article thumbnail

How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

It turns out that to build a successful company you ultimately need this strange thing called “revenue” that people don’t just hand you: You need to earn it. And there’s this other thing called “gross margin,” which shows the quality of your revenue. How much ad revenue does TripAdvisor make?

Startup 150
article thumbnail

Should Founders Be Allowed to Take Money off the Table?

Both Sides of the Table

He’s been at it since 2005. We should end the year with a few million in fully recurring revenue and we’re projected to double next year. But more spend = more viral opps = more revenue down the road. >50% of our revenue in now viral. I founded it in 2005 at the age of 37. I believe this is wrong.

Founder 329
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard ComputerSociety.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start withgood people, to make something customers actually want, and to spendas little money as possible. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called"angels."

Startup 105
article thumbnail

How to Fund a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

November 2005 Venture funding works like gears. A typical startup goes throughseveral rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take justenough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the nextgear. It wasnt because they werent accredited investors that I didntask my parents for seed money, though.

article thumbnail

From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

techcrunch.com

the meebo that launched in 2005 was a group effort – the idea primarily came from sandy being a huge IMer and having trouble getting on IM when we were working on earlier ideas in elaine’s apartment! For both companies, the initial traction enabled raising seed money to get them to a traditional VC investment.)