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.

IPO 134

IPO Prospectus Merger Retention 134

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

Square filed its S-1 several weeks ago and is now in the middle of its IPO road show process. A bunch of articles came out saying that Square had “priced” their IPO below last round and this was something terrible ranging from the bursting of a tech bubble to the coming of the apocalypse. Gross Margins / Net Revenue.

IPO 165

IPO .Net Revenue Acquisition 165

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 3, 2021

To keep you on a positive track with potential investors, I recommend the following logic principles, to balance your passion in presenting your vision of a new business: Make sure your plan includes some business metrics. For example, if you have ever watched the Shark Tank show on TV, they always ask about the cost of customer acquisition.

Exit Strategy 406

Exit Strategy Merger Angel Investor IPO 406

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

On top of all this it was considered very bad form not to have at least four additional consecutive quarters of profits after an IPO.) The IPO Bubble – August 1995 – March 2000 In August 1995 Netscape went public, and the world of start ups turned upside down. Tech acquisitions went crazy at the same time the IPO market did.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. Unfortunately, its easy to lose track of positioning effects when optimizing for a single metric.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Haystack

DECEMBER 29, 2018

More and more angels will be minted as the 2019 IPO class emerges. Also during this time, the underlying metrics in that business can change positively, potentially trapping companies to accept the initially-agreed upon valuation. Traditional seed funds have gotten bigger, many armed with opportunity funds on top.

Technical Review 165

Technical Review Venture Capital Russia China 165

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 15, 2019

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. For many companies, the long game is choosing the right strategic partners and acquisitions. Less is more.

Social Media 218

Social Media India Acquisition China 218

NZ Entrepreneur

SEPTEMBER 29, 2021

Generating liquidity usually entails either selling the venture or an IPO. Agenda items will focus on key metrics illustrating value creation, particularly in software as a service companies. Your big decisions will be when and how to : raise capital. pivot the business. scale – this may include the need to go offshore. change the CEO.

Technical Review 87

Technical Review Software Review New Zealand Due Diligence 87

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

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. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

VC Cafe

AUGUST 3, 2023

Meta of course has an interest in championing B2C startups – most of them use Meta for user acquisition (it’s easier to acquire consumers on consumer platforms like Meta and Instagram, which drives a big proportion of Meta’s revenue. Much has changed since then. founded in 2019, raised $13.5M

B2C 148

B2C Generative AI Artificial Inteligence 148

ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

Kedrosky: "In the 90's I was an analyst through all this [tech investment and IPO] madness. You want to build your own IPO and exit. key metrics or a dashboard showing how you've made progress in whatever the key metrics for your business are. For 10 years there have been no gazelles to take down.

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process. 3) Groupon’s Business is Like An ATM: Groupon is currently unprofitable on a GAAP basis thanks to acquisition related expenses in 2010 as well as ongoing marketing spend to acquire customers. AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

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

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

This structure allows for alignment on the front end, and real-time flexibility for performance metrics,” says Samira Salman , a family office investor and advisor. . Flexible VCs have created structures based on other company performance metrics than revenues, such as profits or founder salaries. Flexible VC 102: Variations.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

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. time to earn back the revenue to cover all your customer acquisition expenses) 75% annual retention. Drastically reduce the cost of customer acquisition. Except, they lost $35m. It’s not impressive when you spend $1.60

Business Model 335

Business Model .Net Revenue Retention 335

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 14, 2017

Pick a single metric that is the focus for all growth. Today’s world is full of metrics leading to business growth, including customer logins, revenue per customer, retention, and average solution price. For many companies, the long game is choosing the right strategic partners and acquisitions. Less is more.

Social Media 163

Social Media India Acquisition China 163

Austin Startup

MARCH 2, 2019

I made very few edits to the original post, mostly in the area of readability and grammar (not in substance of content): Spurred on by my recent Lucky7 post on how capital efficient Bazaarvoice was on its path to IPO , two friends sent me great posts this week on entrepreneurship and risk. I served as Chairman leading up to the acquisition.]

Advisory Board 51

Advisory Board Cofounder Greece Bootstrapping 51

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

In an over-funding environment companies are encouraged to eschew revenues in a land grab to acquire eyeballs, clicks, page views or whatever other vanity metrics give VCs the false comfort that they’re sitting on a gold mine. IPO markets had burned an entire cycle of retail stock investors and many institutional investors to boot.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” There are certain topics that even some of the best journalists can’t fully grok. One of them is profitability. Investors value growth.

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

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. NextView Ventures: Thinking back to before anyone knew HubSpot or the company was headed towards an IPO, where did you even start to market the company?

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). Online social networking is a concept still being evangelized even in Silicon Valley… Friendster is in private beta (wasn’t until Oct 2003 they received Google acquisition offer which they turned down for Kleiner/Benchmark round). link] leehower.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

YoungUpstarts

MAY 5, 2017

The company’s ascension, chronicled in “ Becoming Facebook “ , is a business adventure of unprecedented growth, game-changing acquisitions, recovery from a chaotic IPO and a continuing defense against foes large and small. Decide On, and Obsess About, Your North Star Metric. Above all, that climb was no accident.

Silicon Valley 107

Silicon Valley IPO Metrics Global 107

Ben's Blog

OCTOBER 29, 2020

Since then, the debate over IPOs has continued, with a particular focus on allegedly underpriced offerings that jump shortly after opening — the dreaded “pop.” ” As some criticism has it, this supposedly deprives companies of millions of dollars that should have been theirs if not for underpricing the IPO.

IPO 36

IPO Securities and Exchange Commission Demand SEC 36

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

ConversionXL

AUGUST 13, 2019

SaaS sales and marketing teams can get overwhelmed by metrics. But without any metrics, it’s impossible to track growth. If growth is the best way to get out alive, marketing metrics do little unless they correlate with sales. According to Gartner , three metrics form the foundation for those growth levers: (Image source).

Metrics 117

Metrics SQL Retention Churn Rate 117

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

As with many Silicon Valley failures, a flawless PR launch turned into a flawed customer acquisition strategy. Departments were built and were even metrics-driven. But there was no feedback loop to help the company find the right metrics to focus on. We can capitalize on new customers. February 5, 2009 5:43 PM Chris Lunt said.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Its the same with acquisitions. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. No one wants to buy you till someone else wants to buy you, and then everyone wants to buy you.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

The Equity Kicker

OCTOBER 8, 2012

Growth is the main driver of value in our companies and it is what makes them exciting to IPO investors and acquirers. To show that the company will make profits in the end management produce models that assume metrics like gross margin, customer repeat rates, and customer acquisition costs will improve going forward.

Silicon Valley 149

Silicon Valley IPO eCommerce Valuation 149

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

Haystack

DECEMBER 26, 2018

This doesn’t even yet account for a bear-case scenario of all the private Bay Area juggernauts which are primed to IPO next year — if those all hit, and assuming local investors and employees own at least a third six months after IPO. the cash windfall to the Bay Area will surge past the days of Facebook’s offering.

IPO 76

IPO Private Equity Valuation Acquisition 76

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., Leaders (company is leaving China, our IPO is next week, 1,800 new stores are being opened in 180 days, our new IRR is 8%). or Weightwatchers.co.uk

Analytics 133

Analytics Vertical Metrics Web 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

In a subscription business, maybe your attrition starts matching your acquisition, balancing like magic. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. Nothing seems to matter. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

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

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. The best advantage includes intellectual property to provide a barrier to entry or incent acquisition.

Intellectual Property 48

Intellectual Property Initial Public Offering Merger Acquisition 48

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. Do you have any thoughts on scalable customer acquisition in cases where a decent bit of knowledge work has to be invested into each customer? And yet, their investors are frustrated.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

You engage the marketing team and you do a lot of acquisition and people are coming. You can begin to work on position a little bit, but the early acquisitions are there to give you more users to work on to continue to build out the product. Then, any marketing budget or any acquisition effort you do at large scale is not wasted.

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup 78