Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Yes, it’s true that FOMO (fear of missing out) is driving some irrational behavior and valuations amongst uber competitive deals and well-financed VCs. Try charging customers for your product when you have 12 competitors giving the product away free finances by $20 million of VC. The Exit Problem.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

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. Plus, there’s all the other costs — R&D to build the stuff, office space, executive salaries, billing, legal, finance, HR, tech support, account managers. Drastically reduce the cost of customer acquisition.

Business Model 335

Business Model .Net Revenue IPO 335

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 14, 2018

Examples would be “an acquisition” or “a financing” or “an IPO.” ” Let’s take “acquisition” as an example. Maybe you’ve made some acquisitions in the past. Then, I like to roll into metrics that create a floor on how the business will operate.

Acquisition 145

Acquisition IPO Metrics Finance 145

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

While poised with a limited number of transactions this year, the world of public Cloud Computing and SaaS companies has been marked by two events in the past few months: the acquisition of Omniture by Adobe and the high profile IPO of LogMeIn, a leading provider of PC remote access and support with a very interesting freemium model.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review IPO Cloud 48

Haystack

DECEMBER 26, 2018

TechCrunch’s Kate Clark has done a round-up of the largest “private VC” rounds of 2018, and there’s a whole other list for just $100M+ financings led by Softbank’s Vision Fund. Speaking of acquisitions — many leaders of larger VC funds have privately given up on the incumbents buying their companies.

IPO 76

IPO Private Equity Valuation Acquisition 76

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

This post is intended to be a dynamic document, and I will attempt to update it from time to time with new questions that may arise or as financing trends evolve. Q: What amount of financing is considered Pre-Seed? It’s a legitimate stage of financing in the venture eco-system as of this writing (October 2017).

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

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

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Save Asia for post-IPO Single instance, multi-tenant, single datacenter - Have only one version of the code in production. Effectively measuring and understanding your CAC and CLTV metrics are key to future success. Only after reaching $1M in CMRR should you consider hiring European sales and services execs behind customer demand.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

cdixon.org

AUGUST 3, 2012

Facebook’s market cap is about half of what most tech investors expected before the IPO. - For consumer startups with transactional models, e.g. e-commerce, the number of users required is often far lower because revenue is the more important metric. There will be a lot more consumer talent acquisitions. . -

Bridge Financing 86

Bridge Financing Early Stage Valuation Later Stage 86

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

He’s personally led more than 50 financing rounds. Scott left the company, which eventually IPO’d and became Internet Brands. And finally, Scott demonstrated his internal management tool for managing the metrics of his business. Rumored to have turned down acquisition offers from Yahoo and Facebook.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

Austin Startup

AUGUST 30, 2018

So while the number of dollars pouring into Austin may be increasing, that metric is only favorable to businesses that warrant those sized-rounds. Of these rounds, nearly every one was classified as a Series B or later-stage round, with the exception of a few debt and equity financing rounds.

Austin 48

Austin Early Stage San Francisco Later Stage 48

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 4, 2008

2007 was a turning point for the SaaS industry with the successful IPOs of NetSuite, SuccessFactors, DemandTec, Salary.com, Aprimo and Constant Contact. What metrics should I be using to drive a saas business? or What do I need to do to get ready for an IPO. Save Asia for post-IPO. “Bookings” is for suckers.

Software Review 48

Software Review South Korea IPO Portfolio 48

Occam's Razor

OCTOBER 14, 2014

Any big changes in your marketing/customer acquisition strategy over the last time period (more money doing Search, less money in Email, elimination Facebook as it does not work, etc., Outcomes of the conversations with your Finance team and Sr. You have the standard metrics like Time on Site, Pages/Visit and Bounce Rate.

Analytics 133

Analytics Vertical Metrics Web 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage. but few step back and really examine the underlying assumptions of startup finance. Thank you for your simple, insightful explanation of why that is the wrong metric to use.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Cracking the Code

MARCH 10, 2008

Lets call this ratio the Customer Acquisition Cost ratio or CAC ratio. From our private investor experience, a breakeven in 1-2 year seems reasonable and if we look at Salesforce.com CAC ratio since its IPO, it is indeed within this 0.5-1 SaaS business metrics: why are they different? Yahoo Finance. Happy New Year 2008!

Sales 79

Sales Software Review Marketing Technical Review 79

K9 Ventures

APRIL 9, 2014

Threshold for an IPO is higher Ten years ago, if you had $20M in revenue you were ready to go public. Seed is not the first round of financing any more. They’re starting to use similar metrics and structures as what the old Series A folks used to. Today, you need almost 5x or 10x that number to even be eligible.

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Entrepreneurs and investors who have spent any time dealing with convertible debt seed financing transactions are likely to have encountered the subject of valuation caps. The cap is irrelevant if the next equity financing is at a valuation below the cap amount.) was spun out, and the valuation was set by that financing round.

Valuation 98

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Merger Vesting 98

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Startup Metrics for Pirates â?? SaaS Metrics Tutorial â?? great web customer acquisition tutorials. easy business finance software. YCombinator Series AA Equity Financing Documents. Startup Threads. Videos/presentations. SlideShare. Haiku Deck. GoAnimate *. Customer service. Get Satisfaction. Event platforms.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Pascal's View

AUGUST 21, 2011

This time, the debate centers on the “favored few” Social Media venture backed companies that have brought tremendous windfalls to a select group of venture funds and management teams, both pre- and post-IPO. It is intentional. For me Bubble will always be inexorably linked to what went down in 1999 and 2000 in the internet sector.

Valuation 50

Valuation Social Media Media IPO 50

Seeing Both Sides

JANUARY 13, 2015

Always testing and trying to run fast tests to put up some strong metrics before running out of money (did I mention we''re running out of money?). Financing: holy crap - we are running out of money in 6 months! Financing: The "hopes and dreams" financing stage is over. Do we have an IPO management team in place?

Mezzanine 20

Mezzanine IPO Finance Business Model 20

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

To see proof of this, simply observe the results of the large majorities of corporate acquisitions of startups. This is why so many small businesses can be financed with simple bank loans; the level of risk and uncertainty is well enough understood that a reasonably intelligent loan officer can assess its prospects.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168