Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

While this reaction to such a valuation is understandable, to anybody who has seen the meteoric rise in consumer demand and actual revenue the valuation is much less surprising and may turn out to be quite conservative. I think it’s quite possible that Bird could be the fastest growing company to reach a billion dollars in run rate revenue.

San Francisco 256

San Francisco Valuation Technical Review Los Angeles 256

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

The main thrust of the post is that with YouTube taking a 45% of revenue and talent taking 70% of the remaining revenue, YouTube Networks didn’t have sustainable businesses unless they invested heavily in technology as a tool to increase margin and provide defensibility. Build Non-Ad-Based Revenue.

Video 339

Video Technical Review Distribution Aggregator 339

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2017

So how did a company that provides storage grow so fast (we’ll exit 2017 with 10’s of millions in recurring revenue), why is it so defensible and is it really a tech startup? Today I’m excited to announce we’ve recently raised $30 million in growth finance led by 8VC , with Kimmy Scotti joining our board. years of software development.

Technical Review 268

Technical Review Los Angeles Software Review Artificial Inteligence 268

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Throughout the first year we made many fixes and saw our revenue base in these markets accelerate so we felt we were ready to attack Los Angeles, amongst the most important storage markets in the country. An example of the systems companies build are pricing & revenue management tools to best help to optimize yield.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2014

But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. In the early days the CEO is the jack-of-all-trades, doer-of-all, famously the “chief janitor” or coffee maker. Extremely talented people are ultra competitive. So building a great team often means assembling a team of rivals.

CTO Hire 385

CTO Hire Entrepreneur Technical Review Leadership 385

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

Should SaaS companies trade at a 24x Enterprise Value (EV) to Next Twelve Month (NTM) Revenue multiple as they did in November 2021? We drew this conclusion after a meeting we had with Morgan Stanley where they showed us historical 15 & 20 year valuation trends and we all discussed what we thought this meant.

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Let’s take your revenue line. If you’re a consumer destination the revenue and COGS lines should tell me about how big your funnel is, how you fill the top end of the pipe and what your conversion rates will be. How will your costs scale as your revenue scales. Or lower revenue assumptions. Here’s why.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue. So if it’s not necessarily revenue that’s preventing an investment, then WTF is traction? Unfortunately your advisers are wrong. Update them on your fund raising progress.

Technical Review 309

Technical Review Term Sheet Venture Capital Revenue 309

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 28, 2018

There are many things a VC is looking for in reviewing your business plan but beyond things the like the quality of revenue, margins, OPEX and CAPEX there’s a really simple rule I call, “Cash In, Cash Out, Milestones Achieved.” Usually that’s the point in the meeting where a VC realizes that this meeting isn’t going to go very well.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Dilution 247

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

Revenue Metrics. Revenue metrics are one of the first things I ask for from the startups in which I invest. I like to think of revenue drivers. And they are revenue drivers in that simplistically impressions x fill rate x eCPM equals revenue. 10% of our revenue is coming from direct sales of our banner inventory.

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

In revenue terms our first two years of sales were $2.1 We sold the company when we hit $36 million in bookings and $16 million in SaaS GAAP revenue. It’s ok to build a company that stays small, has a few million dollars in revenue and builds careers, bank accounts and enriches client experiences. million and then $5.9

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 18, 2019

The company started the year with no revenue and at it’s peak had a run rate well in excessive of $100 million / year. We’re at a new watermark because there are now global assets deployed and as the sun peeks out so to do the riders and the revenue. They were new, they were strange, they were ridden mostly by young people?—?they

South America 250

South America Global New York City Software Review 250

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

In SaaS (or any recurring revenue business) this is also a very difficult task. One big, beginners mistake people make in LTV is to measure revenue. If your economic case is built on increasing LTV over time or on retaining recurring revenue streams please remember to layer on “re-marketing or retention” costs into your equation.

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 11, 2021

Digital advertising spend is projected to grow 25% this year to $191 billion, and Google (69%), Facebook (59%), Snapchat (116%) and Twitter (87%) all just reported rapid growth in their year over year advertising revenues. For these companies, it looks like a rosy picture. But if you ask anyone in the ecosystem of customer acquisition?—?founders,

Founder 424

Founder Product Cofounder Acquisition 424

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

It turns out that to build a successful company you ultimately need this strange thing called “revenue” that people don’t just hand you: You need to earn it. And there’s this other thing called “gross margin,” which shows the quality of your revenue. How much ad revenue does TripAdvisor make?

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

The reason that incumbents can’t react is that their revenue and defensibility are continued by serving the high-end of the market for which it would take too much time & money for any competitors to effectively challenge. It’s the most profound book I’ve read on thinking about how the Internet is changing business.

Los Angeles 329

Los Angeles Revenue Retention Acquisition 329

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 10, 2011

Each customer segment of your business needs to be analyzed to determine whether they are profitable enough given ongoing costs to serve them relative to the revenue you would receive and the retention money you’d have to money to keep them with your service. Each mag has a different mix. Not possible.

Customer 287

Customer Technical Review Caching PR 287

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2010

You can often measure how many deals were achieved but there often doesn’t flow a steady stream of revenues / profits from these deals. One of my favorite sayings in this area comes from a portfolio company, RingRevenue , who like to say “ease of use = use and use = revenue.&# I love that saying.

Development Team Review 323

Development Team Review SEM Channel Social Media 323

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2010

My company never became Google but at $14 million in recurring revenue and $36 million in backlog revenue we certainly had enough big clients to necessitate a very solid program management function. Trust me, as you grow these issues become “gating items&# to winning large customers and keeping them happy. In summary.

Fractional CTO 400

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 400

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

70–80% of the costs of most startups are employee costs so what you’re really talking about when a company is unprofitable is that they are growing their staff ahead of their revenue. Revenue When I look at an income statement I start by focusing on the revenue line. You need to understand the “quality” of the revenue.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2013

In the tech world we are breeding a bit of a culture where we have entrepreneurs who are conference famous but have small have small revenues and red ink. In LA we have a culture where people drive fancy cars but live in small apartments and where credit card balances are larger than bank balances. That makes no sense. Back story on photo.

Software Review 398

Software Review Technical Review China Mexico 398

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Founded in November 2007 in New York City by Alexis Maybank and Kevin Ryan (co-founder of DoubleClick); CEO is Susan Lyne (ex-CEO Marta Stewart Living Omnimedia) Revenue estimates: $50mm in 2008; $170mm in 2009 (versus budget of $150mm); $450mm forecasted for 2010. Note that these are “gross” revenue numbers.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

Yet our initial customer success didn’t translate into big revenue growth and we faced issues such as: Do we support developers, end-users or both? He worked his ass off and delivered an amazing technical infrastructure to support a “big data meets social analytics” platform that could be used by any developer.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

Success often comes from doing a few things extraordinarily well and noticeably better than the competition and is measured in customer feedback, product engagement, growth in usage and ultimately in revenue growth. They’re doing how much in SaaS revenue? I offer the same advice for many of my friends who are newer VCs.

Software Review 150

Software Review Turkey Portfolio Syndicate 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Many people have speculated a variety of revenue sources such as charging 3rd parties for their data, charging power users for their accounts, charging “verified users&# for their certified accounts, etc. And it is the most notable media darling not making any money so everyone is asking the question – how will they make money?

Technical Review 286

Technical Review Advertising Early Stage Internet 286

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? I’m paranoid about the evaporation of revenue. It will bring down your overall margins but will produce profitable revenue. It has been a good run.

Marketing 354

Marketing Incubator Turkey Metrics 354

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2011

I might be grooming them for when I have more money or more revenue. Don’t promise revenue or growth faster than you know you can achieve. But let me at least have a coffee and feel out their enthusiasm, talent and ambitions. I might choose to do an upgrade on my existing team. Sell hard, sure. But don’t over sell.

Hiring 399

Hiring Startup Global Revenue 399

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2010

Summary view for people who don’t want to read all of the details: it helps you optimize your revenue by comparing the effectiveness of all possible monetization types: cross promotion, in-app purchasing or ads. it provides complete transparency in how much advertisers are paying, how much Burstly takes and what your revenue is.

Mobile 282

Mobile Management Southern California Application Development 282

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

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. Newsflash – if you had $75k revenue / month you’d have 8 months cash left in stead of 4. I see this weekly. million and has 4 months cash left. Yeah, I know.

Burn Rate 412

Burn Rate Dilution Revenue Valuation 412

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2018

Let’s say you have built a SaaS company where a large part of the early revenue comes from a few big customers or a large part of the revenue is services based vs. software based. Let me give you an example. The investor is a customer and they have money to spend but only for a limited number of companies.

Revenue 236

Revenue Valuation Portfolio Restful 236

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

I know it’s much sexier to race around talking about buying up companies than it is tweaking your business operations to accelerate revenue, reduce churn and grow faster. Look, if you’re doing $4 million in sales and you’re doing anything other than totally fortuitous M&A you’ve got a real issue. What will it do?

Operations 292

Operations CTO Hire Startup Early Stage 292

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2016

It is these stories that helps me bond more with the team because I’ve personally experienced just about every kind of setback at my first startup: Raising too much capital, too quickly & at too high of valuations Hiring too quickly and too senior Building too much functionality before market validation Charging too much, keeping prices too high (..)

South Korea 261

South Korea Silicon Valley Los Angeles Japan 261

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

It has grown recurring revenue by more than 500% and deal-size by 276%. I think he wanted a meaty role if he was going to leave and finally we had something compelling. Invoca has grown its enterprise customer base 550% in the past three years including major customers like Microsoft, Allstate and SunTrust.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Fractional CTO Cofounder Early Stage 150

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

I know that we haven’t brought in revenue as quickly as we had hoped. They haven’t hit their revenue targets. I know that you keep reading about how our competitors seem to been going from strength-to-strength in the press. I know that we’ve made some mistakes. I know it sucks that we had to reduce staff.

PR 331

PR Software Review Ireland Germany 331

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

Again, I think the company would slug me if released revenue data, but … wow. So I hope that offers you insights into how companies move through the VC system. Domain Knowledge. Clear path to execution. Ability to build without a massive budget.

Technical Review 373

Technical Review North America Los Angeles Cofounder 373

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

Along with Greycroft Partners we were the first investors in Maker Studios 3 years ago when the company had no revenue and limited infrastructure. but not that this justifies take a 45% revenue share. Industry averages for talent revenue shares are about 70% with top talent making even more. ” YouTube takes 45%.

Networking 366

Networking Media Distribution Video 366

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