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Ted Rheingold Founded Dogster in 2004: Five Questions About Building a Startup, Selling a Startup and Whether SF Is Still a Good Place

Hunter Walker

Dogster launched January 12, 2004 (Happy 12th Birthday Dogster!) I wish I could claim I deftly foresaw this, but I was just seeking recurring revenue to to cover OneMatchFire’s office expenses. This was pre-Google images, pre-MySpace/Facebook. I spent 6 months coding and building Dogster myself.

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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. It helped that in the nuclear winter that followed the crash, 2001 – 2004, startups and VCs were extremely risk averse and amenable to new ideas that reduced risk.

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Cliff Notes S-1: Kayak ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

Founding Date: 2004. How They Make Money: Majority of Kayak’s revenue actually comes from advertising on their site (55%), not lead generation or referral fees to travel suppliers as you might think (more on this below). Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $170 million. Distribution revenue is CPC and CPA. .

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The Search For the Fountain of Youth – Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Enterprise

Steve Blank

The company loses customers, then revenues and profits decline and it eventually gets acquired or goes out of business. The Ambidextrous Organization, Charles O’Reilly / Michael Tushman : April 2004. Darwin and the Demon: Innovating Within Established Enterprises, Geoffrey Moore : July/August 2004. Creative Destruction. . -

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What Just Happened

Feld Thoughts

Its revenue grew by 30%+. Another company had a revenue decline of 25%. 2004 was the beginning of what I now refer to as “the grind,” which ended for me around 2007. No one will value a company with a GM% of 10% at the same as a company with a GM% of 80% just because they are growing revenue at the same rate.

Valuation 172
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Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

Steve Blank

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. There was now a public market for companies with no revenue, no profit and big claims.

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Customer Development in Japan: a History Lesson

Steve Blank

By then, I had become a venture capitalist at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance and found myself talking to a lot of entrepreneurs who were proclaiming their great technology yet were struggling with little revenue, and claiming they were “crossing the chasm”. Maysee now enjoys hockey stick revenue growth.

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