Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 12, 2020

As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. With the success of Facebook and Twitter, I still see new social media startups almost every day, with most destined to fail. The fallacy of formulas that “can’t fail,” and holding on to troubled ventures, is alive and well in startups.

Intellectual Property 310

Intellectual Property Startup Bankruptcy Viral 310

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. Not all startups need outside investment to grow.

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Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us. The number of startups being created has increased by an order of magnitude. Thank you, Aaron Sorkin!

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users."

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San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 22, 2023

For example, a startup SaaS company can use a specialized app to create a good product management process and keep track of the project's progress. In recent years, eCommerce companies have begun to increase revenue by selling products directly via social media networks. Thanks to Sean Stevens, Immerse Education ! #5-

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Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Entrepreneur Social Media 122

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

Based on my experience as a mentor and an entrepreneur, if you fail on your first startup, you are about average. Every young entrepreneur knows implicitly that startup success is a long hard road. Statistics show that the failure rate for new startups within the first 5 years is higher than 50 percent. Inexperienced team.

Intellectual Property 251

Intellectual Property Startup Viral Early Stage 251

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 14, 2017

and also being involved in other startups I have seen a number of pivots, some of them worked well and others in hindsight probably needed some more thought, but all have been a learning experience! Your revenues are declining or you don’t have any revenue at all! It now has a multi-billion dollar valuation.

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Technical Review Architecture Revenue Channel 157

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Another topic we debated early in the program was “lean startup” vs. “ fat startup ” where we both took the obvious hedge and said “it depends.” But truthfully both Dana and I are more aligned with the lean startup principles and believe you only go FAT when you’ve really proved out your product / market fit. OTHER DEALS: 1.

Partner 240

Partner New York City Cofounder Syndicate 240

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

See Bessemer Venture Partners’ A comprehensive guide to security for startups. Data companies focused on early-stage startups include Aingel , fundsUP , Preseries , PredictLeads , and Sploda. For more on gathering data and using it to assess companies, see How to Assess Startups Using Machine Learning. 2) Market . 7) Negotiate

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Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit.

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Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

It has many stylistic errors — and a few substantive ones, too — that I would now change having learned more, but I realized that it still provides useful insights for entrepreneurs and startup participants outside of the Greylock network, particularly across three areas of interest: how entrepreneurs should approach the pitch process.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Salesforce.com is a startup with 76,000 subscribers (over 2.1M I also joke with Reid Hoffman that this was back in the days before he was “Reid” Reid’s an incredible entrepreneur, startup investor, and human being. How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. May 26, 2011.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Gust

NOVEMBER 3, 2013

Based on my experience as a mentor and an entrepreneur, if you fail on your first startup, you are about average. Every young entrepreneur knows implicitly that startup success is a long hard road. Statistics show that the failure rate for new startups within the first 5 years is higher than 50 percent. Inexperienced team.

Intellectual Property 183

Intellectual Property Startup Viral Early Stage 183

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 10, 2016

As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. With the success of Facebook and Twitter, I still see new social media startups almost every day, with most destined to fail. The fallacy of formulas that “can’t fail,” and holding on to troubled ventures, is alive and well in startups.

Business Model 120

Business Model Intellectual Property Startup Bankruptcy 120

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

I work with a lot of startups. It goes like this, “If your next round investor can see how fast you’re scaling then you can raise money based on your user traction and your valuation can hit the sky. The company with no revenue and a $150k burn rate that raised $2.5 Nobody seems to want to make money any more.

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Burn Rate Dilution Revenue Valuation 412

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Claire got to experience, and played a large part in, Stripe’s proverbial rocketship, blossoming into thousands of employees, generating billions of dollars in revenue and valuation. While at the company — and especially once she departed — Claire became one of the people I always hoped to add to a cap table or startup board.

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Cap Table Hiring Viral Valuation 74

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 1, 2012

Based on my experience as a mentor and an entrepreneur, if you fail on your first startup, you are about average. Every young entrepreneur knows implicitly that startup success is a long hard road. Statistics show that the failure rate for new startups within the first 5 years is as high as 50 percent. Inexperienced team.

Intellectual Property 274

Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Viral Early Stage 274

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 9, 2015

As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. With the success of Facebook and Twitter, I still see new social media startups almost every day, with most destined to fail. The fallacy of formulas that “can’t fail,” and holding on to troubled ventures, is alive and well in startups.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Bankruptcy Viral 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. What are they, how do they differ and what can startup do to take advantage of them? The world of building profitable startups ended in 1995.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2013

I’m super proud to announce that DataSift has just completed a $42 million financing round coming at the end of a year where its revenue grew several hundred percent year-over-year. Considering our revenue is SaaS revenue this achievement is even more remarkable. Asymmetric. Location Aware. Referral Traffic.

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Iran API San Francisco Nigeria 358

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. There’s no time to dicker around at a startup. Startups are hard work. Make deliberate decisions. Fire fast.?.

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Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

And, oh by the way, we also really like the idea of the 1M/1M entrepreneurs building valuation and negotiating leverage through these business development efforts, instead of signing off large chunks of their company in form of equity early on. The game has started getting some traction already, and has a good virality index.

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Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

thebarefootvc

DECEMBER 16, 2011

Startups such as Shopkick offered real time deals when users were in stores and Shopsavvy and similar mobile price comparison tools from Amazon and Google empowered consumers to find the best deals. The viral nature of social media no doubt aided this growth, as did improvements in the online shopping experience.

Technical Review 110

Technical Review India Mobile Hockey Stick 110

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

billion in annual subscription revenues not including advertising or eCommerce). MySpace would liked to have owned YouTube but didn’t have the public stock valuation to purchase them at the price that Google did. Murdoch seethed at these “startups&# getting rich off the back of MySpace.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Internet Technical Review 318

Agile VC

JANUARY 27, 2012

AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Something has clearly changed within the last 5-6 years in terms of the speed with which monster startups are created in the software and internet space. Multi-billion dollar valuations for late stage startups like Dropbox, et al. Are Google-Scale Outcomes More Frequent?

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Hockey Stick Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate 113

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 8, 2015

We just love sharing articles about fonts, logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, economics and other interesting stuff! Steve Blank On Why Most Startups Fail, And It’s Got Nothing To Do With Technology – buff.ly/1IhCLrF. – buff.ly/1EY9ktL.

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Small Business Design Social Media Startup 48

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Be prepared to cross the desert - SaaS requires R&D and sales expense up front for a multi-year stream of revenue, so it demands enough investment capital to fund 4+ years of runway. Farming is also often overlooked, but can help grow customer accounts and revenues from 30% upwards (if successful). Great list! Philippe Botteri.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

Lightspeed Venture Partners

NOVEMBER 12, 2012

Season 4 week 9 of Sharktank was another fun episode, showing the importance of failing fast, being prepared for your pitch and how selecting an investor is about more than just optimizing valuation. When asked why the company is worth a $1M post money valuation, he said, “What it comes down to is passion.” Drive Suits.

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Valuation Post-Money Valuation Viral Algorithm 99

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 26, 2021

Last week, we explored the topic of startup boards of directors. The primary goal of this conversation was to explain how and why a great startup board can be a powerful tool to help the CEO make the company successful. One of the things a financing round brings is an opportunity to strengthen the startup’s overall network.

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Cracking the Code

DECEMBER 16, 2006

however, public SaaS companies like Concur, Saba, Taleo, LivePerson and Ultimate are growing 50-100% per year and trading at an average 5x trailing revenue multiples (I excluded salesforce leading the pack with 9x!) whereas traditional software companies of this size have a growth rate of less than 10% and revenue multiples of 2-2.5x.

Software Review 48

Software Review Silicon Valley Technical Review Software 48

Duct Tape Marketing

DECEMBER 14, 2017

He’s been a developer/hacker for over 15 years, and he sold his first startup, VinSolutions for $150 million. In 2011, before we sold the business, we had a business that was making $30 million a year in revenue, but we’ve never raised any capital. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

Kansas City 40

Kansas City CTO Hire Las Vegas Software Developers 40

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Great content again in September that meets at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. Chris Dixon , September 12, 2010 My most useful career experience was about eight years ago when I was trying to break into the world of VC-backed startups. Why You Should Write. Your service: the game.

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Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

In startup-land, people seem to think raising money is a signal that their business is sound and they should start scaling as soon as possible. The main challenge, as we’ll discuss below, is that startups need to internalize two conflicting attitudes. Weaknesses inside the founder team kill startups. The wrong reason to spend.

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Metrics Cofounder Cram Down Liquidity Event 136