Both Sides of the Table

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Should Startups Focus on Profitability or Not?

Both Sides of the Table

You have to understand whether they’re likely to yield revenue growth in the near term OR whether you have access to cheap enough capital to fund your losses until your investments pay off. They have have raised $2-3 million, built a product that has some amount of market traction and got to annualized revenues of around $1 million.

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How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

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?

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Should Startups Care About Profitability?

Both Sides of the Table

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.

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Should Founders Be Allowed to Take Money off the Table?

Both Sides of the Table

We should end the year with a few million in fully recurring revenue and we’re projected to double next year. But more spend = more viral opps = more revenue down the road. >50% of our revenue in now viral. I raised $500k in seed money to start the company. Probably revenue based.

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Why You’re Not Getting the Most out of Your Board

Both Sides of the Table

If you’re a venture-backed tech company or even an early-stage business fueled by angel or seed money I assume you have a good group of board members or advisors who will give you time to be helpful and they want to be helpful. should we charge SaaS revenue, ad revenue or volumetric billing revenue?

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How You May be Signaling Price without Knowing It

Both Sides of the Table

His company had raised seed money already. They have some revenue but not much. He wanted a good partner, a fair valuation, and quite honestly, just some effing money! But this particular guy who called me for advice I suspect had a different problem. It was the silent killer. He was price signaling without knowing it.

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