View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

” Below are our favorite pieces from the past few years, divided in to a few key categories: fundraising, company building, product development, industry trends, and the life of a VC. Doing Reference Checks on VCs “Try to speak to at least one founder that the investor has worked with in a failed investment.

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

by Lu Zhang, founder and managing partner of Fusion Fund. Competition from other startups and established incumbents, constraints on time and capital, and limited access to talent and technology resources are just a few of the hurdles nearly every first-time founder faces while trying to build a business.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Jeff Katzenberg has a great track record – head of the studio at Paramount, chairman of Disney Studios, co-founder of DreamWorks and now chairman of NewTV. Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries. This reduces guesswork, time, money and effort. Validated learning should be the goal of all entrepreneurs.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and founders being replaced, to their chagrin. According to one study a decade ago, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Cashflow is a basic survival metric for every startup. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

But for founders who do their homework, the cost of entry is lower and the opportunity is higher than ever. Excellent detailed resources are everywhere, including a new book, “ The Startup Checklist ,” by serial entrepreneur and founder of the New York Angels, David S. Establishing your brand with interactive social media.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

Up and Running

MAY 15, 2014

As an entrepreneur raised in the era of analytics, I want to find metrics for everything. When I was going through the co-founder “dating” process, I’d found a potential partner through my network who seemed to be perfect. The problem is that this is harder to do than it sounds. Finding the right business partner for me.

Partner 113

Partner Cofounder Equity Metrics 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 25, 2011

And this year, we’re going to talk not just about business and product development, but we’ll be exploring one of the Lean Starutp movements next big frontiers: the role of design. But along with Intuit founder Scott Cook, Brad is a leader that recognizes that entrepreneurship is critical to his company’s success.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Silicon Valley Lean Agile 146

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. AskAnything.VC Advantages.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

In fact, it’s highly unlikely that you as the Founder will survive. Switch your focus from product development to sales. Explosive growth to an enterprise normally requires a scalable sales model, a well-documented process with incentives, training, and metrics for tracking and management.

Merger 379

Merger Due Diligence SEC IPO 379

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

But the thing I am most proud of about Rob is that he has taken a company with a uniquely talented founder & CTO – Nick Halstead – and managed to build a very tight working relationship with Nick where we drive world-class product development without having the usual founder / CEO conflicts.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2015

The concept is fairly simple: identify an objective — what you want to accomplish — and outline the expected key results — how you will accomplish that objective with clear, measurable and time-related metrics. Use OKRs to establish how company success is measured, establish a metrics-driven culture and track performance progress.

Agile 100

Agile Startup Cofounder Metrics 100

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

Successful entrepreneurs start with a customer problem, and develop a solution, rather than the other way around. They build a startup culture of working for customers rather than pushing a product. Develop market insights and a growth vision far beyond today. Manage by metrics rather than by crisis and emotion.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Metrics Hosting Leadership 120

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2020

In my experience as an advisor to startups, the difference is almost always related to the founder and their execution strategy , more so than to the solution quality or the market. Define success metrics, and measure progress regularly. Richard Branson , founder of the Virgin Group, now drives the strategy of over 400 companies.

Advisory Board 308

Advisory Board Agile Social Media Metrics 308

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

So What is Customer Development? Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, developed a methodology for creating businesses that runs in parallel with the traditional product development process. The core idea behind customer development is that the assumptions you make about a target market are only guesses.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 31, 2016

More than 75 marketplace founders and investors attended the event – coming from as far as South Africa and Nova Scotia. As an investor and former founder, I know that scalable growth (and the pretty hockey stick graph) is the holy grail for every startup. Then, the startup needs to get strong product-market fit.

Software Review 60

Software Review South Africa Hockey Stick Viral 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

That’s where I see too much entrepreneur burnout, growth plateaus, and founders being replaced, to their chagrin. According to one study a while back, only 45% of founders plan to exit after stage one, and my guess is that less than half the remainder survive the next stage in their own company.

Mezzanine 244

Mezzanine Private Equity Startup Bandwidth 244

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 25, 2022

First off, many founders don't really feel the need to have external accountability. Not only that, founders get a lot of warnings from other founders about “losing control” and to be careful about ceding too much power to investors. Metrics around these efforts.

Equity 118

Equity Metrics Widget Bandwidth 118

YoungUpstarts

JULY 2, 2020

by Boris Pfeiffer , CEO and Founder of Riddle. Another common mistake that marketing teams are making is using the same metrics for success that they have used in the past. If you use these same metrics, you’re going to be sorely disappointed in the results. Boris Pfeiffer is CEO and Founder of Riddle Technologies.

Marketing 262

Marketing Metrics Channel Differentiation 262

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Of the NextView-backed founders have have tried to raise this round, over 70% have done so (compared to a mean success rate in the industry of around 27%, according to some sources ). Higher founder salaries, which some investors view as a sign of being less hungry or aggressive, did not affect how quickly a startup raised its Series A.

Syndicate 333

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Startup 333

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Labels: product development Speed up or slow down?

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

As a founder of a startup myself (we’re six years old now, in fact), I know those feelings all too well. Ensure company founders do customer support. We don’t have any traditional metrics in our customer support team. If you do genuinely need metrics, be truly customer-centric in the ones you choose to follow.

Customer 60

Customer Retention Startup Metrics 60

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

The investors, founders, and “community” are all super excited about ASC. ASC starts building product, but as they get into the thick of it, the team realizes executing on their vision is going to be extremely hard. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. Heads down on product, they say.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 8, 2010 Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Review) The next article in my series on entrepreneurship for Harvard Business Review is live today. Once again, we revisit the topic of Actionable metrics and their nemesis: Vanity metrics. Remember "metrics are people, too."

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

Any dispassionate observer would recognize that on Day One, a start-up has no customers, and unless the founder is a true domain expert, he or she can only guess about the customer, problem, and business model. Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

And yet the key to startup speed is to maintain a disciplined approach to testing and evaluating new products, features, and ideas. As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline. Techniques from lean manufacturing can be part of a startups innovation culture.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

Often, in very young organizations, those people are simply the founders. Last year, the co -founders of B ack to the Roots talked about their innovation accounting and how they were ignoring sales metrics in order to grow. You can give advice about applying Lean Startup ideas to business areas other than product development.

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

So, rather than try and fill time unnecessarily and create a lengthy deck just because you’re “supposed to,” Rob — and we’d guess many other VCs as well — will often suggest that a founder create a simple one-sheeter that might start small and build over time. The seed stage is all about traction.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Up and Running

JULY 6, 2016

We want to see those for sure, and we expect good summaries as part of the business plan discussion of product-market mix, or company background (in either section, whichever seems better to the founders). See Also: Use Milestones and Metrics to Turn Planning into Business GPS. It’s reviewed and revised frequently.

Technical Review 72

Technical Review Software Review Business Plan Development Team Review 72

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166