Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

The key reason for the explosion in capital flowing into the industry, and therefore the large increase in practitioners, had nothing to do with 1970’s performance, early stage investing, or technology. Some were Silicon Valley early stage companies, such as Apple, Quantum, and Masstor Systems. This isn’t correct either.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

02:06] Can you share your experience starting with an early-stage company (Hubspot) that eventually went public? [07:11] That's hundred grand annual revenue. And that became about, and now is about 40% of HubSpot's revenue. But yeah, so they definitely made a bunch of changes. Definitely.

Metrics 74

Metrics Analytics Forecast Software Review 74

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

Especially in the early stages, so much about the company may change in how they think about product or go-to-market — and change multiple times — before raising an institutional round. Traction and revenue? Business model? But the costs are definitely there. Previous capital raised?

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

I challenge any entrepreneur, for example, to define the difference between "seed-stage" and "early-stage" financing. Asking for early-stage money before you have customers and revenue will likely kill your credibility with real investors. Yet, knowing this distinction is important.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Finance Early Stage Startup 120

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.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

Almost every early-stage startup who has approached investors for funding has heard the innocuous sounding rejection “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” First of all, a definition. Average transaction size and revenue per customer. Market penetration.

Hockey Stick 266

Hockey Stick Early Stage Metrics Acquisition 266

SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

Where I use LinkedIn: * I definitely use LinkedIn for Specific Requests - Ex. Open Source Business Models, speakers for Web 2.0 I definitely check people out using LinkedIn. However, it definitely has served as a hub. Early Stage Marketing and Branding – Farida Fotouh. event I did last fall.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 14, 2011

a group of entrepreneurs from TiE Chennai gathered at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) Research Park campus, and we spent the next four hours discussing strategy and tactics of early-stage entrepreneurship. Some of these businesses should definitely apply for the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge grants.

India 126

India Technical Review Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 126

K9 Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

What everyone can agree on, though, is that there are definitely more seed and early stage funds now than ever before, and more people willing to give money to young companies looking to make it big. Direct Revenue, meaning no three-way business models and no advertising, media, or content.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Early Stage Portfolio Software Engineering 48

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

especially if the startup already has a product and revenue? Defining the pre-seed round It’s futile to look for ‘one true’ definition. A founder asked me what makes a $2M round “pre-seed”? And why do we still sometimes hear about pre-seed rounds that look more like a series A in pricing and size?

Valuation 186

Valuation Software Review Generative AI Technical Review 186

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

This is because excessive capital becomes toxic for an early stage company. There are few cases where this can be the right approach, but it requires a very clear definition of what’s the core product, technology, and knowledge that needs to be built and retained within the company and what can indeed be done by an external team.

Venture Capital 117

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 117

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

This is because excessive capital becomes toxic for an early stage company. There are few cases where this can be the right approach, but it requires a very clear definition of what’s the core product, technology, and knowledge that needs to be built and retained within the company and what can indeed be done by an external team.

Venture Capital 105

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 105

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

A better approach is to first understand who these people are, why and how they invest, and then focus on the ones who are the best match for your particular startup stage, location and industry. By definition, angels are accredited investors, who invest their own money for a percentage of the business.

Angel Investor 120

Angel Investor Accredited Investor Venture Capital Startup 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 4, 2013

I recommend you read Fred Wilson’s recent blog post about the need for a well articulated business strategy before pushing a particular business model. He then brought her to board meetings so nobody could accuse him of not having a business model. Business Model. That’s Sofa King true.

Technical Review 401

Technical Review Startup Business Model Non-Compete 401

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

John Jantsch (04:30): Yeah, I mean, did you have that like idea, uh, aha, you know, it's like this is what we need to start, Or was it really more the mentoring turned into somebody asking for help and you figured out how to get them that help and the business was born or. Carolyn Rodz (04:43): Definitely the latter. Business model.

Entrepreneur 80

Entrepreneur Technical Review Networking Community 80

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

Rob,” he said, “no offense, but you aren’t going to get a world class, been-there-done-that CEO into a company with less than $1 million in revenue. Think more about business models. I’ve seen many companies with great products die because a great product is not necessarily a great business. I will definitely do that.

Founder 120

Founder Startup Cofounder Business Model 120

Eric Friedman

JULY 1, 2013

You see, in going through my “ sandbox projects ” it was interesting to see that I have tried a few different business models in the past; consulting/development ( Dogsly / TodaysKicks ), ad vertising on DoBlu.com and Multiplayergames.com , consulting, and of course subscription ( SubscribeToIt.com ).

Early Stage 92

Early Stage Business Model Web Software 92

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2009

Avoid elephants in your early stages. See definition of a whore. This is especially problematic in the Web 2.0 / Freemium world where too many company build their business models around trying to build massive scale of free customers and then convert a small share to low monthly payments. Learn from my mistakes.

Startup 389

Startup Early Stage Demand Channel 389

Lightspeed Venture Partners

OCTOBER 10, 2014

Our investment thesis for Gainsight is pretty simple: As customers increasingly interact with products / businesses online, a wealth of data on the frequency and depth of product usage, customer-vendor interaction (webinars, support tickets, NPS surveys etc.) In my mind, this is a very important part of our investment thesis here.

Customer 112

Customer Social Media Early Stage Revenue 112

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned. And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

But with the help of Grahams company, which specializes in creating tech systems for start-ups, Jumpstart grew to more than $50 million in revenue--enough to make it an attractive acquisition for media conglomerate Hachette Filipacchi. Arizona Bay has also blended equity payments with revenue-sharing deals.

Arizona 40

Arizona Equity Iowa Venture Capital 40

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

I recently got together with Aaron Shechet and an early stage startup to discuss the direction the company might want to take. It was definitely challenging to make something like that happen in an academic environment. That is, understanding your business model and the different variables that go into it.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Southern California Startup SEO 150

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

There is an inherent conflict in a consultant’s business model and the needs of a startup. For instance, if a consultant proposes to help you with public relations, pay them a commission equivalent to the greater of a flat fee per story placed or a percentage of revenue generated from the PR coverage. Pyramid Power.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

David Teten

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

I’ve listed below the points I recommend you cover when pitching your business to early-stage investors, including but definitely not limited to ff Venture Capital. At an early stage, the key driver of our investment is the people, particularly how hungry and coachable you are. Business Model.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Pre-Money Valuation Prospectus Early Stage 60

Up and Running

DECEMBER 16, 2014

In October, Jennefer published her new book, “The Little Book of Big PR; 100-plus Quick Tips to get your Small Business Noticed.” ” The book is the inspiration for today’s webinar, and if you enjoy her PR tips for early-stage and established entrepreneurs, I’d really encourage you to check out her book, which is on shelves now.

Public Relations 117

Public Relations Small Business PR Entrepreneur 117

BeyondVC

APRIL 11, 2007

As a VC that invests in early stage companies, part of my job is to discover new opportunities and business models. In addition, I am paying close attention to the revenue model as it has been notoriously hard to extract dollars from kids. I can bet that wireless will definitely be one big component of that.

Software Review 60

Software Review Technical Review Social Network Vesting 60

Hippoland

OCTOBER 16, 2016

In this post, I’m going to very *simplistically* dive into some high level categories and talk about how early stage investors consider each. Essentially my definition for companies in this category is that the technology is so difficult to build that only a small subset of people in the world can build it. Really really fast.

Startup 48

Startup Vertical Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

Tim Keane

JANUARY 12, 2010

3]   However, if they are built bottom up, they demonstrate and make explicit a range of business model assumptions the entrepreneur is using to think about his business and its revenue model.   A cumulative dividend can get to be very expensive and is not often a feature in early stage terms.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Valuation Dividend Liquidation Preference 68

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

The company has just missed its quarterly revenue forecast. Lets take an example, and look at how they might do this: They will be able to tell you that revenue is composed of deals. To compute revenue, you multiply average deal size by number of deals. Bookings is the pre-cursor to Revenue. Obvious, isn’t it?

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

we had no revenue. 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. As a result, we knew that our pitch would need to steer into investors’ biggest concern: the lack of revenue. Investors see a lot of pitches.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

Ben's Blog

MAY 15, 2020

Finally, we’ll zoom out and assess the big picture: how various categories of company may be impacted long-term, how this crisis compares to 2008 (and what that means for early-stage founders), and the industries and business models that are now prime for growth. Are we right or wrong about these things?”

Founder 36

Founder Conversion Technical Review Cash Position 36

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

It means you're relevant to the business, and if your trip around the cycle is successful, you'll have helped the organization get closer to its goals. Another way to find the metric you want to change is to look at your business model. The business model also tells you what the metric should be.

Metrics 156

Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

There are two reasons to raise money: You have a killer idea that is only partially validated, that you think can get to $50M+ of revenue in 5 years with 80%+ gross margins (if margins are lower, you need a lot more revenue)and you need money to get to product-market fit, or. Team, Product, Traction, Business Model and Market.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2020

That's why the Corona Initiative is a Public Benefit Corporation--a for-profit company dedicated to the public good that aims to fund its research with its revenues. You're selling a consumable product, which is a great business model. You really want to see the whole system. I think that's how I really got into health.

Technical Review 68

Technical Review Software Review Finance Technology 68

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. The one-page pitch format is also more suitable for SaaS businesses that are constantly testing new ideas. The business model. 4 Reasons to Brand Your Business.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

2) What is the business model and the potential unit economics? Certain investors tend to gravitate towards certain business models. At a high level, business is simple! :) You bring revenue in and your costs send money out the door. You want your revenue to be higher than your costs. Or in between?

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48