Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

This quarter they interviewed me as part of it on Quarterly VC Update: Brad Feld on the State of Venture Capital Investing. For growth companies (usually Series D or later), there are pretty clear market comparables based on growth rate, revenue, gross margin %, and type of company. Each quarter Cooley does a VC market update.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital Private Equity Early Stage Valuation 70

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. See as a board we can already see very clearly how our 2014 & 2015 years pencil out with a fair degree of predictability. In the Early Days.

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Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. II: Who are the major Revenue-Based Investing VCs? III: Why are Revenue-Based VCs investing in so many women and underrepresented founders? IV: Should your new VC fund use Revenue-Based Investing?

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

The Venture Capital industry as a whole does a terrible job of giving things the right name and so we end up keeping the same name, but changing the meaning out from under it. Fast-forward to June 2015, two years later, and now I feel that the change that I started to notice back in 2013, is here, and it’s here to stay.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Here’s a short summary of the discussion: Guy, you launched Snyk in 2015, and a large part of your success was driven by your freemium model. It took us longer to get into revenue, but the freemium was a real accelerator for us. A year in, we had great usage and no revenue. Developers usually don’t embrace security solutions.

Early Stage 62

Early Stage Open Source Development Team Review Security 62

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 3, 2014

The latest funding round led by Active Venture Partners , a European venture capital company with a presence in Spain, Germany and Scandinavia, is expected to help the online ticket trading platform drive its international growth. million, making it a total of $12.7 million since its founding in 2009.

Spain 159

Spain Asia Europe Germany 159

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Helped merge company with Seedling – on track to do $20 million combined revenue in 2015 – will now become Chairman). As I like to say (and as Kara humbly hates when I do so in front of others) … she has a much better resume to a venture capital partner than I do.

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Partner Las Vegas Los Angeles Baltimore 408

Haystack

NOVEMBER 3, 2019

Fitbit was started in a previous startup era, raised about $65M in venture capital, went public in 2015, and reached heights of over a $4B market cap. in revenues (with 100M devices sold, about 25% still in use). 1/ High End And Low End Disruption – Fitbit ended up owning nearly one quarter of the wearables market.

Acquisition 100

Acquisition Venture Capital Aggregator Mobile 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 10, 2015

One of the most popular and least successful models I see in new business plans for startups is the so-called Facebook model, providing free services to users while collecting revenue from ads to offset costs and grow the business. Share of revenue from ad action initiated by your visitors.

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CPA Advertising Revenue PPC 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 1, 2015

Image via Flickr by Jupiter Labs Many first-time entrepreneurs find themselves unable to bootstrap their startups, and also unable to find early funding at the venture capital level or even with angel investors. Tie re-payments to revenue growth in the startup. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 5/22/2015.

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Sweat Equity Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Equity 120

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 21, 2014

As a result, the full revenue for each deal was recognized in that quarter as soon as the software was shipped. This allowed our revenue to skyrocket from $1.8 But the downside to our business model was that we did not have hardly any recurring revenue. . I later came to realize that r ecurring revenue is magic.

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Revenue Valuation Churn Rate Portfolio 54

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Most entrepreneurs have found by now one or more of the many popular crowdfunding sites , and have the name and contact information for at least one of the big venture capital firms. Their realm fits between crowdfunding and venture capital sources. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 2/06/2015.

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Angel Investor Accredited Investor Venture Capital Startup 120

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

Asking for early-stage money before you have customers and revenue will likely kill your credibility with real investors. A micro venture capital firm. A “genesis” venture capital round. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 9/25/2015.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Finance Early Stage Startup 120

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 14, 2021

Prior to founding Taxfyle in 2015, Richard worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers as an auditor. Fast forward to today; since we founded Taxfyle in 2015, it has earned the support and investment of numerous venture capitalists and is one of the fastest-growing companies in any sector in the U.S. Last year, Taxfyle ranked No.

CPA 136

CPA Founder Vertical Cofounder 136

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 6, 2016

Quick and easy meals are now the go-to, and because of that, grocery retailers have to capitalize on the opportunity to cater to this new culture. If they don’t, they will lose out on billions in revenue potential. Gerry Hays is the founder and CEO of DinnerCall , a public benefit corporation founded in 2015 out of Indianapolis.

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Indianapolis Venture Capital Mobile Sales 100

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 25, 2015

This tweet from YC’s Sam Altman was in my feed this morning: another nice comment from demo day "there are more companies here with $1MM+ run rates than i see in months of startups pitching A rounds" — Sam Altman (@sama) March 25, 2015. Uncategorized Venture Capital' You can see why he’s pleased.

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Venture Capital Equity Revenue Startup 60

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

Creative and determined entrepreneurs always find ways to get people to work for equity, barter services or share later revenue rather than pay cash up front. Indeed, there is a time and place in every new venture where even a bootstrapping entrepreneur should consider bringing on investors. The need to hire staff immediately.

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Bootstrapping Cofounder Equity Agile 120

abovethecrowd.com

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

As the bull market raged on from 2015 to 2022, it became quite trendy for venture capitalists to wave the requirement for an annual audit which is embedded in almost every standard Series A term sheet. The post Venture Capital Red Flag Checklist appeared first on Above the Crowd. Aversion to Audits.

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Venture Capital Non-Compete Government Delaware 113

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

That is to say, they’d want to be able to control costs and revenues at a high level. Ultimately a deal was reached in which the company’s founders ended up giving up majority stakes in the startup, along with turning over significant business decisions to the private equity investors, in exchange for the capital.

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Private Equity Pre-Money Valuation Equity Startup 94

K9 Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

The following interview by Steven Loeb was published in Vator.tv on 5 September 2015 and is reproduced below in its entirety. Direct Revenue, meaning no three-way business models and no advertising, media, or content. What led you to the venture capital world? Frighteningly Early. Where did you go to school?

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Early Stage Portfolio Software Engineering 48

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 7, 2015

On the other hand, venture capital organizations typically look for needs that exceed $2 million. Angel investors will perk up if you have a prototype or a few real customers, while venture capitalists will likely choose to wait until you have achieved several million in revenue or customer count.

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Preferred Stock Exit Strategy Equity Angel Investor 120

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2015

As they say, you only get one chance to make a great first impression, so don’t pitch to a key angel group or venture capital team for practice. If your startup has a proven revenue model, real customers and is ready to scale, approach the best investors even if it costs you more money.

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Cost Angel Groups Due Diligence Silicon Valley 120

View from Seed

MARCH 26, 2015

So it’s natural now for founders to raise a smaller “pre-seed” round prior to the full seed to get the company going and to attract seed venture capital beyond angels. Depending on the business, step function progress might be an early prototype launched, a revenue threshold, or expansion from one to many cities.

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Seed Capital Institutional Investors Venture Capital Partner 120

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 1, 2014

SocialSignIn , just announced as one of the Techstars NYC companies in this cohort, is growing revenues and has their in-venue marketing solution operating across multi-unit chains, theaters and lots of other places where venue owners want a better relationship with their on location customers. Venture Capital & Technology'

Venture Capital 117

Venture Capital Early Stage Portfolio Design 117

Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

In 2015, businesses owned by women brought in more than $1.5 But only around 2% will actually achieve revenues over $1 million dollars. Three major changes could increase their chances of experiencing sustainable growth: access to angel/venture capital, learning effective pricing/negotiation skills and business mentorship.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur CTO Hire 48

Haystack

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

venture capital to date (more on this in a separate post), unfortunately relegating billion-dollar exits as “ho-hum” events to the technology crowd. It’s been a few years now since BlackBerry made phones, and this represents its largest purchase to date (by a factor of 3) since its 2015 acquisition of Good Technology.

Acquisition 62

Acquisition Artificial Inteligence Balance Sheet Cofounder 62

Scalable Startup

APRIL 6, 2015

Fast forward to today, 2015, when we’ve been in a possible “end of the boom” for over 3 years. Angel Investor CEO Succession Scalability startup startup CEO angel investor Cash Flow first revenue The Next Level tom nora venture capital' t [at] tomnora dot com.

Angel Investor 20

Angel Investor Technical Review Southern California Startup 20

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

Google realized that being the way to find the world’s information was a blitzscalable market, thanks to the network effects in its AdWords revenue engine. He also had backing from well-known venture capital investors like Union Square Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Google Ventures, and even Richard Branson.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

Up and Running

MAY 7, 2018

By 2005, GoPro had $150,000 in revenue. Founder Markus Frind started out with literally nothing but some coding knowledge and his bedroom—but turned POF into a $575,000,000 company by 2015. . It wasn’t enough to bootstrap GoPro, though, so he turned to family and friends who together raised a further $65,000.

Bootstrapping 88

Bootstrapping Jordan Venture Capital Lean 88

Bryce Dot VC

SEPTEMBER 28, 2015

These notions of an independent ethos don’t map that well to what we know about venture capital, which is a very staged and formulaic way of building a company. As a venture funded startup, you’re supposed to operate a certain way. Because venture does provide a lot of good things to a bunch of really great companies.

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Venture Capital Valuation Los Angeles Chicago 40

Haystack

NOVEMBER 25, 2018

As a little tradition on this blog, I’ve singled out companies starting in 2013 with Stripe ; there was Snap back in 2014; Slack in 2015; took a break in 2016, as I wasn’t inspired to select one then; and last year, 2017, was Coinbase. 5/ The Enduring Allure Of Platform Potential: Revenue is important.

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Technical Review Open Source Software Review Venture Capital 127

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 11, 2019

They focus on helping content creators and app developers create, identify, package and distribute those meaningful video highlights in ways that help them reach more customers and generate more revenue. The Fantag team came together at the end of 2015. Fantag users range from coaches to video students to parents.

Sacramento 73

Sacramento San Jose Startup Distribution 73

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

You see, Dan knows more about venture than most people; and if Dan isn’t aware that “pre-seed is a thing,” then I haven’t done a good enough job of explaining to the world what I and K9 do! A follow-up post, titled The Seeds Have Changed: An Epilogue , on June 5, 2015, explained this further: Pre-Seed is the New Seed.

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Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

5000 issue in 2015. We were depending on investor funding, but with $60,000 in revenue no one would fund it. . And, Pitch Johnson who was the chairman of the board at Boole & Babbage and a venture capitalist, took me around and introduced me to every venture capital firm in Silicon Valley at the time.

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Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

Spencer Fry

APRIL 17, 2017

Having started and sold 3 successful bootstrapped businesses, and am now running 1 venture capital backed business ( Coach ), this is a topic I know a thing or two about. It wasn’t enough at the end of 2015 to have a working prototype and a handful of customers to somehow take over the market.

Bootstrapping 63

Bootstrapping Cap Table Liquidation Preference Cofounder 63

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 8, 2016

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, a minimum of 110 “open source startups” had raised more than $7 billion from venture capitalists as of 2015, up over 100% since 2013. But even hotter, according to new data from mutual fund filings and Dow Jones VentureSource, are proprietary big data software startups.

Software 60

Software Open Source Valuation Analytics 60

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74