Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch « Steve Blank (tags: presentations presuation vc startup) [.] elevator pitch and follow it up with a substantive presentation is the difference between a funded entrepreneur and those having coffee complaining that they’re out of cash. It’s a litmus test of how you [.]

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

discuss.joelonsoftware.com

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

But this proposal isnt for angel cash investors. Jason Thursday, October 09, 2008 Deleting … Approving … Join the nextNY mailing list, and check out our archives where this has been beaten to death over and over. I intend to rewrite my internal 50-page business plan into an investors proposal. The gist: 1.

Sweat Equity 40

Sweat Equity Equity Angel Investor Affiliate 40

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

All teams raised their hands and screamed: we hundreds of angels and dozens of VCs, all of them say they will only fund deals with prototypes, beta customers, first revenue and executive teams all in place, and they say it will be 2 years from now because their coffers are out of cash and LPs in default. Yeah, I said. Bootstrap for years!

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

Customers: A company’s only sustainable source of cash is sales, so you need to keep track of your business development efforts. If you have a lot of non-cash items such as amortization or depreciation, or if you have unusually long receivables cycles, you should also include adjustments to reconcile net income to cash flow.

Intellectual Property 223

Intellectual Property .Net Valuation Distribution 223

The Equity Kicker

JUNE 22, 2012

Once you decide to check email, follow this pattern: Quickly scan your inbox for important emails and mark them as ‘Priority’ (using a tag or star). I use tags in Gmail for this. Archive them all. Mark any other emails that are important, but not time sensitive, as ‘Later’. Note: This means you won’t answer every email you get.

Email 113

Email Product Venture Capital Internet 113

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

But we didn’t have infinite cash; we had just emerged from bankruptcy, and unless we could get customers to quickly understand why our products were great, we were headed there again. SuperMac War Story 4: Repositioning SuperMac – Market Type at Work « Steve Blank (tags: strategy) [.] Very much in addition to the text.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

I had quit my job, given up my apartment, packed everything I owned in the back of my car, knew no one else in Silicon Valley and had about $200 in cash. Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA « Steve Blank (tags: startup) [.] I am sorry there really isn’t a job for you.&# I was stunned. This could be a bad day.

Agile 245

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Startups who burn through their cash, usually fail by not understanding Market Type. Are you entering an existing market, resegmenting an existing market, or creating an entirely new market?” Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit.

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Altgate

OCTOBER 1, 2010

To the right of that are five charts one each for: Current Equity Equity at Hire Base Salary Target Bonus Actual Total Cash Each of these bar charts shows the respective compensation for the management team on a percentile scale (compared to the cohort). The last piece of the Scorecard is in the bottom left. Bookmark the permalink.

Part-Time VPE 39

Part-Time VPE Startup Salary Equity 39

Altgate

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Share and Enjoy: This entry was posted in Entrepreneurship , Startups , Venture Capital and tagged Angel Investor , liquidation preference , startup , venture capital. link] Tweets that mention @altgate » Blog Archive » More on Liquidation Preferences — Topsy.com [.] Bookmark the permalink. Just make the price right.

Liquidation Preference 39

Liquidation Preference Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet Valuation 39

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Rocket Science Games | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Early Stage Startup « Rocket Science 4: The Press is Our Best Product Burnout » 7 Responses Steve , on July 16, 2009 at 9:10 am Said: Steve, This is an excellent post. Make sure they are.

Silicon Valley 207

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207

Altgate

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

Now, for very early stage companies, you may be thinking, “I don’t have any cash, so outsourcing isn’t an option.&# Even without cash you have many ways to outsource. Share and Enjoy: This entry was posted in Entrepreneurship , Startups and tagged Accounting , Banking , design , Engineering , marketing , Outsourcing.

Software Review 65

Software Review Offshore Startup Boston 65

Altgate

DECEMBER 17, 2009

 What's more, there is probably little money in the company so to promise cash payments based on metrics without knowing the ability to pay is a bad idea. .  It is just too hard to see out 12+ months with any certainty to be able to pick meaningful metrics.  You probably have operating budgets for each department.

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Venture Capital Metrics Startup Software Review 47

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Tagged with Business Model , CAC , Inbound Marketing , Low Cost Sales Model , LTV , Sales 2.0. looking forward to reading the archives Evgeniy Mironov I would also consider another variable, CMC - cost to maintain a customer. Do you think that a follow up post might include a more detailed look at cash flow? All rights reserved.

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Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

Altgate

MAY 14, 2009

What’s happened (#1 in the chart) is that improvements in capital efficiency have “bent the curve&# so that less money is required to get to positive cash flow. The “old&# model is represented in the blue curve above: lots of money in and (hopefully) lots of money out. In some cases dramatically less money is required.

Boston 28

Boston Oakland Bootstrapping Venture Capital 28

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

The latter includes successful technology founders who have cashed out but want to stay in the game for the fun of it. link] Categories: Start Ups Tags: consultant, cto, Engineering, start-up Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a comment Trackback [.] Reply Tadlock Enterprises » CTO Consultants says: November 19, 2009 at 9:52 pm [.]

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Fractional VPE 40

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

Most startups following the Product Development Model never achieve their revenue plan and burn through a ton of cash not knowing what hit them. Even more serious, startups can have radically different cash needs. And the converse is true; Palm would have failed, burning through all their cash, using Handspring’s strategy.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

www.cscyphers.com

MARCH 8, 2012

Basically, the kind of technical people you want for a startup — whip smart, adaptable, willing to work long hours for equity instead of cash and highly competent — that person is probably already out there, doing her own startup. Tags: business vs. technical , founders , meetups , realistic expectations , recruiting.

Cofounder 40

Cofounder Technical Review Founder Software Review 40

www.scottporad.com

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

What may actually work is approaching somebody and telling them, “look, I have 50k to get this prototype up and running, you can either take it all, or get some cash and equity if you like my idea and you think it’s gonna work&#. Tags: startupcto. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Evan Williams.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO Developer Philadelphia Seattle 40

www.singlefounder.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Per Eric Sink , the number one cause of companies going out of business is a lack of cash. In the very early stages of a technology company, one of the biggest unnecessary cash sinks is office space. Tags: startupcto. Some people feel that an office is absolutely necessary and won’t work without one.

Software Review 40

Software Review Software Startup Massachusetts 40

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Now with cash in hand, we wanted to fix everything that seemed broken and annoying about our office environment. Six months later, the startup hit a rough patch and ran out of cash. That’s when things went south. We made what seemed to be a series of logical and rational decisions about what to do with our next office building.

Silicon Valley 205

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 205

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

Customer Development is Low Burn by Design The Customer Development process keeps a startup at a low cash burn rate until the company has validated its business model by finding paying customers. Filed under: Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto | Tagged: Customer Development « Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40?

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Local venture investors and/or companies offer cash prizes for the winners. For those of you who don’t know, business plan competitions are held by universities who get their students to enter and compete to see who has the best business idea.

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This approach is not predicated on discovering the right market or learning whether any customers will actually shell out cash for your product. You’ve built a sales organization and company that’s burning cash before you know if you have demand for your product or a repeatable and scalable sales model.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

bhargreaves.com

MARCH 7, 2010

2010 03 /07 CATEGORY Uncategorized TAGS dev shops development getting it built software startups tech themoreyouknow View Comments [link] Victor Wong I would say that if you have a strong development team and need contract developers who can work well remotely and under your project manager, then you can also bring in a development shop.

Hiring 40

Hiring Technical Review Agile Software Review 40

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

A little piece of advice for future founders: find something that turns revenue quick, profitable and cash flow positive quick and forget about fantasy businesses that take a decade to turn profitable like twitter! Just wrote about this at [link] Dave Hanna Sorry Kameko- digital life archiving is thriving. Tags: startupcto.

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

He said that you need a reliable business plan, six months of cash on hand, and cheap labor. Finding Your Co-Founders (tags: startup business entrepreneurship entrepreneur inspiration startups entrepreneurs howto) [.] Tags: startupcto. Hopefully next time you will make more sense and will talk less on obvious things.

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 66

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Figuring out how to turn that attention into cash seems to have been pretty obvious to Mark Zuckerberg. If you haven’t figured out the ecosystem, growth is useless – whether it is a acquisition-only viral loop, like Tagged, or an advertising blitz like countless dot-bombs. The ecosystem worked, and was growing.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Software By Rob

DECEMBER 10, 2008

You’ll make some money and get laid off and be really glad you have the extra cash. Coinstar , and companies like it, do well during recessions because people start cashing in their unused change. I find many other developers doing freelance in their free time to make some extra cash. Boring programming jobs? You betcha.

Programming 30

Programming Technical Review Software Review RSS 30

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Top management was trying to coordinate all of the operating details (sales, manufacturing, distribution and marketing,) across all the divisions and the company almost went bankrupt that year when poor planning led to excess inventory (with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash.)

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Altgate

APRIL 26, 2009

Basically the survey collects salary, cash bonus and equity information for the top executives in private companies (mostly venture- and preventure-backed companies). One is that company founders have a significant discount in terms of cash compensation (but obviously a premium in equity).

Term Sheet 60

Term Sheet Venture Capital Startup 60

www.readwriteweb.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

The site was torn down and rebuilt, but not without costing them a hefty fortune in VC cash and possibly spelling the demise of the biz. Tags: startupcto. See Also Elegant.ly Lesson learned KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. Designers want to design for themselves but never can.

Web 42

Web Design Startup Flash 42

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Building the sales channel and supporting the marketing can burn a lot of cash. The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product Development Diagram « Steve Blank (tags: startups) [.] The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product Development Diagram « Steve Blank (tags: startup) [.]

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

www.readwriteweb.com

FEBRUARY 23, 2010

Dont just take the cash, make sure your investors can add value. Dont just take the cash, make sure your investors can add value. Tags: startupcto. For example, tell the bar you are having a "birthday party" instead of a corporate event (which they would charge you $5,000 for). Rent servers, dont buy them.

Entrepreneur 69

Entrepreneur Venture Capital San Francisco New Zealand 69

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Most people are going to hear about the site for the very first time via an organic notification, when a friend signs up for the site (or tags them in a photo, etc). For example, consider a site like Facebook in its early days. No positioning exists yet in the mind of the prospect. Venture Hacks interview: "What is the minimum viab.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

www.readwriteweb.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Cash Definition : Money in the bank. Click a topic in the tag cloud to focus on it. Tags: startupcto. Calculation : (total_number_paying_accounts - number_cancelled_paying_accounts_this_month) * monthly_price Carson suggests you aim for a monthly growth of around 5% ater Churn in your CMRR.

Metrics 58

Metrics CPA Illinois Acquisition 58

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Cash allows things to grow that may not have a chance to do so if it wasn’t there to provide sustenance to those potentially involved. Thus had to spend hard cash building a half way completed demo outsourced to India. Lost massive cash via elance contacts. Thus cash talks if you cannot find the gems.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84