Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

In January, Jerry Neumann wrote a long and detailed analysis of his view of the VC industry in the 1980’s titled Heat Death: Venture Capital in the 1980’s. So contrary to the piece, it wasn’t VC were good at early stage technology, it was that they had newfound capital and a big exit window.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund and mutual fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . See Bessemer Venture Partners’ A comprehensive guide to security for startups. Data companies focused on early-stage startups include Aingel , fundsUP , Preseries , PredictLeads , and Sploda.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

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. Not all startups need outside investment to grow.

Cofounder 431

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Thanks to all of the amazing founders, advisors, co-investors, corporate partners, and others that helped make 2018 an amazing year. congrats to BigID on its $30mm Series B led by Scale Venture Partners, Kustomer on its $25mm Series B led by Redpoint, and Snyk on its $22mm Series B led by Accel and GV. Ed Sim, Boldstart Ventures.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Bottom line, early stage equity is very, very expensive. So at any point, if you are trying to raise money, and you are hearing from investors that you are too early and have too little validation, it may be a good thing. Then Liana Thompson pitched Trendy Loot , a very early stage deal site for low-end jewelry.

Valuation 119

Valuation Silicon Valley Pre-Money Valuation Bootstrapping 119

SoCal CTO

MARCH 5, 2007

However, Elgg could power 100,000 networks and it would make no difference - there is no revenue stream as we give everything away under a GPL license. Common revenue streams are consulting, training, support, customization, upgraded versions for corporate applications, etc. I understand his frustration. in Computer Science.

Open Source 150

Open Source Business Model Technical Cofounder Southern California 150

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 25, 2016

But I’ve seen little startups, mid-sized companies like WP Engine, and large companies struggle with complexity in decisions even in conditions of relative certainty. Examples: how a market will evolve, what competitors are investing in, whether new marketing campaigns will be successful, or how an important new hire will perform.

Differentiation 120

Differentiation Framework Restful Software Review 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. (My Both venture firms sought my advice for their portfolio companies. Between the board work and the consulting, I enjoyed my first-ever corporate “out-of-body experience.” It was a long way from Ellis Island.)

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 129

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. These gaps are what led Robert to found a public benefit corporation called The Corona Initiative. Before that, I was an electronics engineer.

Technical Review 68

Technical Review Software Review Finance Technology 68

VC Cafe

DECEMBER 28, 2010

Virtualization technology is increasingly in demand as large corporations try to cut back on hardware in their data centers. Guidewire Group is a global market intelligence and advisory firm focused on technology entrepreneurship in early-stage companies and emerging technology markets. billion in 2010. billion in 2010.

Technical Review 87

Technical Review South Korea Mexico 87

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I got a job at a bank, and I worked in their corporate finance group. You know, the weird thing, Derek, and I should probably let you speak some time, but I was deeply technical when I went into Andersen consulting, and I got paid much less than engineers who graduated, because I had a degree in economics. Engineering degree.

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Startup San Diego 337

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 17, 2014

Key to any early stage fundraising effort is a well-crafted Executive Summary, or Exec Summary. This succinct document describes your new venture and preemptively addresses fundamental questions that prospective investors will have. Or, this can be high-level projections about revenue and expenses.

Elevator Pitch 154

Elevator Pitch Early Stage Venture Capital IP 154

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. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Eric Friedman

JANUARY 24, 2020

Perhaps this best encompasses the past decade of startup lore – get off the treadmill of corporate work you are on and step aboard the rocket ship of awesomeness that awaits within a high growth startup environment. This is not anti venture scale – far from it. Just take the recent acquisition of Plaid by Visa. The Place.

Elevator Pitch 135

Elevator Pitch Valuation Revenue Early Stage 135

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

I think this idea is particularly appealing to those of us from an engineering background. And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Another advantage of the early stages is that most dont have to juggle too many competing priorities. 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. Lo, my 1032 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

Opportunity cost is very real for any stage company, but it is critical for an early-stage one. They will bring you revenue, delight your clients (the right salespeople care about the ultimate value delivered?—?not At Coremetrics, I built more of an engineering-driven culture.

Software Review 48

Software Review Sales Cofounder Analytics 48

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Tech Gadgets Mobile Enterprise GreenTech CrunchBase TechCrunch TV Disrupt SF More TechCrunch TV Beta Invites Crunchies Elevator Pitches Gillmor Gang Podcasts TechCrunch Europe TechCrunch Trends TechCrunch France TechCrunch Japan Whats Hot: Android Apple Facebook Google Microsoft Twitter Yahoo Zynga Subscribe: Think Your Start-up Is Venture Worthy?

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

Reid Hoffman

OCTOBER 17, 2018

In fact, to achieve your aggressive growth goals in the face of uncertainty and change, you need to follow a new set of rules that fly in the face of what is taught in business schools and are completely counterintuitive to accepted “best practices” of either early stage startups or classic corporate management. Annual plans.

Finder 28

Finder Rhode Island Cofounder Engineer 28

David Teten

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

Enter Raul: This capital table startup options valuation model was created with the purpose of valuing options for an illiquid, early-stage start-up. Daily updates of the risk-free rates and corporate bond spreads were mandatory, even if the movement from one day to the other consisted of only a couple of basis points.

Employee 155

Employee IRR Startup Mexico 155

ReadWriteStart

JULY 21, 2011

We had two crowdsourced funding ventures, peerbackers and Ekjaa. Earlier, of course, we covered AngelList at length , also a crowd sourcing venture in the angel financing space, and this week, we have covered SecondMarket , which is powering Facebook's private market capital raising. peerbackers. peerbackers. Endeavour Press.

Affiliate 130

Affiliate San Francisco Entrepreneur India 130

Eric Friedman

JUNE 11, 2019

If you really break things down, this is there job – de-risk a venture scale investment to deploy capital at the right time. Partnership Forcing Functions can be tricky because they typically don’t involve revenue, which drives most business decisions, but there are other reasons to do the deal.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Stock Options Early Stage Agile 68

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

You can argue that the DNA created by Microsoft's over emphasis on distribution (Steve) and development (Bill), has ultimately cost it $50bn or more in lost revenue, market share and market capitalization. It is right that Google and Facebook pride themselves on being engineering organizations (note - so did Microsoft).

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. When we first published Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Being "SaaS-y" in early 2008 in conjunction with our annual invitation-only SaaS CEO Summit, we were overwhelmed with the positive response and feedback we received.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

infochachkie.com

DECEMBER 5, 2011

Once GoToMyPC became a highly successful product, we renamed DesktopStreaming “GoToMeeting,” but not before DesktopStreaming had generated over $30 million dollars of revenue. If we had named the product BuddyHelp, we probably would have generated a comparable amount of revenue. link] Worst Corporate T-shirt Designs Ever. [.]

Naming 40

Naming Technical Review Product Product Name 40

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 21, 2010

He is thinking about other services, including corporate training, and he is also looking at multiple international geographies. Finally, he is wondering if he can raise money for this venture. She has a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Bootstrapping 113

Bootstrapping IP India Silicon Valley 113

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Sorry, folks. Harsh, but probably true.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

You make elaborate plans for a product, hire a team of engineers to develop it (people who do this tend to use the term "engineer" for hackers), and then find after a year that youve spent two milliondollars to develop something no one wants. And it would be hard to find a place where things suck more than in corporate IT departments.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Scalable Startup

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

San Francisco, over 50 universities and trillions of dollars in revenue. Stanford - Not sure this even needs explaining, but Stanford has been a wole new entity in the past 20 years, beyond anyones imagination in wealth creation, funding, computer science, a recruiting engine into SV then on to local companies, pride, confidence, location.

Silicon Valley 22

Silicon Valley San Francisco Angel Investor Hawaii 22

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company. All the strategic thinking in the world won’t make up for a missed revenue plan. If sales revenue and profits are high enough, we could take the company public or sell it, and the stock would be worth more than the paper it was printed on.

Silicon Valley 130

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 130

Pascal's View

JANUARY 28, 2010

Startups, the engine of American innovation and an important source of job growth nationally, took a severe beating in 2009 because so few were funded by the venture community. Public companies such as Google, Cisco and Intel, all initially venture-backed, today represent 17 percent of U.S.

Management 53

Management Silicon Valley Virginia Seattle 53

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 20, 2013

I love the early stages of building a company. Dan went on to continue being a very successful company builder, becoming the CEO of Rocket Lawyer and, among other successes, quadrupling its revenues.). Jeff was our 338th employee, and helped us launch our Talent Solutions business, which is now a key revenue driver for us.

Founder 78

Founder Hiring Cofounder Hawaii 78