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 5, 2016

It takes extra effort and focus on some special techniques, including the following, to get the edge you need over your competitors in customer attraction and retention: Set order-of-magnitude goals. New” companies, like Uber, can build billion dollar valuations, and start acquiring older companies seen as much larger.

Retention 120

Retention Valuation Equity Analytics 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 16, 2017

For example, Patagonia donates one percent of their sales to environmental charities, and Ben & Jerry’s awards five social change grants annually. All stakeholders see this as an advantage, encouraging new investors and raising the valuation of your business. Improves employee retention and attracts better candidates.

Government 120

Government Retention Valuation Employee 120

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

Sales and marketing has been 30%+ basically forever, though undoubtedly Airbnb has enough brand recognition and loyal customers that if you turned off marketing spend then revenue would drop but not to zero. Uber is an $85B+ market cap company today but is essentially flat to its IPO price and late private round valuations.

North America 401

North America IPO Prospectus Europe 401

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 23, 2012

But all that investment in growth and sales force didn’t have a long-term payback, and the actual value of the product to small businesses wasn’t as high as claimed, even though the simplest of customer development reveals this fact (ask any restauranteur). So now it’s your turn to think about this with your own company.

IPO 240

IPO Flash Bootstrapping Private Equity 240

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 26, 2022

The startup didn’t work out, but I found ways to be around it, whether it was on the sales side in Goldman for a few years. But stuff like retention is super important. So how sticky are your customers, and can you break that down to customer retention? That’s a valuation number and pricing number.

Partner 132

Partner Cofounder Retention Acquisition 132

www.mint.com

MARCH 9, 2010

What is the post-money valuation of your last round? Post-money valuation” is the value of the company after the last round of money was put in (again, lines of credit and promises don’t count). I worry about everything: money, sales, engineering, support, and recruiting. No customers no sales, no startup.

Software Review 68

Software Review Startup Post-Money Valuation Technical Review 68

Gust

JULY 23, 2012

To qualify for a deduction, the donation must be accompanied by an independent valuation appraisal. This is not always feasible or advisable in the case of private stock, and it also reduces the amount contributed (as the donor would need to pay tax upon sale of the stock). Deductions are against ordinary income. in excess of $25,000).

Stock 114

Stock Capital Gains Warrant Stock Options 114

Startup Company Lawyer

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

In response to the problem of worthless common stock, some companies have implemented employee retention plans, which are also referred to as M&A carveout plans. This was particularly common from 2001 to 2003, after the dot-com crash when companies had raised a large amount of venture financing at high valuations. Participation.

Retention 31

Retention Liquidation Preference Employee Common Stock 31

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

Sustainable growth: Prioritise sales efficiency over growth at all costs. ValuatIon should be a function of value, not ego. Kawasaki’s Law of Pre-Money Valuation: for every full-time engineer, add $500,000; for every full-time M.B.A., A good way to think about valuation in seed/pre-seed is to reverse engineer the next round.

Founder 187

Founder Startup Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 187

Steve Blank

APRIL 1, 2020

Sales pipeline/forecast. Others are cutting their valuations. I listened in on a board call with an enterprise software company this week, and when the CEO said, “Our VP of sales assured me our pipeline won’t be affected.” How can you shift focus to customer retention versus acquisition? Internal Assessment.

South Korea 333

South Korea Salary Business Model China 333

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 12, 2014

The SEC’s proposed rules (mandated by the JOBS Act of 2012) amend the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to allow the offer and sale of securities through an internet crowdfunding campaign, similar in some respects to donation crowdfunding campaigns conducted on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Equity 125

Equity SEC Technical Review Security 125

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

For a Series A round you want to prove you have built a repeatable and scalable sales/revenue model and understand all parts of the business model. The goal of the product at this stage is not a sale, but to test hypotheses about customer product/market fit. Retention and low attrition are good signs of customer validation.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 4, 2019

They do phenomenal things, great marketing, great sales systems, good culture, all of that sort of stuff. Profit can be defined in retention of employees. It can be defined in retention of customers. You got to have that profitability for valuation. Brad Sugars: Absolutely, I’m an accountant by training.

Cofounder 64

Cofounder Australia Retention Sales 64

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

But as I like to tell entrepreneurs, great PR could add $10 million to your valuation or increase your chances of closing a round 2x and either case is a reason to make sure you have good press. You can’t measure the retention benefits but I promise it exists. but didn’t convert to sales. Classmates call.

PR 415

PR Early Stage Dividend Acquisition 415

Scalable Startup

FEBRUARY 9, 2011

Revenue can change many things for you and your company – valuation, respect, confidence, negotiating position, attraction of other revenue and cash, retention of your equity, and the ability to attract key people and partners. Aside from the low hurdle examples above, there are many other ways. And get that first revenue.

Revenue 20

Revenue Cofounder Retention Valuation 20

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 23, 2022

Revenue doesn’t measure sales efficiency – you can hit a revenue target but the question is at what cost? Sequoia shared this advice on sales efficiency with portfolio founders in their recent ‘adapting to endure’ series. i.e. if you get to $1M ARR, but reduce your runway by 6 months, is it worth it?

Metrics 180

Metrics Revenue B2C Portfolio 180

Occam's Razor

APRIL 23, 2012

This will have huge implications on your paid search strategy, your valuation of clicks you get from Google and Bing. First, the company deemphasizes short term win — installs — and emphasizes the long term win — retention. What promises are our sales/marketing programs making? Do we need a loyalty program?

Metrics 152

Metrics Analytics Search Channel 152

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 2, 2021

Would that help retention and NPS (Net Promote Score)? The punchline of Chris’ argument is in the highlighted box, where he argues Procore is better off (having done an IPO and “as a result” of choosing the IPO), because Procore ended up with a valuation the day after the IPO of 20.5X Would they be loyal? Damn straight it would.

IPO 82

IPO Customer Matching Silicon Valley 82

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

There is nothing on sales. Can you add useful resource for generating sales for start-ups. Reply Martin Henk , on June 8, 2011 at 6:13 am said: Impressive list, but missing a key ingredient: Sales management tools. Reply jade , on February 27, 2011 at 2:25 pm said: Great compilation. removed from the list. Yep, C’est moi.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Hunter Walker

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

We don’t aspire to be venture backed, to be a mark-up, or to chase the headline of a valuation. HW: When we first met you had founded Belly , a B2B2C loyalty/retention startup. Or, I hear about the % ROI from Chicago investments being top decile because of lower entry valuations, as if that’s something that is attractive to founders….

Chicago 78

Chicago Venture Capital Miami Employee 78

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

I’ll address potential valuation further down the post here. Unfortunately the fact that the company raised capital in private markets at a healthy valuation ($6B) and the uncertainty about having a CEO who’s attention is divided between two public companies obscures this story. Given the unit economics above (e.g.

IPO 165

IPO .Net Revenue Acquisition 165

ConversionXL

JUNE 19, 2018

The growth system is broken: product, marketing and sales are siloed. Look at your growth team score and ask yourself: are you working in a multi-disciplinary team where you focus on high tempo testing on the entire customer journey for bottom line and valuation impact? Sales compensation is a rule. Engagement & Retention.

Technical Review 103

Technical Review Agile Analytics Conversion 103

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

customer retention, churn reduction, lifetime value. turn customer feedback into sales and relationships. Seed Stage Valuation Guide. SaaS Sales Team Compensation â?? Startups For Sale. valuations. SEO Keyword Analysis Tool. Online Marketing Suites. HubSpot -Â online marketing and web analytics system.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53