Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels. Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan.

Technical Review 257

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Offshore 257

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 5, 2023

Bill was relentless in his focus on getting the software PC DOS project delivered, while continually challenging us with new business models. Let me be a bit more specific on how follow-up trumps ideas for success in the key challenges of a startup, or any small business: Networking with investors, partners, and customers.

Cofounder 389

Cofounder Startup Term Sheet Acquisition 389

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 27, 2016

Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels. Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Offshore 120

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. Factoring, MCAs and receivables financing are all short-term oriented with pay-back periods measured in weeks, months or quarters, while RBI is generally measured in years.

Revenue 60

Revenue Term Sheet Founder Technical Review 60

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 4, 2012

After you have successfully attracted angels or venture capital with your business case, your million dollar product idea, and you have a signed term sheet, there is still one more hurdle to overcome before investors write the check. A good investor can do a lot to help a company, but can't make customers buy products.

Technical Review 237

Technical Review Due Diligence Intellectual Property Private Equity 237

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

You (think) you have product-market fit with real customers and real revenue and need money to grow and expand. For a Series A round you want to prove you have built a repeatable and scalable sales/revenue model and understand all parts of the business model. Team, Product, Traction, Business Model and Market.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Gust

DECEMBER 27, 2012

You should know EVERYTHING about your business, product, customers and competition. You should know every metric regarding customer acquisition, conversion and retention. You should have a crystal clear understanding of your business model and your financials.

Software Review 164

Software Review Term Sheet Technical Review Angel Investor 164

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 22, 2010

After you have successfully attracted angels or venture capital with your business case, your million dollar product idea, and you have a signed term sheet, there is still one more hurdle to overcome before investors write the check. A good investor can do a lot to help a company, but can't make customers buy products.

Technical Review 225

Technical Review Due Diligence Intellectual Property Private Equity 225

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Ability to Pivot – I don’t like to invest in people that I’ve never met before who come through my office wanting to have a term sheet within 30 days. Yes, there is the mythical company you all heard about that walked into Sequoia and had a term sheet 24 hours later. I’m sure that happens.

Entrepreneur 291

Entrepreneur Term Sheet Early Stage Affiliate 291

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 5, 2020

Bill was relentless in his focus on getting the software PC DOS project delivered, while continually challenging us with new business models. Let me be a bit more specific on how follow-up trumps ideas for success in the key challenges of a startup, or any small business: Networking with investors, partners, and customers.

Entrepreneur 307

Entrepreneur Cofounder Term Sheet Acquisition 307

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

It included one firm who I asked not to call Salesforce.com as a reference (they were our largest pilot customer) and in their kindness they called Marc Benioff (the CEO) and asked his opinion. I thought, what would I do if I was trying to sell to a customer. Page 4: Business Model. That changed very quickly.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 1, 2020

Funding might be a need in some cases — but it’s not an absolute necessity. ? The business should be self-sustainable. The primary source of your funds should be your paying customers, i.e., your business should generate enough revenues and profits to fund the growth and expansion. Growth and expansion stages.

Startup 150

Startup Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Seed Stage 150

Gust

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

After you have successfully attracted angels or venture capital with your business case, your million dollar product idea, and you have a signed term sheet, there is still one more hurdle to overcome before investors write the check. A good investor can do a lot to help a company, but can’t make customers buy products.

Technical Review 152

Technical Review Due Diligence Intellectual Property Private Equity 152

Mucker Lab

AUGUST 27, 2014

We see a lot of great entrepreneurs with incredible market vision, loyal customers, and flawless execution who simply do not yet speak the same language as the typical Valley entrepreneur and executive. Encyclopedic knowledge of term sheets and startup buzzwords can be quickly learned, trained, and packaged.

Los Angeles 138

Los Angeles Southern California Silicon Valley Technical Review 138

View from Seed

AUGUST 17, 2021

Competition matters when it comes to talent, customers, funders, partners, attention, and others. One of my side-project ideas is to try to create a new strategy course at a business school focused on startup competition. And to some degree, I believe that, especially when you are talking about bigger, slow moving incumbents.

IRR 205

IRR Dilution Founder Portfolio 205

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 12, 2017

A frequent metaphor I use in customer acquisition, fundraising, or any kind of deal making is that you as the founder and promoter should present the finished meal on the dining table and not drag your counterparts into the kitchen. Most customers will sell themselves if you just give them half a chance.

Term Sheet 48

Term Sheet Technical Review Due Diligence Merger 48

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

You’ll learn more about what destroys startups, how to use the Customer Development method to succeed, how to use the Business Model Canvas, how to identify and keep your customers, and how to drive profits. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

View from Seed

AUGUST 17, 2021

Competition matters when it comes to talent, customers, funders, partners, attention, and others. One of my side-project ideas is to try to create a new strategy course at a business school focused on startup competition. And to some degree, I believe that, especially when you are talking about bigger, slow moving incumbents.

IRR 156

IRR Dilution Founder Portfolio 156

View from Seed

AUGUST 17, 2021

Competition matters when it comes to talent, customers, funders, partners, attention, and others. One of my side-project ideas is to try to create a new strategy course at a business school focused on startup competition. And to some degree, I believe that, especially when you are talking about bigger, slow moving incumbents.

IRR 136

IRR Dilution Founder Portfolio 136

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2012

The more your narrow down your target audience, the higher the chance is that you will be able to reach the crucial turning-point where you offer your customers enough added value to make them happy and returning. The metrics that matter the most are returning customers (user retention), turnover per customer and viral growth (k-factor).

Bankruptcy 121

Bankruptcy Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence 121

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

Note to self, this event is not for alpha products with no customers. Use the 10-5-3-1 formula for raising money: Have 10 great meetings with investors, 5 of those do detailed due diligience on your company, get 3 term sheets, and 1 transfer into your bank account! Check out the twitter feed from the event.

CTO Hire 49

CTO Hire Cofounder Fractional CTO San Francisco 49

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2016

Bill was relentless in his focus on getting the software PC DOS project delivered, while continually challenging us with new business models. Let me be a bit more specific on how follow-up trumps ideas for success in the key challenges of a startup, or any small business: Networking with investors, partners, and customers.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Term Sheet Acquisition Metrics 120

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. We’re currently evaluating about 20 companies a month and issuing term sheets to 25% of them; those that fit our investment criteria. We’re also regularly following-on for existing portfolio companies.”.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. Staring at us in the board meeting were three term-sheets from brand name VC’s and an unexpected buy-out offer from Google. The Internet has created a series of new and innovative business models. Take No Prisoners.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Sophia Perl of Wisdom

NOVEMBER 9, 2010

Note to self, this event is not for alpha products with no customers. Use the 10-5-3-1 formula for raising money: Have 10 great meetings with investors, 5 of those do detailed due diligience on your company, get 3 term sheets, and 1 transfer into your bank account! Check out the twitter feed from the event.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Cofounder Fractional CTO San Francisco 40

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 9, 2015

Bill was relentless in his focus on getting the software PC DOS project delivered, while continually challenging us with new business models. Let me be a bit more specific on how follow-up trumps ideas for success in the key challenges of a startup, or any small business: Networking with investors, partners, and customers.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Startup Term Sheet Acquisition 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

Having been through the company-building process myself and after a decade in VC working with thousands of companies and negotiating hundreds of term sheets, I wrote this book to help demystify the process. Morgan credit card business to acquire tons of Square customers at a very low cost. No need to name names.

Lean 108

Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

Up and Running

MARCH 29, 2017

At the same time, I was starting to realize that both the elegance of cloud-based software and the business models it enabled were what really got me excited. See Also: Demand Validation: How to Find Out If Customers Want to Buy Your Product. Those two terms determine how much of the company you’re giving away.

Term Sheet 60

Term Sheet Venture Capital Liquidation Preference Valuation 60

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

But with so many investors still licking their wounds from the dot-com bust, many focused on proven business models, such as advertising or e-commerce. The general rule is one business model drives the business. As it happened, we did end up pursuing all three lines of business.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

This provides us more time to develop meaningful relationships with prospects and customers. A number of analysts have particular focus on serving the customers of technology companies, e.g., Gartner and 451 Research , and their work is also relevant for investors. 3) Raise capital. 6) Due diligence.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 26, 2022

They’ll obviously see the value of what you built and will be compelled to offer a term sheet on the spot. If you raised the same sized seed round as everyone else, you can only hire so many salespeople, put so much into marketing, and those resources can only grab so many customers in an efficient market for people’s time.

Founder 103

Founder .Net Term Sheet Aggregator 103

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer service. Google Custom Search Engine. Customer Relationship Management. great web customer acquisition tutorials. customer retention, churn reduction, lifetime value. free/cheap web customer relationship mgmt software. small business CRM.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2010

How-to learn about angel/vc term sheets - Gabriel Weinberg , June 28, 2010 I think every startup entrepreneur (and angel investor) should have a good understanding of financing term sheets. Why you have to design products for how your customers are , and not how you want them to be. Yes, even bootstrappers.

Cofounder 175

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Term Sheet Startup 175

Up and Running

JANUARY 7, 2020

We ended up receiving a $5m term sheet from investors, dozens of government customers from all across the western United States, and several offers to acquire us for 10x the initial investment. My investor meetings would be long and scattered because my business’s mission was. Getting there was a struggle. Our Process.

Product 82

Product Marketing Silicon Valley Term Sheet 82

K9 Ventures

JUNE 30, 2016

Now, what do you do when you get an email from a VC firm, that says something like: Dear <Founder’s Name>, We recently came across your company in {TechCrunch | Term Sheet | StrictlyVC}. Saw that you’ve raised a seed round and are building a AI platform for chatbots.

Email 96

Email Database Term Sheet Partner 96

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

The promised to follow up with: calls, using your product, talking to customers or “noodle on things.&# Will they? You would never go see an important executive at a customer and then sit around and wait for them to realize how great you are. Or maybe you had a major customer win that you’d like to walk them through.

Campaign 277

Campaign Email Venture Capital Term Sheet 277