Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

In the old days, every entrepreneur dreamed of someday taking their startup public, and making it a multi-national powerhouse. Typical costs for startups today range from $250,000 to $1 million, even if the offering does not go through. Startups going public are laid open to competitors and critics.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

Investors look for a team with business, financial, marketing, and operational skills, as well as a social passion. Constituents look for a long-term strategy of continuing return, normally including an initial public offering (IPO) or merger/acquisition, to on-going value or option to cash out.

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ReadWriteStart

JULY 20, 2023

While venture-backed startups struggle to find relief amidst a backlog of richly priced ventures, some tech companies are defying expectations and going public with resounding triumphs. Despite the allure of high-margin recurring revenue, many smaller firms that sell software products are struggling to demonstrate sustainable profitability.

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Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

With this capital, the company propels itself to $50 million+ in revenues, and to either a sale to a strategic acquirer or to an initial public offering. By definition, companies that receive venture capital cannot fund their businesses from operations, and thus need to seek outside capital.

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Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Qualtrics, a company purchased for $8 billion by SAP in late 2018 just days before a planned initial public offering, grew rapidly for a decade before taking in VC funding and is only the latest example of a company that found most of its success without VC firms behind the scenes. Certainly.

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YoungUpstarts

MARCH 11, 2015

This compensation can come in the form of a stock option , a stock appreciation right, or a similar financial instrument, which can potentially be quite lucrative for employees at the time of a merger, acquisition or initial public offering (IPO). A company can have value, even if there is no current income or revenue.

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VC Cafe

JANUARY 15, 2024

M&A/ Exits – This situation is compounded by a narrowing window for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and initial public offerings (IPOs). There’s a pecking order, and perhaps the right timing will be the end of the year or beginning of 2025.

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Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

Necessary machinery, an initial website, your first batch of inventory-things you can't function without. Put everything else on your "wish list" to buy with revenues from sales or additional financing. The average Series A round is between $2 million and $5 million, with the expressed goals of funding early stage business operations.

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Rob Go

OCTOBER 1, 2014

It’s the eve of Wayfair’s Initial Public Offering, and I’m so excited for the company. Big congrats to the entire team there, especially NextView Venture Advisors Niraj and Steve (who were among the first people to get behind NextView in the early days). Congrats Wayfair!

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Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

And from a financial perspective, any investor would be better off buying stock in Amazon than buying and share of a corner bookshop; if you invested $100 in Amazon’s 1997 initial public offering (IPO), those shares would have been worth about $120,000 in 2018. The second is a lack of operational scalability.

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Version One Ventures

JULY 20, 2015

Our rule of thumb is that marketplaces at scale are valued at roughly 1x annualized GMV (typically about 6-8x annual revenue). Consensus estimate of approximately $270M for 2015 revenue. Etsy had a market cap of about $2.22B as of July 20, with a revenue multiple of 8.2 Our assumptions for this valuation: Scale: > $1b GMV.

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Berkonomics

JULY 8, 2021

How do roundtables operate? Years ago, a young entrepreneur joined one of the roundtables, and we followed his progress with his issues, many of them directly related to fundraising, as he grew his company from a raw start-up to an initial public offering on the NASDAQ exchange, followed by continued growth in revenues and stock price.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2017

In the old days, every entrepreneur dreamed of easily taking their startup public, and making it big. Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is up from the dead zone, but is still half the rate of 15 years ago. Startups going public are laid open to competitors and critics.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2019

In the old days, every entrepreneur dreamed of easily taking their startup public, and making it big. Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is up from the dead zone, but is still half the rate back before 2000. Startups going public are laid open to competitors and critics.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

In the old days, every entrepreneur dreamed of easily taking their startup public, and making it big. Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is up from the dead zone, but is still less than half the rate of 15 years ago. The M&A alternative looks simple by comparison.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2022

In the old days, every entrepreneur planned on taking their startup public, and making it big. Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is finally up from the dead zone of the last two decades, and is now double the rate back in 1999. Constant pressure to increase earnings.

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online.wsj.com

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

If failure is defined as failing to see the projected return on investment—say, a specific revenue growth rate or date to break even on cash flow—then more than 95% of start-ups fail, based on Mr. Ghoshs research. start-ups fail, he says. Languishing businesses were counted as survivors. Of the 6,613 U.S.-based

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ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

For most startups, it’s no secret that a significant part of their long-term plans is to go public and become the next market darling for investors. If you use history as a guide, I’m afraid you’ll find no real consensus on the matter of when to go public with your startup.

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