Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2011

If you are new to the entrepreneurial world of startups, you are likely confused by the terminology of seed-stage, lean startups, micro-VCs, and Super Angels. The good news is that he is all about helping early-stage startups, the hard part for entrepreneurs is figuring out what it takes to play. Series-seed round.

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Early Stage Seed Stage Angel Investor Silicon Valley 231

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 16, 2012

If you are new to the entrepreneurial world of startups, you are likely confused by the terminology of seed-stage, lean startups, micro-VCs, and Super Angels. Seed-stage means promising companies that don’t yet have a revenue stream, and may not yet have a proof of concept. Series-seed round. Super Angels.

Early Stage 253

Early Stage Finance Seed Stage Entrepreneur 253

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

They’ve grown from nothing to >$2B in revenue in 30 months time, making the company among the fastest growing businesses in the histroy of the world. How They Make Money: Groupon keeps a share of the coupon value (typically 40-50%) as its net revenue (1). Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $713M. to the merchant.

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North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Hippoland

JULY 24, 2016

Valuation is a nebulous topic amongst early stage startups, so I thought I’d really spell it out in detail. In short: Valuations for seed stage companies are fairly arbitrary and driven solely by supply and demand. Your startup’s valuation is not based on a proforma of your revenue. This just doesn’t happen.

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Seed Stage Valuation Vertical Demand 48

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2011

Today, the signs of the new bubble are the Linked-In initial public offering (IPO), Facebook’s stratospheric valuation and the rapid rise of early-stage startup valuation. Hiring technology talent in Silicon Valley is getting difficult, and the time it takes to drive across Palo Alto has tripled—all signs of the impending apocalypse.

Silicon Valley 330

Silicon Valley Stealth Valuation Mississippi 330

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Year of HQ2 and Distributed Teams: It was a banner year for non-Silicon Valley cities as NYC and Northern Virginia were selected as Amazon’s HQ2. The 10 year bull market where every company’s revenue chart is up and to the right is over. Google also unveiled plans to double its NYC employee base to 14k.

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Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Diego Basch

MARCH 14, 2013

I avoid the entertainment industry, and anything where the revenue stream is based on advertising. I’ve been around Silicon Valley for a while so I’m connected to many engineers and investors whom I deeply respect. If your seed-stage company fits the criteria above, please contact me.

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San Francisco Startup Silicon Valley Seed Stage 55

Gust

JULY 8, 2012

If you are new to the entrepreneurial world of startups, you are likely confused by the terminology of seed-stage, lean startups, micro-VCs, and Super Angels. Seed-stage means promising companies that don’t yet have a revenue stream, and may not yet have a proof of concept. Series-seed round. Super Angels.

Early Stage 177

Early Stage Finance Seed Stage Entrepreneur 177

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

Some days in Silicon Valley it feels like there are more investors than there are entrepreneurs. While it it may not feel that way, the data suggest that there is indeed too much capital in the system — especially so at the seed stage, with more and more individuals and larger funds trying to invest in companies at this stage.).

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Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 117

Gust

OCTOBER 16, 2012

This summer I conducted our third annual survey of the pre-money valuation of pre-revenue companies recently funded by angel groups in North America. For the first time, we asked for data from specific business sectors, as follows: All pre-revenue deals. Pre-revenue life Science, biotech and medical device deals.

Angel Groups 169

Angel Groups Valuation Pre-Money Valuation North Dakota 169

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

Some days in Silicon Valley it feels like there are more investors than there are entrepreneurs. While it it may not feel that way, the data suggest that there is indeed too much capital in the system — especially so at the seed stage, with more and more individuals and larger funds trying to invest in companies at this stage.).

Venture Capital 105

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 105

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. We’ll look at the model stage-by-stage. Product Development In stage two, product development, everyone stops talking and starts working.

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Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 267

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2015

Temper your approach based on the stage of your startup. If your startup has a proven revenue model, real customers and is ready to scale, approach the best investors even if it costs you more money. For new entrepreneurs looking for seed-stage help, concentrate on investors who know you or organizations with a vested interest.

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Cost Angel Groups Due Diligence Silicon Valley 120

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2012

I met with local seed fund investors like Mike Venerable who is the MD of CincyTech (a local seed stage fund), Tony Shipley who is a director of Queen City Angels as well as some local entrepreneurs including Blake Shipley of CoupSmart and Sameer Mungur of ZipScene. It’s easy to discount Cincy – it’s a “flyover state.”

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Houston Dallas Los Angeles Chicago 364

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

But we did eventually raise capital outside Silicon Valley. in revenue. When I do it again - and I think I'd do it outside NYC or Silicon Valley - these are some basic rules that I'd try to follow: Write as much code as humanly possible before raising any capital. revenue) before they write a check.

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Silicon Valley Montana Curation Seed Stage 126

Agile VC

JANUARY 12, 2012

When a startup doesn’t match the stage where a particular investor focuses, founders may get a response along the lines of “This is interesting to us, but come back once you get from X phase to Y phase” That could be from seed stage to a larger Series A financing need, or to progress from pre-product to post-revenue.

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Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate Syndication 100

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

As a seed-focused VC fund we invest comparatively small sums of capital at the very beginning of a startup’s life. A company that in time can generate $100M+ in revenue and have an enterprise value measured in the hundreds of millions or more (what some VCs refer to as a “venture scale” outcome). Read More ».

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South Korea Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate 124

Agile VC

JANUARY 27, 2012

There’s lot of anecdotal evidence for this: Seed stage investors (including NextView and many of our peers) are seeing more startups progress from seed to Series A stage in 6-9 months rather than 12-18. Multi-billion dollar valuations for late stage startups like Dropbox, et al. Read More ».

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Hockey Stick Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate 113

YoungUpstarts

JULY 29, 2013

But they’ll sit up and pay attention when you talk about the customers and revenues of the business. In the US, seed accelerators offer more than $100,000 to startups. Because we’ve learned the hard way that $100,000, which is six months of runway in Silicon Valley, is a retirement jackpot in half of Southeast Asia.

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Asia Singapore Cofounder Incubator 207

Agile VC

DECEMBER 5, 2011

Objective Logistics has created a game layer on top of very sophisticated scheduling algorithms which increase revenue, save time, and improve customer and staff satisfaction. Im a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned East Coast VC. I co-founded NextView Ventures , a seed-stage VC firm based in Boston, in 2010.

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Silicon Valley Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication 100

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 6, 2014

Instead of the old “throw-money-at-a-good-idea” approach, I based our strategy on the belief that the best startups are the ones that can become revenue-positive shortly after takeoff with as little upfront investment as possible.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Business Model Silicon Valley Coder 154

Agile VC

AUGUST 22, 2011

Even Amazon isn’t a platform… yes they have AWS but it accounts for <3% of their revenue and isn’t terribly profitable given the capex & opex currently going into growing it. Im a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned East Coast VC. Not Groupon. Not Dropbox. Author howerl. Filed under Uncategorized.

Silicon Valley 113

Silicon Valley Seed Stage Startup Syndicate 113

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 13, 2012

He is on the board of the Angel Resource Institute, and is a partner with Montlake Capital (a late stage growth capital fund) and with Revenue Capital Management (a royalty based lender). Valuable lessons learned from Andy’s personal experience venture investing in Silicon Valley. Let’s take a look at the actual data.

Angel Investor 103

Angel Investor Venture Capital Seed Stage Silicon Valley 103

Agile VC

MAY 23, 2012

E-commerce accounts for the vast majority of LL Bean’s revenue today ( it crossed 50% in 2010 though was as low as 15% in 2000 ), but because LL Bean is over a hundred years old and started as catalog & physical store retailer we typically don’t refer to it as an internet company. . link] leehower. Your welcome. .

Internet 182

Internet Silicon Valley IPO Seed Stage 182

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 20, 2011

He talked about everything from raising funding for pre-seed entrepreneurs to get them to the seed stage, crowd funding, social media marketing and open source. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. It's the kind of pitch that makes your mind spin. You can't tell what the company does.

Massachusetts 113

Massachusetts Entrepreneur Open Source Silicon Valley 113

Agile VC

MARCH 18, 2012

Costolo clearly wants to position Twitter as a complementary part of the media ecosystem (which it is by and large) rather than a competitor, and there remains a chance that Twitter will have other forms of revenue besides ads. Here’s why: Virtually all of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising.

Media 113

Media Advertising Silicon Valley Revenue 113

Agile VC

MARCH 8, 2012

For SaaS or other recurring revenue businesses these figures might be on a bookings basis rather than GAAP revenue, but conceptually they’re similar. Bill Gurley’s post last year does a great job analyzing why some businesses are valued at 10x+ revenue and most aren’t. Zynga – 8x+ trailing revenue.

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IPO Silicon Valley Revenue Seed Stage 100

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Seed-stage investors are learning the metrics of traction, and are getting better at identifying those companies that are really achieving validated learning about customers. Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

How They Make Money : Facebook’s primary revenue stream is of course selling advertising on Facebook.com, which in total accounts for 85% of revenue. The next chunk comes from Facebook’s platform, in essence “taxing” the revenues of app developers like Zynga, which represents 15% of revenue.

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IPO South Korea Venezuela Revenue 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Now we can call you a seed-stage VC or a micro VC. My wife worked at Google so while we had good income in Silicon Valley it’s hardly the life of luxury given the costs of housing. .&# If you’re investing other people’s money you’re a professional money manager. But you’re not an angel.

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Silicon Valley Liquidity Event Seed Stage Finance 308

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

For much of 2014 and 2015, I banged my head against a plane window flying back and forth between Austin and Silicon Valley while trying to raise institutional VC money for Localeur. Are there amazing Silicon Valley VCs out there with whom entrepreneurs should work to partner? but it’s true. Most definitely.

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley Technical Review Venture Capital San Francisco 48

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

There are two reasons to raise money: You have a killer idea that is only partially validated, that you think can get to $50M+ of revenue in 5 years with 80%+ gross margins (if margins are lower, you need a lot more revenue)and you need money to get to product-market fit, or. Pre-seed Round of Funding.

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Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 24, 2012

Dan: My question is related to all this talk that I hear in the Silicon Valley about Internet scale. Trying to figure out how the Silicon Valley… again, my last venture was not built here. So VCs invest in different stages. You have seed stage, A round, B round, C round, D round.

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Silicon Valley Software Review Internet Technical Review 204

Agile VC

APRIL 13, 2012

I spent some time with some startups in San Francisco proper, as opposed to the heart of Silicon Valley (see Note 1). “Silicon Valley” (see Note 2) is hardly alone in this urbanization of startups trend. far more huge companies in Silicon Valley. April 13, 2012. et al) were down on the peninsula.

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Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Startup 185

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

Ann Miura-Ko is a founding partner at Floodgate , a seed-stage VC firm. Well known founders within Silicon Valley demanded this kind of change across the board, and if they wanted to see it internally, they also had to see it within the organizations that touched their group.

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Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

Agile VC

AUGUST 12, 2011

The simple answer is “be able to convince a partnership of smart investors that your startup has a good probability of being a $100M+ revenue company within 5ish years.” I was in a board meeting for a seed stage company recently and a successful GP at a larger fund said “you know it when you see it” which is true.

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Seed Stage Silicon Valley B2B Acquisition 113

View from Seed

MAY 27, 2015

We don’t try to share a playbook because, at the seed stage, there IS no playbook. Instead, the point of sharing these stories is to stretch the imagination of listeners and to get us all to think differently and creatively about how to approach the challenges of building a very early stage business.

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Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 120