Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Most entrepreneurs today don’t remember the Dot-Com bubble of 1995 or the Dot-Com crash that followed in 2000. Almost overnight the floodgates opened, and risk capital was available at scale from venture capital investors who rushed their startups toward public offerings. It’s the antithesis of the Lean Startup.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2021

The best part of being an entrepreneur is having the independence to make your own decisions, the flexibility for a better work/life balance, and personal satisfaction from driving change. The road to business success is filled with challenges and frustrations that most aspiring entrepreneurs never even imagined.

Entrepreneur 436

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Operations Social Media 436

View from Seed

DECEMBER 11, 2019

But even at the Partner-level, the amount of transition in Venture Capital is much more than you perhaps would expect… especially in a business which should have a long term orientation with portfolio investment-hold periods and Partnerships lasting more than a decade. So why is there so much turnover in Venture Capital?

Venture Capital 205

Venture Capital Cap Table Partner LP 205

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Ego Metrics: What Measurements Matter? The problem is that some of these metrics aren’t meaningful. In fact, some of the most visible metrics are the most misleading. This is possibly the most visible metric in social media, but many of those followers are inactive or even inhuman robots. So what metrics really matter?

Metrics 70

Metrics Social Media Widget Chicago 70

David Teten

APRIL 6, 2015

It also shows market white space for the smart entrepreneur. The industry standard metric for tracking the severity of disease is disability-adjusted life years ( DALYs ), i.e., the number of healthy life years lost due to the disease or risk. All venture capital and NIH funding data for CY 2010 – 2014 in USA.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Technical Review Non-Compete Philadelphia 60

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Part 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds. Few entrepreneurs find this scalable and repeatable business model because it’s not easy. This has changed the way entrepreneurs think about building their startups and how investors should look at them. ——-.

Early Stage 292

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 292

NZ Entrepreneur

MAY 31, 2021

Jason Graham from Movac provided an early-stage venture capital fund perspective, detailing 35 investments made across 5 funds and 22 years. Marcus Henderson and Hursh Shah provided the institutional venture capital perspective, with NZGCP’s Aspire NZ Seed Fund having invested in over 160 companies over 15 years.

Portfolio 81

Portfolio New Zealand Management Technical Review 81

deal architect

JANUARY 25, 2024

He is in constant touch with entrepreneurs in the EU discussing go-to-market, operational metrics. For the 112th episode of Burning Platform we have Ton Dobbe of Value Inspiration. Ton and I regularly participate in our respective podcasts and video series.

Entrepreneur 170

Entrepreneur Metrics Video Operations 170

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

I interviewed Eric for an hour for - This Week in Venture Capital. 3:35 The real entrepreneurs come out during a down economy. 19:30 A teachable moment for entrepreneurs: HAVE A HYPOTHESIS! 44:45 Telling an entrepreneur to focus is like telling a fat person to lose weight. 48:30 Vanity metrics.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

This structure allows for alignment on the front end, and real-time flexibility for performance metrics,” says Samira Salman , a family office investor and advisor. . Flexible VCs have created structures based on other company performance metrics than revenues, such as profits or founder salaries. Flexible VC 102: Variations.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

At NextView Ventures we have written many pieces about venture capital — how to raise it, build your business, engage with investors, iterate your product, navigate expanding industries, etc. 7 Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make in VC Pitches and How to Fix Them “Different partners in a VC firm are different.

Seed Stage 178

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 178

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 25, 2015

” This, too, is a must read for any entrepreneur. I have many investments with early traction and I the entrepreneurs I work with must tire of my constantly saying, “Are we really making a difference? Not vanity metrics. I am obsessed with a topic because it has literally become my job.

Product 150

Product B2B Warrant Technical Review 150

David Teten

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Instead of budget approvals, monitor key metrics and give managers more flexibility. Paul Bianco, CEO of Graphite Financial *, says, “Entrepreneurs are characteristically optimistic by nature, and often present their board best-case-scenario budgets and projections. Traditional budgets can be destructive and a huge waste of time.

Agile 60

Agile Management Forecast Silicon Valley 60

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. Looking ahead at the next decade I am excited by what I believe will be viewed as one of the best and most rational investment periods for venture capital due to seven discrete factors: 1. Thank you, Aaron Sorkin!

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

I’ve been fortunate enough to be on both sides of the table, as an entrepreneur and a VC, and I’ve observed that most investors look for the same things I do when deciding whether to invest in a company. As an immigrant founder, I didn’t have the industry connections that entrepreneurs often rely on to be successful.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

That’s on average the time venture capital investors spend on a pre-seed pitch deck, according to the latest Dropbox/Docsend funding research report. What most improved your primary metric? I believe that VCs are in the ‘service’ business and capital is commoditised. 2 and a half minutes.

Technical Review 166

Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder Portfolio 166

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers. In many of them I get asked similar questions, including the inevitable “what makes a great entrepreneur?” Tesla is not. It's a great talk.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

If you do build the MVP and show it to them, they will ask you about your metrics. They really want metrics, not a product. The real question you should be asking is "When I've built this product and show you the following metrics, would you invest?" A startup does require MVP but it is much more than just MVP.

Algorithm 264

Algorithm Metrics Viral Venture Capital 264

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

how on Earth could the venture capital market stand still? One of the most common questions I’m asked by people intrigued by but also scared by venture capital and technology markets is some variant of, “Aren’t technology markets way overvalued? And the truth is that several entrepreneurs prefer it this way.

Pre-Money Valuation 471

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

Yet as a business advisor I am convinced that making the jump from a startup to a the next unicorn takes a different mindset, and actions most entrepreneurs are reluctant to face. In my experience, here are some of the key elements of that “second-stage” of entrepreneurship: Move from small investors to major venture capital.

Merger 379

Merger Due Diligence SEC IPO 379

YoungUpstarts

JULY 31, 2019

Billions of dollars are being poured into companies that have yet to clear the value chasm, as entrepreneurs use early traction that isn’t necessarily financially-oriented, but shows a certain level of uptick or success, to raise capital and convince early stage investors that their horse is the one to bet on.

Cofounder 127

Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Cofounder Seed Capital 127

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 6, 2013

Unless you''re a well funded, growth stage company that has lots of hands on deck--tons of instrumentation that easily dumps out pretty charts and metrics, or luxury emenities like, well, time, most entrepreneurs probably feel like they could be doing more productive things than telling their investors what they did last month.

Metrics 144

Metrics Venture Capital Technical Review Entrepreneur 144

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Designing startup metrics to drive successful behavior Great companies are almost always run by great management teams. Good metrics should also be actionable, and drive successful behavior. In a follow up post, I will use this technique to walk through the design of a set of metrics for a SaaS company.

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

I like the guy because he’s credited with coining the word entrepreneur. According to Schumpter, capitalism is an evolutionary process where new industries and new companies continually emerge to knock out the old. As the venture capital business has come roaring back in the last 5 years, startups are awash in available capital.

Private Equity 329

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 329

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

A big piece of the solution lies in the scalable impact of entrepreneurship and an increase of successful entrepreneurs. Max continued, “That’s why I’m really interested in ways of optimizing the entrepreneurship ecosystem to allow more entrepreneurs to go from idea to reality. I was feeling pretty old.

Technical Cofounder 334

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 334

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2010

Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. Great stuff. This post looks at the implementation details of HTML 5 video.

Acquisition 150

Acquisition Cofounder Technical Cofounder Cost 150

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

What metrics do we use to see if we learned enough in Customer Discovery ? I gave my boilerplate answer, “I’m a product guy and I tend to invest and look at deals that have measurable revenue metrics. Dave McClure has some great metrics…” It was an honest but vaguely unsatisfying answer.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

Austin Startup

JULY 22, 2017

She was an African-American entrepreneur, hair care industry pioneer, philanthropist, patron of the arts, political activist and one of the 20th century’s most influential businesswomen. This is similar to something we did at Austin Ventures to encourage startups to make a donation to the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas.

Austin 54

Austin Angel Investor Startup Term Sheet 54

David Teten

AUGUST 7, 2019

You identify the “hot” companies; network into them; and sell them on the value of accepting your capital. Likely signs of a Momentum investment: the round is oversubscribed and the entrepreneur has more negotiating leverage than VCs during the closing process. . LTV / CAC, revenue growth, etc.)

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Valuation Stock NDA 60

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 24, 2014

Benchmarking SaaS Startup Efficiency with Revenue per Employee Metrics | by @ttunguz – crowdspring.co/1sRVdjm. Why You Should Find Product-Market Fit Before Sniffing Around For Venture Money | Co.Labs – crowdspring.co/1sRVsv5. Design Is Changing How We Innovate | Co.Design – crowdspring.co/1sChJN5. Candid & raw.

Social Media 95

Social Media Small Business Design Media 95

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 8, 2023

In my experience, I follow different resources, for instance, the Andreessen Horowitz blog , one of the top venture capital funds reporting trends in their newsletters, and INC.5000 Aside from venture capitalists, following Twitter personas or subscribing to newsletters is another way to utilize industry information.

eCommerce 185

eCommerce Technical Review Software Review Analytics 185

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Blog About Log in Register Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit.

Acquisition 103

Acquisition Cost Customer Entrepreneur 103

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

” I mention journalists here because they perpetuate the myth that focusing on profits is ALWAYS the right answer and then I hear many entrepreneurs (and certainly many “normals”) repeating the same mantra. If you have a market lead then raising capital and making investments now will help you as others enter the market.

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

Up and Running

JUNE 19, 2013

The New York Times profiles two successful tech start-ups— GoodData , which at its start raised more than $50 million in venture capital funding, and RJ Metrics, which held out with self-financing for as long as possible—that went after the same market at the same time, and contrasts their approaches to finance.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital Finance Lean New York 70

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. I believe that Revenue-Based Investing (“RBI”) VCs are on the forefront of what will become a major segment of the venture ecosystem. Kauffman Foundation: Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs: Removing Barriers.

Revenue 60

Revenue Term Sheet Founder Technical Review 60

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 23, 2021

Entrepreneurs and executives will do all sorts of things to improve themselves, from taking a class on a particular technology, to reading a book about venture deals, to practicing intermittent fasting. When I evaluate entrepreneurs, one of the key factors I analyze is their decision-making calculus. It also means “faster.”

Venture Capital 50

Venture Capital Metrics Investment Bankers Framework 50