Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Most of these rhyme with what we’ve said in the past, but some have also evolved to fit the changing landscape and our own convictions about what really matters for founders and their investors at the seed stage. Of the last 15 investments we’ve made, 8 have been pre-product or pre-seed style rounds.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

K9 Ventures

APRIL 28, 2010

– a seed-stage fund. is a $6.25M fund that is designed to do concept and seed-stage investments in technology companies. Direct Revenue : The company must have a direct revenue model. No distributed teams, and no outsourced product development. K9 Ventures, L.P.

Seed Stage 61

Seed Stage San Francisco IP Portfolio 61

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2016

Getting investors to trust you with their money is always a challenge, and it’s even more difficult in the early stages, where you don’t have a significant revenue stream, a few customers, or maybe even a product yet. At these stages, it’s all about you, and your ability to communicate and execute effectively.

Due Diligence 120

Due Diligence Intellectual Property Preferred Stock Seed Stage 120

K9 Ventures

JULY 19, 2012

which was a $6.25M fund designed to be deployed over 3-4 years, making initial investments between $100K – $250K in concept and seed stage technology companies located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Direct Revenue : The company must have a way of getting direct revenue from its customers (“I deliver value to you, you pay me”).

Technology 132

Technology Seed Stage San Francisco Limited Partner 132

K9 Ventures

JULY 19, 2012

which was a $6.25M fund designed to be deployed over 3-4 years, making initial investments between $100K – $250K in concept and seed stage technology companies located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Direct Revenue : The company must have a way of getting direct revenue from its customers (“I deliver value to you, you pay me”).

Technology 132

Technology Seed Stage San Francisco Limited Partner 132

K9 Ventures

APRIL 9, 2014

Instead, it was more of a result of over-funding at the seed stage. There was simply too much money coming in to the seed stage, which increased the supply of companies at the seed stage. Threshold for an IPO is higher Ten years ago, if you had $20M in revenue you were ready to go public.

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2015

Most new entrepreneurs assume that great investors will find their startups based on the compelling solution the founders have created. The right investor will have specific feedback on pricing models, distribution and market positioning to improve scalability. Temper your approach based on the stage of your startup.

Cost 120

Cost Angel Groups Due Diligence Silicon Valley 120

Agile VC

JUNE 17, 2015

We were a profitable company at that point with nearly $200M annualized revenue, one of the first tech companies to IPO after the dot-com bubble. We’re hearing more about people new to startups asking their seed stage company how many months of severance is included in their package.

Startup 188

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 188

View from Seed

JUNE 30, 2015

The cliff notes behind the idea is that what used to be considered a series A is now actually a seed round because… Capital efficiency allows founders to get further with less. Institutional seed rounds are getting bigger. Some seed funds are investing later. Does that mean we are invest “pre-seed”?

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication Dilution 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

One is explaining the world as it used to work: the importance of gatekeepers, the scarcity implied by limited distribution, and the resulting quality bar that the industry is so proud of. Mostly it is the time and expense required to create the means of distribution for that industry. It’s just taking some longer than others.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

View from Seed

JUNE 17, 2015

We were a profitable company at that point with nearly $200M annualized revenue, one of the first tech companies to IPO after the dot-com bubble. We’re hearing more about people new to startups asking their seed stage company how many months of severance is included in their package.

Startup 120

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 120

Agile VC

JUNE 17, 2015

We were a profitable company at that point with nearly $200M annualized revenue, one of the first tech companies to IPO after the dot-com bubble. We’re hearing more about people new to startups asking their seed stage company how many months of severance is included in their package.

Startup 100

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 100

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. We’ll look at the model stage-by-stage. The distribution discussion also leads to some assumptions about pricing.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

Ann Miura-Ko is a founding partner at Floodgate , a seed-stage VC firm. She’s also a founding member of All Raise, a non-profit committed to improving diversity in both funders and founders. That meant that if the change was starting on the founders side, then there had to be a change on the financing side.

Founder 68

Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

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. Founders tend to fixate on the product.

Cofounder 431

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

Jeff Hilimire

AUGUST 30, 2013

By providing very early — or seed-stage — capital, Cummings hopes to give the B2C startups the breathing room to achieve financial milestones that would make them more palatable to investors higher up the food chain. “If Backed by his $5 million Atlanta Ventures fund, Cummings hopes to “de-risk” such investments. Dragon Army launches.

Atlanta 77

Atlanta B2C Georgia Los Angeles 77

K9 Ventures

JULY 21, 2016

And 2 seed stage companies that haven’t launched yet. Last year we hosted a K9 Founders’ Hardware Geekout at the The Kennel and talked through a bunch of the issues that arise in hardware companies. Distribution: Most startups tend to launch on either Kickstarter or on their own site.

Software Review 48

Software Review Forecast Portfolio Distribution 48

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 28, 2022

The market regards equity as an ownership “share” in a corporation’s income revenue stream. Equity for Co-founders. They need to ensure that the shares are distributed productively. Founders can compensate them in either equity or salary as per their preference. What is Company Equity?

Valuation 108

Valuation Equity Warrant Common Stock 108

Gust

OCTOBER 20, 2011

In 2011, the valuation of pre-revenue, start-up companies is typically in the range of $1.5–$2.5 Such comparisons can only be made for companies at the same stage of development, in this case, for pre-revenue startup ventures. As can be seen the average (mean) pre-money valuation for recent pre-revenue deals is $2.1

Valuation 146

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Intellectual Property Technical Review 146

View from Seed

MAY 27, 2015

We’ll talk to founders as well as executives, investors, and journalists, all of whom did something smart or sneaky or downright brilliant to go from zero to one in an important area of their business. Yes, there are other tech podcasts out there that do a great job talking about industry trends, strategy, and founders’ stories.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

This in turn has fueled incubation programs like YCombinator, TechStars, 500 Startups & many more to help early-stage teams launch businesses led by most technical founders who are getting coaching from seasoned management teams. In addition it is much easier to get distribution than it was in the pre Facebook, pre iPhone world.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Or you can find seed-stage investors who will give you the money to hire a developer. Ultimately, the project can founder on the “core incompetencies&# you both bring to the partnership. You’re asking someone to take a chance that with the code they deliver you can get funding or gain some revenue traction.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Fractional CTO Partner CTO Hire 40

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

To answer these questions, we built a database of 112 Israeli companies founded between 1996 and 2013 that have met or exceeded $20 million in revenue. The founders have started companies before. More recently, Israeli founders are themselves moving to the U.S. What are the challenges and lessons of scaling up?

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

Rob Go

MAY 27, 2015

We’ll talk to founders as well as executives, investors, and journalists, all of whom did something smart or sneaky or downright brilliant to go from zero to one in an important area of their business. Yes, there are other tech podcasts out there that do a great job talking about industry trends, strategy, and founders’ stories.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 28

Rob Go

MAY 27, 2015

We’ll talk to founders as well as executives, investors, and journalists, all of whom did something smart or sneaky or downright brilliant to go from zero to one in an important area of their business. Yes, there are other tech podcasts out there that do a great job talking about industry trends, strategy, and founders’ stories.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Non-Compete Early Stage Silicon Valley 28

Reid Hoffman

AUGUST 6, 2020

Moreover, the indicators that show founders are ready to take on new capital in order to progress to the next phase of company-building – be it hiring, expanding into a new market, launching a product or more – can vary from company to company. WHAT METRICS SHOULD A FOUNDER SHOW TO RAISE A SERIES A FROM A VC FIRM LIKE GREYLOCK?

Technical Review 69

Technical Review Seed Stage Software Review Early Stage 69

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

(co-written with Stephane Nasser , co-founder of OpenVC , an open-source initiative to collect and analyze all VC theses.). OpenVC is a new, open-source initiative to collect and analyze all publicly available VC theses, to help founders more efficiently find the right investors, and vice-versa. Technical founders .

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

View from Seed

APRIL 23, 2015

However … An unfortunate side effect of this particular POTAJ is that, in many startup pitches, entrepreneurs focus so much on product or tech that they leave out one crucial, deal-making-or-breaking detail: distribution. ” Founders must address distribution in their pitches both overtly and succinctly.

Founder 120

Founder Distribution Viral Seed Stage 120

David Teten

JUNE 7, 2011

Our session looks at the rise of socially enabled platforms that blend commerce with community, where reputations trump credit ratings, and where hyper-distributed service businesses outgrow traditional monolithic suppliers. Adam Berk, Founder of Neigh*borrow. Adam Black, Founder KeyWifi.com. Jeff Stewart, Founder of Lenddo.

Darfur 122

Darfur Sudan Cofounder United Kingdom 122

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

“I wouldn’t expect anyone except seed investors to complain about it,” Graham says. “Founders don’t think their problems are due to trends. And in fact, overall trends are a second-order effect for founders.” Sarah Lacy is the founder and editor-in-chief of PandoDaily. Sarah Lacy.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93