Agile VC

MARCH 8, 2012

Tech IPOs Are Back – So Now What? Three of the five “blockbuster” tech IPOs I predicted have happened (LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga) and the biggest of all (Facebook) has filed and will likely go public within the next 90 days. I see several dynamics at work in today’s IPO markets. March 8, 2012.

IPO 100

IPO Silicon Valley Revenue Seed Stage 100

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? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). is the leading consumer internet company with Terry Semel as CEO. One partnership was clearly very divided and a vocal minority of GPs thought consumer internet companies were a massive waste of time and money. link] leehower. link] leehower.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

Facebook S-1: The Most Anticipated IPO in a Decade. Here’s my first look at Facebook viewed through the lens of their IPO filing. How They Make Money : Facebook’s primary revenue stream is of course selling advertising on Facebook.com, which in total accounts for 85% of revenue. 2011 YoY Revenue Growth: 88%.

IPO 100

IPO South Korea Venezuela Revenue 100

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process. They’ve grown from nothing to >$2B in revenue in 30 months time, making the company among the fastest growing businesses in the histroy of the world. Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $713M. in net revenue and passes $0.58

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Agile VC

OCTOBER 1, 2013

I believe we’re going to look back in 2-5 years and realize that we’ve been in a once a decade boom for internet & software startups. In the tech sphere, a good bit of air was let out of the tires when the hype around some consumer-facing internet companies proved transitory.

IPO 147

IPO Cloud Valuation Mobile 147

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa. Expo SF (May.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Lets return to our team thats failing to hit their targets. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off. Expo SF (May.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. We’d always cringe as we admitted that, no, we really only had a few thousand customers and a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Retention cohort analysis. I am chugging along.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Sounds very similar to agile development which is the way. If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. February 21, 2009 7:39 AM Rocky1138 said. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. Naturally, they had just raised money, and their new investors were understandably pissed. Expo SF (May.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Agile VC

MAY 22, 2014

How does that stack up against analogous US internet companies? Unfortunately Alibaba doesn’t actually break out revenue by marketplace or business unit. In fact JD.com, which priced it’s IPO yesterday, is a direct seller (e.g. The makeup of the revenue is different too (see #4 below).

China 159

China Revenue Flash Affiliate 159

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

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. In the 20th century tech companies and their investors made money through an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

As a consumer internet company with millions of customers, it may seem to have little relevancy for an enterprise software company with only a handful of potential customers, or a computer security company whose customers demand a rigorous audit before accepting a new release. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

And thanks to the radical transparency enabled by the internet, the quality of these proposals is actually constantly rising, to the point that it’s almost impossible to judge the quality of the final product – because all the proposals look polished and professional, even the terrible ones. What is the right revenue model?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Agile VC

AUGUST 9, 2012

The company’s lost nearly 80% of its value from the peak earlier this year, in the run up to Facebook’s IPO, and currently trades below $3/share… a fraction of it’s IPO price of $10. Zynga’s trailing revenue is nearly $1.2B trailing revenue multiple. That much we all know.

Stock 160

Stock LBO .Net Valuation 160

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

I understand why people would think that a consumer internet service like IMVU isnt really mission critical. Some of these benefits are shared by agile systems which have continuous integration but large batch releases, but others are unique to continuous deployment. Or variations thereof. I just dont believe it.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Agile VC

JANUARY 27, 2012

Something has clearly changed within the last 5-6 years in terms of the speed with which monster startups are created in the software and internet space. What if the new paradigm is simply that software and internet startups accelerate much faster than before, but terminal velocity so to speak remains the same? January 27, 2012.

Hockey Stick 113

Hockey Stick Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate 113

Agile VC

AUGUST 1, 2012

The best example of this was Facebook’s disclosure during their IPO process back in May that “mobile” usage was increasing significantly but FB’s monetization of mobile users lagged considerably. This question has lingered for Facebook and other consumer internet companies in recent months. First the enthusiasm.

Mobile 160

Mobile Advertising Bandwidth Web 160

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Not just about expenses, about increasing revenue. Make sure for planned revenues you have "leading indicators" to know if you will hit it. This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. And its hard to know if youre truly succeeding without a focus on revenue.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. ► 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. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

Id been on the internet since I was playing MUDs as a kid, but by 1999 I felt Id already missed the boat. We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Realizing it had taken a wrong turn, SlideShare rethought its approach to premium accounts and ultimately performed what we’d call a value capture pivot , one where the company changes the way it collects revenue from customers. The process started with a few moving parts. The process started with a few moving parts. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Heck, thats what it says right there in the agile manifesto. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. Labels: agile , continuous deployment , lean startup , product development , Test-driven development 4comments: Nivi said. But, unfortunately, startups cant afford to adopt that standard.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 1, 2009

LIKED: Y startups fail, cont deployment vs waterfall vs agile, small batches & learn fr biz metrics #leanstartup As concise a summary as Ive ever seen. I covered a few of them on twitter already: Q: "Do you reccomend removing features that youve launched but dont movethe needle on engagement or revenue?" A: yes, absolutely.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

To increase the number of iterations you have left, you can either increase cash on hand (by raising money or increasing revenues), reduce burn rate, or increase the speed of each iteration. Combining agile development with customer developm. The key is to be able to refute as many major hypotheses as you can. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Today, many of these businesses are suffering because the ecosystem no longer balances thanks to the Internet. Here’s Andrew Chen’s description : “it strikes me that consumer internet companies often don’t care much whether or not they have viable businesses in the short run. Sorry about that.)

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Not even if its generating revenue. So I don't think the Apple experience should be used to discount lean, agile, or customer development-type approaches. Most executives, especially in startups, dont have the courage to hold their teams to a high standard for new products or features. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. ► 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. Expo SF (May.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We just add up the revenue we've made in the past few months from Win98 users, and compare to the pain that Win98 has caused as identified in 5Ys. It's so old and so buggy that it's a real pain to ship 3D software on it. So far, it's been a net win to keep supporting it. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

In fact, in the early days, when IMVU would experience unexpected surges of revenue or traffic, it was inevitable that every person in the company was convinced that their project was responsible. When something works, its too easy to invent a story about how that was your intention all along. Expo SF (May.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Revenue is always my preferred measure, but you can use anything that is important to your business: retention, activation, viral invites, or even customer satisfaction in the form of something like net promoter score. Or it could be that they are endlessly pecking through menus, totally confused about what to do next. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Agile VC

APRIL 13, 2012

And going even further back there have been a few random ones have been built before like Salesforce.com and e-tailer RedEnvelope (IPO’d in 2003 though now defunct as a company). If my memory serves me, <10% of our pre-IPO employees at PayPal lived in SF and literally 1 of the first 40-50 folks at LinkedIn were city-dwellers.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Startup 185

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? Their speed should be measured in validated learning about customers, not milestones, features, revenue, or even beautiful design. Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? Or should you focus on user engagement or virality? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154