Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

There are many reasons to found a startup. There are many reasons to work at a startup. To most founders a startup is not a job, but a calling. But startups require money upfront for product development and later to scale. Traditional lenders (banks) think that startups are too risky for a traditional bank loan.

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Private Equity 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 23, 2013

Marketo filed for IPO with impressive 80% year-over-year growth in 2012, with almost $60m in revenue. So no, this upside-down business model isn’t what a SaaS business should construct. I wish the modern startup community would understand the mindset that gets a company to this point, and resist it.

Business Model 335

Business Model .Net Revenue IPO 335

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2023

Luckily, not all investors are looking for the same thing, so it pays to know what type of investors are most interested in what your startup brings to the table. The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. Congratulations!

Angel Investor 313

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 313

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

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. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

View from Seed

MARCH 3, 2015

Ellie Mirman was the first marketer hired by the CMO of HubSpot, the Boston-based marketing software startup that IPOed in 2014. Below, she shares lessons learned from the earliest days of marketing the company and how this has translated to her second startup role as VP of Marketing at Toast. Where do you start?

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

Austin Startup

MAY 10, 2021

Georgoff’s scorecard with growth-stage startups speaks for itself?—?three three companies he previously worked for had successful exits including two acquisitions and one IPO. Georgoff has more than 15 years of experience as a growth-stage executive focused on strategy, product and design.

Hiring 104

Hiring Product United States Startup 104

Austin Startup

APRIL 27, 2019

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series/ebook, over the years I’ve noticed that I tend to frequently share certain Lucky7 posts with entrepreneurs we’ve backed , team members at data.world, or other startup investors I know. In totality, these posts are at least as long as most business books. It is just four-years old?—?for

B2C 51

B2C Austin Cofounder IPO 51

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 The three drivers of growth for your business model. Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

Seed-stage, meanwhil e, is technically that critical period when you need funding to do solution- and business-model development, to prove that your new product or service works, before you try to sell it to customers. Crowdfunding is rapidly becoming the major source of funding for seed-stage startups.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Finance Early Stage Startup 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

What are they, how do they differ and what can startup do to take advantage of them? Paths to Liquidity: a quick history of the four waves of startup investing. The Golden Age (1970 – 1995): Build a growing business with a consistently profitable track record (after at least 5 quarters,) and go public when it’s time.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you. VC’s invested their limited partners’ “risk capital” in a portfolio of startups in exchange for illiquid stock. Startup lifecycle in an IPO Market. Netscape’s 1995 IPO changed the rules.

Venture Capital 303

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 303

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 4, 2014

Luckily, not all investors are looking for the same thing, so it pays to know what type of investors are most interested in what your startup brings to the table. The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. Congratulations!

Angel Investor 232

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 232

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

For years, the most desirable exit strategy for startup companies was to go public through an initial public offering. Today, many startups are succumbing to the temptation to sell their companies early. A review of recent case studies from similar startups may make this decision a little easier. Here are a few to consider.

IPO 162

IPO Exit Strategy San Francisco Startup 162

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

Entrepreneurs who are looking to attract investors need to develop and pitch a plan -- preferably written -- that answers every potential investor question about your startup before it is asked. What is the business problem you are solving? How does your business model make money?

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Advisory Board Liquidity Event Startup 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

Over breakfast he got me up to date on his life since school (two non-CEO roles in startups,) but he wanted to talk about his third startup – the one he and two co-founders had started. In this first step, the goal of a startup is to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Most startups die here.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2018

Luckily, not all investors are looking for the same thing, so it pays to know what type of investors are most interested in what your startup brings to the table. The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. Congratulations!

Angel Investor 184

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 184

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2016

Luckily, not all investors are looking for the same thing, so it pays to know what type of investors are most interested in what your startup brings to the table. The key is understanding how potential investors see you, and especially how they view the maturity stage of your startup. Congratulations!

Matching 120

Matching Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers 120

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. The value ascribed by subsequent investors (in a secondary); buyers (acquisition); or the public markets (IPO). Typical business stage. An already proven business model and its already valuable assets. Of the Inc.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

Hila Qu joined Mucker’s Tony Yang for an Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) conversation about Product-Led Growth (PLG) for Startups to kickoff the 2023 Mucker Growth Series. Hila Qu has been the Head of Growth or VP of Growth at a number of different companies and startups, most notably Acorns and GitLab. Hila is a mentor with Mucker Capital.

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Startup Fractional CTO 78

Tim Keane

MARCH 9, 2011

Startups and angels: Along the way to success. How to prepare a sales forecast for a business plan » March 09, 2011. It’s a deceptively simple question:  what is the optimal way to finance a new startup? It’s a deceptively simple question:  what is the optimal way to finance a new startup? five years.).

Finance 83

Finance Bootstrapping Startup Equity 83

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

. — Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm. The startup process has become demystified – information is everywhere. 20th Century Tech Liquidity = Initial Public Offering.

Founder 274

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 274

Hunter Walker

MARCH 8, 2014

If you’re graduating this spring and starting a career in tech, I’ve got one piece of advice: go work at a midstage startup (I’ll define that as B/C rounds of financing – eg Twilio, Stripe, Airbnb, Warby). At a more mature technology company you’re protecting and extending your business model.

Liquidity Event 134

Liquidity Event Early Stage Seed Stage Startup 134

The Startup Toolkit

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

The company becomes valuable and someone buys the whole thing (acquisition). It gets very big and very valuable and you go public (IPO). 5mm/year) and someone buys you to add that revenue to their portfolio (revenue-based acquisition). Most big ($100mm+) acquisitions follow this pattern. You’re making solid revenue (e.g.

Dividend 50

Dividend Acquisition Founder Bootstrapping 50

Scalable Startup

AUGUST 26, 2014

There’s a lot of buzz about the Amazon acquisition of TWITCH this week. Red Hat was one of the first of these types of companies bridging open source with big finance, leveraging Linux support into a profitable business, also leveraging the enterprise. They kind of invented this business model.

Founder 42

Founder Los Angeles PHP Open Source 42

Seeing Both Sides

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

Scott Kirsner of The Boston Globe called them the startup equivalent of the Justice League of America. The CEOs on the panel were (from left to right): Michael Simon, CEO/founder of LogMeIn (2009 IPO) . Scott Griffith, CEO ZipCar (2010 IPO). Gail Goodman, CEO Constant Contact (2007 IPO).

Technical Cofounder 45

Technical Cofounder Cofounder IPO Boston 45

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

Description of the business entity you plan to form. The most common business entity used for startups is a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), which is the cheapest and simplest to manage. If possible, quantify these in non-technical business terms, such as dollars saved or replacement costs over time.

Business Plan 423

Business Plan Product Intellectual Property Elevator Pitch 423

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Fairchild Semiconductor became the progenitor of a flood of Silicon Valley chip companies and at the same time the adoption of the limited partnership as the model for Venture Firms gave VC’s their own profitable business model. In 1980 Genentech became the first IPO of a venture funded biotech company.

Lean 263

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 263

Growthink Blog

APRIL 15, 2015

Now given that the company has yet to even come close to breaking even, this can be viewed as either a great validation of Domo''s business model, or as more evidence of the “Bubble Mania” of the current technology financing landscape and a screaming signal to get out while you still can.

Valuation 48

Valuation Venture Capital Finance Acquisition 48

View from Seed

JANUARY 24, 2018

For this reason, we’ve partnered with Guild members who have experience across different kinds of customers, business models, and distribution channels. Prior to joining Oscar she was involved in building products at many e-commerce startups in NYC in industries ranging from food delivery to leisure activity ticketing.

Operations 177

Operations Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 177

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

It probably had more to do with the fact that they had doubled their sales annually for several years, and still managed to squeeze out a profit of $11M in their year of acquisition. At the other extreme, I don’t condone greedy and unethical business practices to unjustly shake down customers and employees alike.

Intellectual Property 48

Intellectual Property Initial Public Offering Merger Acquisition 48

The Next Web

AUGUST 5, 2013

Passive Income vs Startup Guy. It seems that a typical “successful” startup life cycle looks like this: Build a product. Talent acquisition. What’s crazy about this is that the guy who’s actually making money is being laughed at — it’s just so much better to have a gazillion eyeballs (and no business model).

Chile 122

Chile Canada Bootstrapping IPO 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 21, 2010 What is a startup? I think most people have a fairly specific image that gets conjured up when they hear the word startup. It leads people to mistakenly believe that any time they see two guys in a garage attempting the impossible, that’s a startup. Wrong again.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

The Equity Kicker

OCTOBER 8, 2012

The central point of his essay is that startups are all about growth and that is the one thing they measure at Y Combinator. According to Paul most startups should look at revenue growth, but active users is a good proxy for companies that aren’t charging their customers (yet). I disagree that growth should be the sole focus though.

Silicon Valley 149

Silicon Valley IPO eCommerce Valuation 149

cdixon.org

AUGUST 3, 2012

Entrepreneurs and investors have been enamored with consumer internet startups for the last few years. Facebook’s market cap is about half of what most tech investors expected before the IPO. - Facebook’s market cap is about half of what most tech investors expected before the IPO. -

Bridge Financing 86

Bridge Financing Early Stage Valuation Later Stage 86

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2013

Since Angel investors put money into 60 times as many companies as venture capital funds, according to Wikipedia, early-stage startups need to focus first on the key thresholds that drive these investment decisions. Angel investors look for prior domain and startup experience. The same hold true for venture capital investors.

Angel Investor 269

Angel Investor Cram Down Intellectual Property Venture Capital 269

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

He’ll be speaking at this year’s Lean Startup Conference , and also has a new book (for which I very happily wrote a short foreword) coming out next month: Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It. It used to be that startups went public about 6-7 years from founding; that number is now 10-12 years.

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167