Lightspeed Venture Partners

FEBRUARY 12, 2013

Almost a year ago, my partner Barry Eggers and I met with Craig Elliott and Scott Hankins to talk about their vision for a new company, Pertino. Veterans of the networking industry, Craig formerly served as the CEO of Packeteer, a high-flying networking appliance vendor that he took public in 1999 with Scott as his director of engineering.

Networking 144

Networking Technical Review Cloud Software Review 144

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 11, 2018

If you own a small business, you should know that internet marketing is essential to your company’s success. There are so many great marketing strategies out there, like SEO, Local SEO, PPC ads, and more. When customers enter that fence, you’re able to market to them and send them messages. Location-Based Marketing tool.

Small Business 189

Small Business Marketing Massachusetts SEO 189

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 5, 2012

Embodying the informal, casual wit of the company, the founding of Innocent is summarized on their website in the form of a charming story as follows: “We started innocent in 1999 after selling our smoothies at a music festival.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Europe Advertising Matching 150

Up and Running

MAY 20, 2019

There’s a famous scene in the cult-classic 1999 movie “ Office Space “ where the main character, Peter, is confronted by his boss, Bill. Align on a mission statement that ensures all partners understand what you want to accomplish and what is outside of that core. A good business plan can reduce the hassle in many ways.

Business Plan 92

Business Plan Angel Investor Partner Naming 92

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

Yes, VC / Startup Funding is up Massively If you look at how much VC firms have raised from Limited Partners (LPs) over the past 2 decades you’ll see that we’ve returned to a level that we haven’t seen since 1999. Companies are raising billions of dollars in the private markets and the valuations are enormous PRIOR to the IPO.

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital IPO Mezzanine Early Stage 292

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2012

When I started my first tech company in 1999 I had pretty good tech chops and had led teams but had very little exposure to many other things that matter in a startup including sales, marketing & business development. Getting an office in a tight real estate market. Like most first-timers, I learned the hard way.

United States 322

United States Software Developers Software Development Developer 322

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

Get your product/market fit working before you ramp up your costs (or raise too much money). My action item – I will soon announce the GRP Partners CEO Summit. And market your brand, not your personality. I’m going to save that for a future blog post. Nail it before you scale it” – I missed who said this but I love this quote.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Growthink Blog

DECEMBER 27, 2017

Get Growthink's Proven Venture Capital Business Plan Template Here Industry Analysis Goal of the industry analysis section: Prove that there is a real market for your product or service. Cite credible sources when describing the size and growth of your market. Focus on the “relevant” market size. market research).

Venture Capital 129

Venture Capital Business Plan Technical Review Private Placement 129

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 2, 2014

Basically, employees purchase their own individual policies on the open market (a purchase frequently offset by government subsidies), and employers reimburse them. You can attract these employers by emphasizing your familiarity with the individual market and your experience working with defined contribution solutions.

Software Review 224

Software Review Employee Retention Government 224

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. I had really positive experiences such as working with Greg Gretsch at Sigma Partners where he championed us to a partners’ meeting where we sort of got crucified. The managing partner of the firm called me the next day. And covered we did.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

In 2013, 298,800 angels invested in 70,730 entrepreneurial ventures, according to the 2013 Angel Market Analysis by the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. Source: Center for Venture Research – Angel Market Analysis Report. Sohl: “The Angel Investor Market in 2011: The Recovery Continues”.

Angel Investor 114

Angel Investor Technical Review Venture Capital Pre-Money Valuation 114

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 13, 2013

Whereas I may have seen a dozen companies in 1999 with a point solution in a particular area, now I see multiples. While there are some nuances in their solutions, these are not usually enough to validate so many startups in any given market, and larger companies are looking to snap up talent which is otherwise hard to recruit.

Advisory Board 70

Advisory Board Cloud Venture Capital Vertical 70

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

And funds also have investments from the partners of the firm. Some wait 5-7 years but usually this is because it’s proving more difficult to raise a new fund due to market conditions or the lack of returns in their current fund. Most funds are 10 years in length and the initial investment period is normally 3-5 years.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Early Stage Software Review 269

Up and Running

MAY 10, 2012

Sulaiman Sanni and his partner Ben Lamson were both working for Meltwater Group, a large, well known Software as a Service company, Su as a social media consultant and Ben as a sales manager. We actually consult with each client, and tend to become an extension of their marketing team or development office.”

Small Business 142

Small Business Advisory Board Employee Entrepreneur 142

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 23, 2011

My advice was to keep doing the SharePoint solution development and consulting work the company does today and develop the store project as a side effort until the market is ready. He is heading straight into an intensely competitive market without adequate differentiation or competitive positioning. He currently has a 1999 strategy.

Spain 115

Spain Entrepreneur India San Francisco 115

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I’ll publish the final post in this series this week and then move on to my next series – sales & marketing. When you’re researching a market you can spend a year putting your hypotheses on paper but you somehow never really have a handle on the minute details of the industry until you’ve lived in it.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

If you are going to do the tour up and down Sandhill Road to try and raise your 1st round of financing you need a pitch deck because the vast majority of those meetings you are going to be sitting around a table and you will be presenting to one or more partners and that is going to be your first engagement.”. Is that when it became big?

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

Austin Startup

APRIL 27, 2019

The market for the product simply wasn’t a good one. At the beginning of Coremetrics in 1999, the market risk was whether or not companies would embrace the outsourced model (what we called ASP, or Application Service Providers, back then, and are now called SaaS, or Software as a Service, or “cloud” providers). and negative?—?voice

B2C 51

B2C Austin Cofounder IPO 51

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

The market size for online advertising, e-commerce, and web premium services are 1/10th to 1/3rd the size they are today. To give you a sense, for 2002 the entire US online ad market was $6B and had shrunk year over year (it was $25B+ for 2010). We’re a how-to site and community for small business on marketing. .

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

examined over 20,000 VC-backed companies and found that women’s positions have primarily been in sales and marketing, rather than more “heavy-hitting” roles like chief technology officer and so on. A study based out of Babson College via The Diana Project looked at venture capital investments in women between the years 1999 and 2014.

Venture Capital 82

Venture Capital Lean Cofounder Technical Review 82

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

I quit a very well paid job at Accenture with very little time remaining before making partner and took a risk of having no job security at all. But then you can springboard from there to your next gig and you’ll be an experienced startup employee with functional experience at sales, marketing, product or whatever roles you played.”

Founder 409

Founder Salary Startup Early Stage 409

OnlyOnce

OCTOBER 27, 2022

I’ve been lucky enough to see his career unfold and develop into what it is today, a flourishing coaching business called Inflection Point Partners that helps clients tremendously…and that also feeds Matt’s soul. Our idea was that he would do the same for us as we got our product in market.

Framework 62

Framework Partner Developer Employee 62

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 15, 2010

In 1999 I was working in the London offices of Andersen Consulting. I had been working on marketing & strategy initiatives for European telcos for the past several years helping them to think through and design Internet offerings. Both Tyler & I are Nihon -files. It was right up my alley in terms of skill sets and interests.

San Francisco 379

San Francisco Europe Japan Switzerland 379

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 25, 2011

Before this, it was housed, since inception in 1999, within the walls of ATI, where the Wi-Fi Alliance and ATI built a unique, collaborative relationship. The organization was incorporated in 1999 when a number of visionary companies realized the tremendous opportunity for compatible wireless networking connectivity around the world.

Incubator 54

Incubator Technical Review Austin Texas 54

Gust

JUNE 19, 2012

I bought the Rocket eBook Reader in 1999. I used to think you could use convenience and common sense to predict markets. One of my earliest excursions into market research was working for a research firm doing a 1979 forecast on ATMs. There’s also timing and trends, leadership, luck, and maybe even marketing. .

Startup 180

Startup Forecast Angel Investor Software 180

thebarefootvc

MAY 8, 2012

The best VCs are the ones that balance their optimism, vision and enthusiasm for startups with realism based on very real constraints (the primary one being his/her own time, but also includes market development and exit timing). Too many pivots, and you can lose the market opportunity, even with the greatest idea.

Venture Capital 78

Venture Capital Syndicate Syndication Bandwidth 78

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” Union Square Ventures The next morning I got to spend time with Brad Burnham , partner at Union Square Ventures talking about their investment strategy and insights about web-based businesses.

Customer Development 223

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 223

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 6, 2023

So it’s not “rah rah go do the work and make me my money” bs content marketing. I interned at Mattel in the summer of 1999 so have some light first-person stories about how this company works. It’s words (and advice) he’s been given and had to take himself. “But there was no secret shoe pipeline.

Jordan 68

Jordan IP New York Founder 68

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 18, 2011

than it is to explain how the 1999 UETA and 2000 ESIGN Acts and our https framework help keep us secure. I wanted to run a marketing campaign saying “Our business is so easy and secure it makes signing documents feel like a Corona commercial&# but our legal team said no. If you could go back, would you do anything differently?

Small Business 105

Small Business New Jersey Internet Bootstrapping 105

Transformify

APRIL 15, 2016

Despite Kenya has been named as the fasted growing payments market in Africa, there is still a lot to be done to develop the local business angel community. Mbwana Alliy Founder and Managing Partner at Savannah Fund. He has extensive experience working in Kenya’s tech industry, having founded Wananchi Online in 1999.

Kenya 45

Kenya Africa Incubator Cofounder 45

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 1, 2010

Austin-based Bazaarvoice , the leader in social commerce, has been aggressively building out an incredible suite of applications, furthered by the launch of Social Commerce Insights, which allows marketers to easily and precisely measure social commerce ROI. In this economic age, ROI matters more than ever.”.

Social Media 59

Social Media Analytics Software Review Austin 59

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 26, 2015

After a tumultuous week in global markets, today the US stock market ended higher on the session. As a former investment banker who followed the markets closely once upon a time (especially when I was in the midst of public market M&A transactions), I now have the luxury of watching from an arm’s length.

Marketing 40

Marketing Investment Bankers Valuation China 40

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 26, 2015

After a tumultuous week in global markets, today the US stock market ended higher on the session. As a former investment banker who followed the markets closely once upon a time (especially when I was in the midst of public market M&A transactions), I now have the luxury of watching from an arm’s length.

Marketing 40

Marketing Investment Bankers Valuation China 40

thebarefootvc

JULY 26, 2015

After a tumultuous week in global markets, today the US stock market ended higher on the session. As a former investment banker who followed the markets closely once upon a time (especially when I was in the midst of public market M&A transactions), I now have the luxury of watching from an arm’s length.

Marketing 40

Marketing Investment Bankers Valuation China 40

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

The response from customers and technology partners validates we are onto something big. Today, Calxeda announces three significant executive team additions: Karl Freund, formerly of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, as Vice President of Marketing. Freund brings 30 years of Server market experience to Calxeda.

Naming 59

Naming Hiring Technical Review Virginia 59

Growthink Blog

NOVEMBER 10, 2017

A formal business plan is necessary to show all interested parties -- employees, investors, partners and yourself -- that you are committed to building the business. The business plan process involves researching your target market, as well as the competitive landscape, and serves as a feasibility study for the success of your venture.

Business Plan 128

Business Plan Private Placement Exit Strategy Finance 128

Austin Startup

JANUARY 31, 2018

market this year after an initial trip out to the U.S. media market. People looking to drive true change and evolution in the Media Tech sector whether it’s investors, product owners from corporates, or potential partners. What inspired your team to apply for SXSW Accelerator? We are planning to enter the U.S. in October 2017.

Startup 48

Startup Germany Poland Argentina 48