A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 23, 2012

Freeloader — On $3m invested, sold for $38m in 1996 — shut down in 1997. Note that some of those companies were bootstrapped, some bootstrapped and took money later, and some had huge funding from the start. Support.com — On 2.5m invested, IPO’ed in 2000 for $32/share — stock price now $2.

IPO 240

IPO Flash Bootstrapping Private Equity 240

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

And from a financial perspective, any investor would be better off buying stock in Amazon than buying and share of a corner bookshop; if you invested $100 in Amazon’s 1997 initial public offering (IPO), those shares would have been worth about $120,000 in 2018. Publishers and authors (like O’Reilly and us) also benefit from Amazon’s success.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

Professor VC

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

investment bankers, while the dot com bubble was driven by investment bankers willing and able to convince institutional and retail investors that companies didn''t need to have a business model or even a way to exist without relying on additional investment. No, the question today is not whether these unicorns are viable businesses.

Las Vegas 28

Las Vegas IPO Pre-Money Valuation Valuation 28