View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

Taking Corporate Venture Money: When it Makes Sense “PayPal took on these investors in small part because it gave us an imprimatur in the stodgy and regulated world of financial services. ” (Lee Hower). 7 Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make in VC Pitches and How to Fix Them “Different partners in a VC firm are different.

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

Your goal is to invest in engineering (to maintain your product lead), new offices / locations (to capture markets before others), marketing (to capture consumer attention before others do) … all of these activities consume cash often in advance of the revenue they generate. Think DropBox, Airbnb, Uber, Maker Studios.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

Kayak was started here in my backyard of Boston… co-founder & CTO Paul English and the product/engineering team is based here in Concord MA. What They Do: Travel search engine. Post-money valuation probably no higher than $12M (2). I’m pleased to now turn to Kayak’s S-1 filing.

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2015

In the old days VCs funded off of a “pre-money” valuation. If you add the pre-money valuation (let’s say $8 million) to the amount of money you’re raising (let’s say $2 million) you get the post-money valuation. Those are the big three.

Pre-Money Valuation 150

Pre-Money Valuation Option Pool Post-Money Valuation Dilution 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

Many buying companies price these deals on the basis of $1 million per engineer on the team for an early-stage deal. Usually the location of the engineers matters great so having offshore engineering makes acquihires unlikely. I talked about the math of this in this post, “ Is it Time to Learn or to Earn.”

Liquidation Preference 357

Liquidation Preference Early Stage Retention Lock-up Period 357

www.mint.com

MARCH 9, 2010

What is the post-money valuation of your last round? Post-money valuation” is the value of the company after the last round of money was put in (again, lines of credit and promises don’t count). Has anyone in the engineering team actually shipped a product? You may think I’m kidding.

Software Review 68

Software Review Startup Post-Money Valuation Technical Review 68

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 1, 2019

A quick look at what’s available shows they are targeting enterprise users (design, product, sales, human resources, engineering…) but the Personal and Education template libraries are also fairly developed. Pitchbook shows that Notion has a post money valuation of $800M, making Notion a fast unicorn from the time of funding.

Wiki 68

Wiki San Francisco Post-Money Valuation Cloud 68