Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 2, 2014

” I bootstrapped my first company and, while we did a lot of work for VCs, I liked taking money from them as “revenue” (where they paid Feld Technologies for our services) rather than as investment. I’d say – very bluntly – “stay away from VCs.” Feld Technologies was acquired in November 1993.

San Francisco 159

San Francisco Boston Angel Investor Venture Capital 159

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. 1970 – 1995: The Golden Age. The world of building profitable startups ended in 1995. August 1995 – March 2000: The Dot.Com Bubble.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

Reporting in the Harvard Business Review on a major study of growth stalls they conducted, Olson and his colleagues cite the case of the iconic brand Levi Strauss, which hit a historic high mark of sales in 1995, reaching revenue of $7 billion, but then, starting in 1996, saw a decline in sales so precipitous that by 2000, revenue was down to $4.6

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

Spencer Fry

JULY 16, 2013

A little background on me for anyone who hasn’t been reading my articles since 2009: I started selling on the Internet when I was eleven years old, in 1995. It’s revenue. Revenue comes from sales. If you don’t have sales, you don’t have revenue, and without revenue, you will die. What code can we improve?

Sales 71

Sales Cofounder Revenue Finance 71

Mike Michalowicz

FEBRUARY 12, 2013

To help with the growing work load at the lab, she has subsequently hired her son and daughter to work with her. In January of 1995, Miller opened the doors to Miller Paper Company and started with $300K in savings and 15 employees. She goes to work every day, and at the age of 84 is bringing into the business about $350K annually.

Entrepreneur 151

Entrepreneur Kentucky Offshore Founder 151

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

One could argue that there’s nothing new here, as Internet distibution models started in 1995. Drive for a repeatable and scalable business model (revenue in Dave McClure’s investment thesis, “ network of scale &# in Union Square’s.). But in reality they only became mainstream ~5-7 years ago.

Lean 263

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 263

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 20, 2013

I speak from personal experience, since I hired and partnered with a CEO, Jeff Weiner, very successfully at LinkedIn five years after co-founding the company. Couldn’t we just hire a COO and have you stay as CEO?”. My idea when hiring Dan was that I could handle the product, and he could handle everything else.

Founder 78

Founder Hiring Cofounder Hawaii 78

Reid Hoffman

MAY 18, 2021

The babysitter my father hired had a highly effective technique for placating young boys, which was to let them slay monsters and win treasure in a fantasy world. because you found more gold, or reached a revenue target. GAME #2: RUNEQUEST. I was first introduced to Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) when I was nine years old.

Cofounder 69

Cofounder Silicon Valley Russia Germany 69

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. And when businesspeople try to hire hackers, they cant tell which ones are good.Even other hackers have a hard time doing that. When we got real funding nearthe end of 1996, we hired a great CFO, who fixed everything retroactively.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

To answer these questions, we built a database of 112 Israeli companies founded between 1996 and 2013 that have met or exceeded $20 million in revenue. Eighty-two percent have global offices, and yet 91% are still run by Israeli CEOs, as opposed to foreign executives hired from the outside. American VCs are critical.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 5, 2012

Some 92% of job growth comes after a company goes public - which makes sense, because a company acquires public capital in order to hire people. economy and for maintaining competitiveness, 86% of CEOs surveyed said that going public was a less attractive option for businesses today than in 1995. million per year just to stay public.

IPO 118

IPO SEC Silicon Valley Startup 118

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

Google realized that being the way to find the world’s information was a blitzscalable market, thanks to the network effects in its AdWords revenue engine. If O’Reilly had that same insight in 1995, it could have been an amazing blitzscaling opportunity. The second is a lack of operational scalability.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 7, 2017

When I began practicing law I was hired by a firm where billable hours and collected fees were the only considerations for advancement. Soon, I had more work than I could handle, and had to hire another attorney and staff member. Thanks to Dean Cycon, Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Co. ! #19 Image Credit: Nancy D.

Entrepreneur 91

Entrepreneur LLC Cofounder Green 91

BeyondVC

APRIL 29, 2006

Microsoft released its third quarter numbers the other day and while revenue growth was strong, the stock got hammered and dropped over 10%. I would say that they did alright in 1995 when they decided to point their guns at Netscape to make sure the browser and Internet would not circumvent their monopoly on the desktop.

Acquisition 60

Acquisition Internet Software Stock 60

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Pierre Omidyar founded AuctionWeb in September of 1995, and its rise to fame is legendary. In November of this year, the company announced that it had achieved “substantially” more than $1B in revenue in the third quarter. billion of GSV (gross services revenue) across 2.0 Exchange of Goods Marketplaces.

Internet 88

Internet Matching Vertical Hosting 88