Burn Rate Portfolio Revenue Technical Review 
Both Sides of the Table
SEPTEMBER 28, 2014
I was reading Danielle Morrill’s blog post today on whether one’s “ Startup Burn Rate is Normal. Danielle goes through some commentary from Bill Gurley, Fred Wilson and Marc Andreessen about burn rate and then goes on to discuss her own burn rate and others publicly weigh in.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 5, 2018
A version of this article first appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. Then the cycle repeats with a new set of technologies. IPOs dried up.
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Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 3, 2009
portfolios. Let’s take your revenue line. If you’re a consumer destination the revenue and COGS lines should tell me about how big your funnel is, how you fill the top end of the pipe and what your conversion rates will be. Usually in a tech / software startup 70-80% of your costs will be people.
Steve Blank
FEBRUARY 11, 2010
After I retired I would get calls from VC’s to help with “marketing problems” in their portfolio companies. The phone call would sound something like: “We have a company with great technology and a hot product but at the last board meeting we determined that they have a marketing problem. Six is a Proxy for Burn Rate.
David Teten
NOVEMBER 26, 2019
So here’s the solution I have recommended to some of my portfolio companies: “ agile budgeting ”, i.e., monitoring a few key variables while giving managers significant flexibility. Sean Colrock, Director of Client Partnerships at Wiss & Company , suggests at a minimum you track: cash on hand; fume date; and burn rate.
abovethecrowd.com
APRIL 20, 2016
The pressures of lofty paper valuations, massive burn rates (and the subsequent need for more cash), and unprecedented low levels of IPOs and M&A, have created a complex and unique circumstance which many Unicorn CEOs and investors are ill-prepared to navigate. In Q1 of 2016 there were zero VC-backed technology IPOs.
www.chubbybrain.com
SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
Also worth a read after you review these startup failure post-mortems. spent $20 million to get back to the same revenue that I had when I was CEO. created a vastly higher cost structure; I had 80 people mostly on base salaries under $100,000 and was bringing in revenue at the rate of $20 million annually. .”).
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