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See More than 120 Speakers and Mentors at The Lean Startup Conference

Startup Lessons Learned

Bill Gross founded Idealab in 1996, making it the longest-running technology incubator alive today. Max Ventilla took Aardvark from startup to Google acquisition, a case study Eric described in The Lean Startup. He’ll talk with Eric Ries about how companies successfully scale.

Lean 165
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On Funding?—?Shots on Goal

Both Sides of the Table

We’ve had two companies where we had to bridge finance them several times before they eventually IPO’d We had a portfolio company turn-down a $350 million acquisition because they wanted at least $400 million. It sold to Amazon for > $1 billion. It can be years before you start seeing returns.

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Top 5 Traits That Make Veterans Great Entrepreneurs­­

Up and Running

percent of new entrepreneurs in 1996 and that by 2014, this number had fallen to just 5.6 In fact, almost 50 percent of veterans owned a business after World War II. But today, veteran entrepreneurship is on the decline. The most recent Kauffman Foundation research found that veterans accounted for 12.6

SBA 93
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FullContact Continues Its Journey To Solve The Contact Management Problem

Feld Thoughts

They followed this up with two acquisitions – first Conspire and then Profoundis. I love using a targeted acquisition approach in conjunction with a business that has a clear strategy and strong organic growth. In my world, historical revenue is the least interesting thing to consider in an acquisition strategy.

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When A Startup Chooses IPO Most Founders Are Out

Startup Professionals Musings

IPOs in 2008, the market was up to a still trivial 128 in 2012 (compared to 675 in 1996). With the more popular Merger & Acquisition (M&A) exit strategy, the control stays with the new entity. Even though the Initial Public Offering (IPO) alternative for a successful startup seems to be coming back, it is relatively rare.

IPO 224
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‘Capital Efficiency’ doesn’t exist

K9 Ventures

I started the company in December 1996, we sold the company in March 2000 (3+ years). We had just under 20 people prior to the acquisition at over $100M — that’s a pretty capital efficient company by any definition. In fact, when starting K9 I used my own startups as an example such capital efficiency.

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How to Hack Growth When Growth Stalls

ConversionXL

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