Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

A reverse merger is the acquisition of an already public company (usually a dormant shell) to avoid the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process and cost, to quickly get your startup on a public exchange for fund raising through visibility and selling stock. Yet reverse mergers are not all bad.

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Merger OTC IPO Due Diligence 261

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2022

Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is finally up from the dead zone of the last two decades, and is now double the rate back in 1999. Thus, today around 90 percent of successful startups are still acquired by bigger companies versus an IPO, as the safer and preferred method of growth and funding.

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IPO SEC Prospectus Startup 245

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 6, 2014

" Current IPO activity feedback seems to support their excitement. IPO market showed more activity than any other first quarter since 2000, with 64 companies raising $10.6 That is more than double the number of IPOs in the first quarter of 2013. Market volatility usually hits public companies first.

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IPO Initial Public Offering Startup Small Business Administration 236

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 12, 2014

We will cover them in more depth below: Acquisition. Initial Public Offering (IPO). Acquisition: The acquisition is often known as a “merger and acquisition.” An acquisition or merger does not have to happen on a big scale. This list should give you an idea of common types of exit strategies.

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Exit Strategy Lock-up Period Merger IPO 117

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 3, 2021

To assist his consulting firm clients with attracting investors willing to fund an unknown business, Luke Lazarus uses an IPO or acquisition model to ensure the highest possible value for his client’s organization. Luke Lazarus Comments on the Top Marketing Trends of 2020.

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United States Entrepreneur Angel Investor Social Media 167

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.

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Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 22, 2017

Corporate transactions including mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and initial public offerings (IPO) bring necessary capital and resources to a growing company. Mergers and acquisitions can be fairly contentious and not all shareholders agree that it is in their best interest for Company A to buy Company B.

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IPO Prospectus Merger Initial Public Offering 147

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

Then there is the pressure to go public ( IPO ), and open your investment to thousands, maybe millions, of small investors. Of course, customer relationships, and penetration into new market segments are also critical elements. Isolate marketing from sales for maximum customer focus.

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Merger Due Diligence SEC IPO 379

YoungUpstarts

MAY 6, 2019

Market Research. In this stage, you will also search the market to check if your idea is viable. If there is a gap in the market, there will be demand. Now the question is: How to find gaps in the market? MVP is the product that you can bring to the market. Next is marketing. There is a simple rule of thumb.

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Startup Technical Cofounder Merger Early Stage 113

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

Even though the Initial Public Offering (IPO) alternative for a successful startup seems to be coming back, it is relatively rare. IPOs in 2008, the market was up to a still trivial 128 in 2012 (compared to 675 in 1996). business entrepreneur exit founder IPO startup' After a record low of 39 U.S. Marty Zwilling.

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IPO Founder Exit Strategy Investment Bankers 224

Haystack

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

Last night, SAP bought the company before it could IPO. In the wake of what is now considered the second-highest enterprise SaaS acquisition in history, below are some quick takeaways that are on my mind: 1/ The Efficiency Of Silicon Slopes – By now it should be no surprise that Utah’s tech ecosystem is on fire.

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Acquisition Utah IPO Venture Capital 105

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

Even though the Initial Public Offering (IPO) alternative for a successful startup seems to be coming back into vogue, it is relatively rare. IPOs in 2008, the market was up to a still trivial 159 in 2011. With the more popular Merger & Acquisition (M&A) exit strategy, the control stays with the new entity.

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Exit Strategy IPO Investment Bankers Entrepreneur 239

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

To do this they have to accomplish five things; 1) get deal flow – via networking and legwork, they identify likely industries, companies and teams with the potential for rapid growth (less than 10 years), 2) evaluate those companies and teams on the basis of technology, market opportunity, and team.

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

This happens when you either sell your company ( M&A ) or go public (an IPO.) For the first few years, your VCs want you to keep your head down, build the product, find product/market fit and ship to get to some inflection point (revenue, users, etc.). Or as with consumer deals, is the value is ascribed by the market?

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Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

billion acquisition of Weta Digital, Peter Jackson’s VFX company, gives Unity capabilities in creating hyper realistic virtual environments using RT3D (real-time 3D) technology. To live to its potential as a core part of the Metaverse Meta has to overcome a challenging market and a confused brand. Unity’s recent $4.4

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IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 8, 2019

A reverse merger is the acquisition of an already public company (usually a dormant shell) to avoid the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process and cost, to quickly get your startup on a public exchange for fund raising through visibility and selling stock. Yet reverse mergers are not all bad.

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Merger OTC IPO Due Diligence 303

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 3, 2015

For financial reasons alone, an IPO is a statistically rare phenomenon, happening just 275 times in 2014 , out of almost 500,000 startups. As an advisor and mentor to startups, I try to make sure entrepreneurs understand both the pros and cons of an IPO as an exit strategy. The public is not an easy master to satisfy.

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IPO Initial Public Offering Entrepreneur Private Equity 120

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 25, 2017

During business mergers or acquisitions there’s plenty of research and document reviews. IPOs are difficult company transactions as it requires companies to go public. VDR provides the necessary channel through which such companies can survive and launch careful IPO document management and retention.

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Software Review Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 16, 2011

It has been at least a decade since going public via an Initial Public Offering (IPO) has been considered a credible exit strategy for startups. Usually a small company can sell about 20 percent of its stock in an IPO. The market is moving back up, but slowly. The market is moving back up, but slowly. How’s the timing?

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IPO Social Media Media Exit Strategy 223

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2023

For example, if you have a proven product, real revenue, a big potential market, and are ready to scale up the business, every investor will be interested. Investors call this the seed stage , where money is required to build a market and a real product. The final product works great, and all the early users love it.”

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Angel Investor Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Private Equity 313

Hunter Walker

MAY 13, 2023

Especially in the early days of mobile/iOS engineering, if you hired strong technical talent into your early stage company, you basically created an acquisition outcome floor. Sometimes you’d even get lucky and receive stock in the acquirer, which was how I gained pre-IPO equity in high growth stars like Pinterest and Facebook.

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Early Stage Cap Table Acquisition Sales 117

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

Projected IPOs for 2009 are an embarrassing 10 total deals, down from 86 just 2 years ago (it was 265 in the go-go years of 99-00) but at least up from 6 in 2008. Fred Wilson supports Montgomery’s view in this thoughtful post on the return of the tech IPO market.

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Technical Review IPO Southern California Venture Capital 241

Genuine VC

MARCH 26, 2012

Over the past decade, VCs have been lamenting about the poor state of the IPO markets and that the number of real potential acquirers for consumer internet startups has dwindled down to a handful, if that. That optimism, even, can extend beyond the IPO markets to M&A as well.

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Acquisition Internet IPO Venture Capital 128

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 24, 2017

Moreover, the company’s performance in global markets (last year the unit sell-through increased 90% in China) could work well in favor of investors. Snap Inc’s stock SNAP increased 44% from the initial IPO rate on the first trading day. This would be useful for personalization and cross-user acquisition. and $24.48

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Stock United States China Technical Review 113

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 16, 2023

That would be almost any bank that provides checking accounts, savings accounts, and money market accounts to businesses, and also makes loans to businesses. So unless your business is well established, and ready to sell or go public (Initial Public Offering - IPO), you should steer clear of investment banks.

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Early Stage Silicon Valley Private Equity Initial Public Offering 182

View from Seed

DECEMBER 4, 2019

This equates to something in the neighborhood of a 10% IRR, which isn’t great given the illiquidity of the asset class and strength of the public markets. Over the last 10 years, we’ve been in a bull market with considerable froth in late stage financing activity and valuations. How Have the More Recent Vintages Performed?

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LP IRR Distribution Portfolio 256

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 26, 2020

That would be almost any bank that provides checking accounts, savings accounts, and money market accounts to businesses, and also makes loans to businesses. So unless your business is well established, and ready to sell or go public (Initial Public Offering - IPO), you should steer clear of investment banks.

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Silicon Valley Private Equity Initial Public Offering Term Sheet 362

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2021

Especially for entrepreneurs who have not built and sold companies before, and need this startup to be an attractive acquisition or IPO target in a few years, I can’t think of a better way to enlist outside experts and keep them motivated to help you meet the challenges of a startup. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Advisory Board IPO Government Acquisition 362

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

If you want the full SlideShare deck with many slides not in either post it’s in this link –> The LA Tech Market. Has it begun to mature or is it just better marketed than in was say 5 years ago? Given how efficient markets are when a large market like LA starts to blossom it attracts capital pretty quickly.

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Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

Haystack

DECEMBER 29, 2018

Hundreds of new micro funds somehow keep getting into the market. More and more angels will be minted as the 2019 IPO class emerges. If every sector is to be transformed by technology, and if private markets keep growing, it makes today’s conditions understandable. 5/ Early Effects Of The Softbank Effect.

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Technical Review Venture Capital Russia China 165

Genuine VC

MARCH 26, 2012

Over the past decade, VCs have been lamenting about the poor state of the IPO markets and that the number of real potential acquirers for consumer internet startups has dwindled down to a handful, if that. That optimism, even, can extend beyond the IPO markets to M&A as well.

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Acquisition Internet IPO Venture Capital 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

As I’ve highlighted I believe we’re in a unique period similar to 2005-08 where the biggest tech firms of Silicon Valley (and some media companies) are scooping up small software companies as “talent acquisitions&# versus accretive revenue / profit generators. Total disruption on the funding market? I doubt it.

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Cap Table Angel Investor Liquidation Preference Deal Flow 283

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 3, 2021

For example, if you have ever watched the Shark Tank show on TV, they always ask about the cost of customer acquisition. Competitors, like the market, never stand still as you disrupt their space. Equity investors realize that they won’t see any real return until an exit occurs, such as a sale, merger, or IPO.

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Exit Strategy Merger Angel Investor IPO 406

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

GameFly filed in 2010 and remains in registration, though 2011 has seen a positive start for VC-backed IPOs with 14 in Q1 2011. Last week ZipCar began trading and has a market cap of about $1 billion. paying for travel data from ITA or others (customers acquisition spend is not included in COGS). Quinstreet priced at $15.00/sh

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Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Pascal's View

MARCH 18, 2010

Susan Mangiero , CEO of Investment Governance’s Fiduciary X , asked me the following: Question: Do you think than anemic IPO market will remain a deterrent to VC investing? I believe that an entire generation of American innovation is at risk as a result of the lack of IPO’s. equity markets. Yes I do.

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IPO Government SEC Venture Capital 28

VC Adventure

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

The graph below shows the trend of exits – IPO vs. M&A over the past handful of years (side note here that Foundry, like many firms, considers an IPO a financing event, not an exit in and of itself; although obviously it can be a path to an exit shortly thereafter).

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IPO Acquisition Distribution Algorithm 83

NZ Entrepreneur

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

With the pandemic, climate crisis, global economic shifts and rapidly changing consumer markets, it is clear that many businesses of today will no longer be relevant tomorrow. Addressing real world problems, they thrive in uncertainty, generating new jobs and new revenue streams in new markets. Our world is changing, and fast.

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Technical Review Software Review New Zealand Due Diligence 88