Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. What is the right revenue model? Gatekeepers are overloaded. My blog has over 14000 subscribers, for example.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. 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. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

BeyondVC

NOVEMBER 17, 2006

I am not sure if you saw the news , but Salary.com recently filed for an IPO to raise up to $50 million. According to the S-1 filing: Salary.com is a leading provider of on-demand compensation management solutions. From April 2001 through June 30, 2006, we achieved 21 consecutive quarters of revenue growth. million, $0.9

IPO 60

IPO Investment Bankers Demand Revenue 60

Pascal's View

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

Dan Primack posted an article in Term Sheet last week titled Yelp This: IPO Market Is Killing It. Responding to these comments in a new post on Monday November 14, IPO Worries Put to the Test This Week , Dan reasserts “my belief that the death of small company IPOs has been greatly exaggerated.”

IPO 31

IPO Term Sheet Marketing United States 31

K9 Ventures

APRIL 9, 2014

The low supply and high demand is driving up the valuations and deal sizes. Threshold for an IPO is higher Ten years ago, if you had $20M in revenue you were ready to go public. Threshold for an IPO is higher Ten years ago, if you had $20M in revenue you were ready to go public. Series C/D is the new Mezzanine.

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2014

In it, he talks about how he handles public company stocks that he ends up with either via an IPO or a sale of a company he’s involved in to a public company. They raised relatively little so probably had supply / demand on their side – which drove competition and enabled a higher price.

Valuation 143

Valuation Stock Angel Investor IPO 143

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

If the Micro-VCs are looking for Series A-like metrics, what does a company do when it’s just getting started? In order for a company to attract a full Seed round ($2M – $3M), that company needs to show an almost completed product, an advanced prototype, or some kind of traction/demand metrics.

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 30, 2015

I have a feeling that a lot of these "on demand" companies aren''t going to be as gamechanging as we think--and will come back down to earth with valuations that look more like temp agencies than the next big thing. Because companies today have way more revenues than the companies that went public or had huge up rounds back then.

Hockey Stick 60

Hockey Stick Valuation Startup Maryland 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

► 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. Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Tim Keane

JANUARY 12, 2010

Next, they carefully consider the range of multiples being used today to value companies being acquired or doing IPOs in the market that the business is in. So, after having built a working business model with a bottom up projection, let’s assume the five year number in this example is $91MM in revenue. times the investment.).

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Valuation Dividend Liquidation Preference 68

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. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Cracking the Code

MARCH 28, 2022

While the average forward revenue multiple has declined slightly since its February 2020 peak (19x), it’s still higher today than last year at 17x vs 15.8x The cloud IPO market has also been very active with 32 IPOs vs. 17 in 2020. 60% of the cloud IPOs had a market cap of $5B+ vs. only 28% this year. in Sept 2020.

Global 62

Global Europe Software Review 62

Up and Running

MAY 1, 2014

Milestones and Metrics. Your prices need to match up with consumer demand and expectations. Milestones and Metrics. While the Milestones and Metrics chapter of your business plan may not be long, it’s critical that you take the time to look forward and schedule the next critical steps for your business. Read more ».

Business Plan 163

Business Plan Forecast Balance Sheet Distribution 163

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.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

How do you sustain growth that precedes the highest IPO in history for a software company? Results from Snowflake’s ABM efforts post-IPO. Dreamforce is such a crowded, high-energy conference that we knew we had to tailor our offer to stand out.” – Julia Stead, Director of Demand Generation at Invoca. Keep doing what works.

Marketing 105

Marketing Campaign Artificial Inteligence Sales Cycle 105

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

It’s important to note that system I’m about to explain evolved organically in response to new demands on the system and in response to post-mortems of failures. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A business that strives for something like this should absolutely be charging money from day one, in order to establish baselines for their two key metrics: CPA (the cost to acquire a new customer) and LTV (the lifetime value of each acquired customer). Now consider a traditional media business. Now consider a traditional media business.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Only after reaching $1M in CMRR should you consider hiring European sales and services execs behind customer demand. Save Asia for post-IPO Single instance, multi-tenant, single datacenter - Have only one version of the code in production. Effectively measuring and understanding your CAC and CLTV metrics are key to future success.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

oh, and on the book front, you'll be able to get all of my essays so far in ebook, print-on-demand, and kindle editions - coming soon. 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. They seem to be liking it. (oh,

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem. Unfortunately, revenue a trailing indicator. Its a great time to increase revenues without spending money on acquiring new customers.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 4, 2008

2007 was a turning point for the SaaS industry with the successful IPOs of NetSuite, SuccessFactors, DemandTec, Salary.com, Aprimo and Constant Contact. This introduction was also the opportunity to illustrate the amazing growth of our software and saas portfolio in the past years, with aggregated revenues reaching $1.2B

Software Review 48

Software Review South Korea IPO Portfolio 48

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

Square filed its S-1 several weeks ago and is now in the middle of its IPO road show process. A bunch of articles came out saying that Square had “priced” their IPO below last round and this was something terrible ranging from the bursting of a tech bubble to the coming of the apocalypse. Revenue Composition.

IPO 165

IPO .Net Revenue Acquisition 165

Austin Startup

MAY 29, 2019

Brands would get higher margins but lower revenues while retailers would get lower margins but higher revenues (generally speaking, with Apple being a notable exception owning both sides of that for much of their sales).

Networking 48

Networking Fractional CTO CTO Hire B2C 48

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. until I couldn't seem to find a way from getting away from all these nasty, vulgar teens (or people pretending to be teens) demanding explicit sex every time I went there. So I gave up.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158