Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

We meet to discuss trends in the industry and to find ways to work together to help with SoCal deal syndication – somethings that happens automatically on Sand Hill Road in NorCal due to proximity. A recent example would be Compuware’s $295 million acquisition of Gomez , a networking monitoring company.

Technical Review 241

Technical Review IPO Southern California Venture Capital 241

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

We are also seeing more investors try to be a part of syndicated A rounds for companies that are raising $5M or more and are really not what most would consider “seed” stage. As the venture capital industry has evolved, more and more seed investors are passing on traditionally “seed stage” startups because there isn’t enough traction.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

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. Groupon’s 2010 net loss includes $203M expenses related to acquisitions of several deal businesses. . Author howerl.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Agile VC

MAY 21, 2012

On the consumer facing side, the number of companies doing multiple acquisitions of $100M+ was extremely short… Google, eBay/PayPal, Amazon, and Microsoft are at the top of the list. <$100M) acquisitions for several years now, but they’ve mainly been acquihires. IAC and Yahoo! Author howerl. Filed under Uncategorized.

Acquisition 162

Acquisition Silicon Valley B2B Seed Stage 162

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

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). Btw, here’s our startup [link] We are bringing yield management to the restaurant industry.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

million and is normally syndicated from one to three institutional seed investors or larger VC funds. Finally, many more mature companies, including Intel , Google and FedEx , offer seed funding to promising startups working on innovative technologies which might be good acquisition candidates later. Business accelerator funding.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Finance Early Stage Startup 120

K9 Ventures

APRIL 27, 2011

On future occasions, whenever I expressed an interest to invest, the founders came back and told me that they had an acquisition offer on the table! I helped introduce the company to various angels and lead the effort to form a syndicate for their fund-raising round. And crank it out they did. One occurrence of this was in Q1/Q2 2009.

Software Review 134

Software Review Technical Review IP Finance 134

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

The value ascribed by subsequent investors (in a secondary); buyers (acquisition); or the public markets (IPO). Coinvestors: Flexible VC terms have not been standardized, which may make the investment harder to syndicate. Yes, typically preferred equity. 15-20% sold per round. Volatile, uncapped. Flexible VC: Revenue -based.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 25, 2009

Fantastic post by Christian Gammill - Startup Delta Force… From a competitive perspective (e.g. all the other folks out there that will try to enter the same market) the barriers have been dropping over the last few years.

Business Model 150

Business Model SEM IP Syndicate 150

View from Seed

AUGUST 12, 2015

I once showed a company to another VC for an investment we were syndicating. The game plan is then to show accelerating user growth across a variety of user segments and understandable/declining acquisition costs. This investor loved the team and thought the solution they were building was compelling.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Marketing Angel Investor Term Sheet 120

View from Seed

AUGUST 12, 2015

I once showed a company to another VC for an investment we were syndicating. The game plan is then to show accelerating user growth across a variety of user segments and understandable/declining acquisition costs. This investor loved the team and thought the solution they were building was compelling.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Marketing Angel Investor Term Sheet 120

Agile VC

MARCH 13, 2012

Patents and the threat of patent infringement lawsuits provide maximum leverage against a competitor when they’re in the middle of a strategic inflection point… a major financing, acquisition, or large product launch. What’s Your Favorite Future?

IP 100

IP IPO Social Network Silicon Valley 100

View from Seed

OCTOBER 22, 2015

I don’t mean growth hacking for user acquisition, although that’s certainly part of this. Also, we’d love to syndicate any articles you’ve written offering tactics or stories about going zero-to-N at your startup! ). Now, I don’t mean the (false) overnight success stories found in splashy exit announcements.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Seed Capital Syndicate Syndication 120

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

We never seek any rights to give Amex preferential treatment at the time of a potential acquisition. There is a possibility that Amex may explore acquisitions within the Amex Ventures portfolio, but those discussions will be on market terms similar to those with other potential acquirers.”. They invest alongside financial VCs.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 28, 2015

We’re joined in the round by RRE, BOSS Syndicates, NextGen, and awesome strategic angels like Niraj Shah (CEO of Wayfair) and Fabrice Grinda. Both are online marketing gurus with a rich background in multi-category customer acquisition at BuyerZone, TripAdvisor, and Cayan. Today Renoviso is announcing their $1.4M

Syndicate 100

Syndicate Syndication Lead Generation Acquisition 100

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 29, 2012

You're going to want syndication partners on the deals you find and sounding boards on the thesis behind each of your potential investments. A mutual fund manager won't give you their portfolio strategy but most seed funds love having a network of angels to syndicate deals with. Bonus: Never stop learning.

Angel Investor 118

Angel Investor Syndicate Syndication Portfolio 118

View from Seed

JULY 9, 2015

Across the NextView portfolio and in discussing this topic more broadly, we’ve found that funding announcements are rarely good customer acquisition channels. They create a public record of your company and investor syndicate (in some cases) for sites like Crunchbase.

Startup 120

Startup PR Cofounder Stealth 120

Agile VC

AUGUST 22, 2011

Salesforce is trying to create a platform both through internal efforts on Force.com and acquisitions (e.g. How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC Syndicate 10 July 2012, 5:13 pm What A VC Orders for Breakfast Says 27 June 2012, 10:16 am To Leave or Not to Leave as Your Startup Grows 12 June 2012, 12:21 pm. Google of course has Android.

Silicon Valley 113

Silicon Valley Seed Stage Startup Syndicate 113

Lightspeed Venture Partners

SEPTEMBER 21, 2013

These huge companies put pricing and margin pressure on the category, and about a year from the acquisition, Cisco shut down the Flip business altogether. But eventually two syndicates emerged. Both syndicates competed on the distribution and marketing that they could bring to the table.

Pre-Money Valuation 167

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Dilution Distribution 167

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

I had a lot of smart back and forth with Phin about retailers, group buying, customer acquisition challenges, etc., We’ve also got some serious sector expertise in the syndicate, including the founders of SeamlessWeb and Restaurant.com. and Chris weighed in given his expertise in the sales & marketing area.

Syndicate 104

Syndicate Syndication Venture Capital Social Network 104

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Manage a marketing budget that will drive the most qualified leads through paid programs such as content syndication, pay-per-click, and events. . • Plan, develop, and execute email marketing campaigns to generate and nurture leads in an effort to build a qualified sales pipeline.

Demand 95

Demand Management B2B Campaign 95

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

The first of these to exit was recently announced, with Groupon’s acquisition of Hyperpublic , though most of the portfolio will continue to build for a long time. Just under half our portfolio is B2B in nature, slightly more than half is consumer-facing in some way. What’s Your Favorite Future?

LP 100

LP Seed Stage Silicon Valley Limited Partner 100

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 20, 2015

If you just need the money, stick unknown angels in an AngelList Syndicate so they have more limited information rights. ” or “A buddy told me Competitor A is talking with Google about an acquisition. Avoid these folks. You can reference check angels just like you would VCs or employees. His info is usually pretty reliable.

Cap Table 48

Cap Table Warrant Syndicate Syndication 48

Agile VC

MAY 16, 2012

Back in 2010 we were observing more and more new B2B startups emulating the product and customer acquisition strategies of existing consumer web companies which my partners & I have long been familiar with. A good example of that is our theme around the consumerization of business software. What’s Your Favorite Future?

Seed Stage 124

Seed Stage Silicon Valley B2B Syndicate 124

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 13, 2012

When I asked him to come share his sales and company culture expertise at GA, he was on it--right in the middle of acquisition negotiations. When we first syndicated the seed round with other investors, some people didn't get it. He'll take any meeting with a student looking to find their way in their career.

Syndicate 131

Syndicate Syndication Viral B2B 131

ConversionXL

JUNE 16, 2022

This will improve customer lifetime value (CLTV), making customer acquisition costs (CAC) healthier. The majority of these interactions are self-guided from sources including social media, syndicated content, and industry-specific resources. Cross-selling can be a powerful tool for retention and acquisition. Conclusion.

B2B 129

B2B Email Sales Acquisition 129

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

These companies report gross ad revenue but then subtract out “TAC” (Traffic Acquisition Costs) which is basically accounting-speak for the revenue share they pay to the partner sites where the ads actually appear. This is different from companies like Google and Yahoo! Ergo, Zynga spends more like $250 million on Facebook ads.

IPO 100

IPO South Korea Venezuela Revenue 100

Agile VC

MARCH 8, 2012

And finally margins matter… a $50-100M software company can go public given it’s 80-90% gross margins, an e-commerce company with 20-30% gross margins and high customer acquisition costs needs to be much bigger (probably 5-10x at least). What’s Your Favorite Future?

IPO 100

IPO Silicon Valley Revenue Seed Stage 100

Rob Go

NOVEMBER 10, 2011

I once showed a company to an investor for an investment we were syndicating. The game plan then is to show accelerating user growth, across a variety of user segments, and understandable and declining acquisition costs. This investor loved the team and thought the solution they were building was compelling.

Marketing 52

Marketing Angel Investor Syndicate Syndication 52

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 21, 2010

Interestingly enough, I thought more people started taking part in the conversation who weren’t on Hot Potato because they now knew their thoughts were being syndicated to an app where more people were talking about the event. It’s only one data point, but I think it was a big win. Think about what your product and market will demand of you.

Product 68

Product Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Syndicate 68

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

That show daily turned into the Red Bull, which now has two million subscribers and then all the videos and the syndication and they’re having The New York Times and Wall Street Journal pay them money for some of their content. They wanted to do a show daily. I mean, that stuff happened from just an idea. And now what are we?

Cost 37

Cost Marketing Audience Media 37

BeyondVC

OCTOBER 11, 2005

Like Nick Denton and David Galbraith , I can’t comment on the acquisition. What I can say is that Moreover was a pioneer in the early use of weblogs via newsblogger, news search, and content syndication via XML and RSS.

XML 60

XML Architecture Syndicate Syndication 60

Pascal's View

AUGUST 22, 2009

Unfortunately, outside of the IPO-syndicate-bias and the much-maligned Sarbanes Oxley, the article does not address far more serious systemic regulatory consequences that further exacerbate the problem– such as the combined impact of decimalization and the Spitzer decree (taking trading commissions down from $0.125 per share to $0.01

IPO 40

IPO Merger Institutional Investors Venture Capital 40

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 1, 2022

The parts of digital marketing we can track— email marketing , paid social, content syndication—are the tip of the iceberg. Word-of-mouth interactions (e.g., text messages, DMs, video calls, etc.) Events (e.g., industry conferences, marketing meetups, VC groups, etc.). The dark funnel is everything happening below the surface.

B2B 103

B2B Social Media Channel Audience 103

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

They also did a lot of self-directed research checking all sorts of sources, from social media to syndicated content to category- or industry-specific resources.” – Beth Caplow, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester [via Forrester ].

Demand 91

Demand Lead Generation PPC Leadership 91

Professor VC

JUNE 20, 2011

We managed to pull together an angel syndicate and close $450K on 9/30 after working the phones the last few days and anxiously waiting for signature pages to show up on the fax machine and wire confirms to hit the bank account. A talent acquisition or bootstrapping are still options, but need to include buy-in from the investors.

San Jose 28

San Jose Angel Investor Term Sheet Venture Capital 28

SVPG

SEPTEMBER 30, 2016

Between working with the co-founders on the strategy, validating concepts with the users, assessing the analytics, driving features and functionality with the team, and working with finance on the new business model, marketing on acquisition, and the warehouse on fulfillment, you can imagine the workload Kate faced on a daily basis.

Product 60

Product Technical Review Software Review Engineer 60