Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2018

You’re hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Investment bankers are staking out your house.” When a startup achieves product/market fit, it can be forced to grow extremely rapidly. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account.

Investment Bankers 135

Investment Bankers Silicon Valley Government Lean 135

Ben's Blog

AUGUST 31, 2020

Whether it’s Yotta encouraging emergency savings accounts, Dave.com providing overdraft protection, or Stash enabling broad participation in public market investing, I believe that the private sector could be an inflection point for the country’s financial health – and that fintechs will lead the way.

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IPO Stock Software Review API 36

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2012

At this stage, your startup better be selling a commercial offering, have price and cost validated, with significant customer sales and a real revenue stream. This is the final stage of investment in venture opportunities, and is the point where investors expect to see the return and gain from the original investment.

Investment Bankers 241

Investment Bankers Venture Capital Startup Initial Public Offering 241

Rob Go

JANUARY 18, 2012

Nick Beim (Gilt, The Ladders, JBoss) was a consultant and investment banker. But there is also negotiating a sale, letting go of a co-founder, switching business models, rapidly scaling or rapidly cutting costs, etc. Fred Wilson (Twitter, Zynga, Foursquare) has been a VC for almost his entire career. Go figure.

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Operations Technical Review Investment Bankers Cofounder 50

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 31, 2017

by Mark Hasebroock, Founder and Managing Partner, Dundee Venture Capital. Area for Improvement: Sales Skills. The remaining point for Omaha startups to improve on is cultivating sales skills. Sales aren’t glamorous, and universities aren’t teaching sales techniques to their students. But not for long.

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Omaha Nebraska Chicago Incubator 100

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 13, 2010

At this stage, your startup better be selling a commercial offering, have price and cost validated, with significant customer sales and a real revenue stream. This is the final stage of investment in venture opportunities, and is the point where investors expect to see the return and gain from the original investment.

Investment Bankers 231

Investment Bankers Venture Capital Startup Initial Public Offering 231

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

We selected this benchmark because it reflects the phase in which companies have proven product viability, achieved initial product/market fit, and are now expanding sales and growing more complex operations. In the old model of Israeli startups, many Israeli executive teams would hire a vice president of sales in the U.S.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

The Equity Kicker

AUGUST 24, 2016

The cue for this post was Harry Stebbing’s 20MinuteVC interview with David Pakman , the partner at Venrock who led the Series A and Series B rounds at Dollar Shave Club and recently had his faith justified with a $1bn exit to Unilever. We are happy investing in sectors where we see opportunity, even if others don’t.

eCommerce 60

eCommerce Investment Bankers Curation Stock 60

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sentiment is strong in personal portfolios and up commensurately with VC’s expectations that their last fund will now be worth something (and along with that increase the partners’ personal wealth). IPOs and M&A have returned – and with them the investment bankers have staged a rebound.

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IPO Investment Bankers Venture Capital Marketing 255

Gust

NOVEMBER 22, 2011

At this stage, your startup better be selling a commercial offering, have price and cost validated, with significant customer sales and a real revenue stream. This is the final stage of investment in venture opportunities, and is the point where investors expect to see the return and gain from the original investment.

Venture Capital 171

Venture Capital Investment Bankers Angel Investor Initial Public Offering 171

Mike Michalowicz

JANUARY 8, 2015

I’ve sold two companies, and the sales were vastly different experiences, with wildly different results. When I was approached about the sale of my first company, I wasn’t looking to sell. Fast forward a few years to the sale of my second company. Fast forward a few years to the sale of my second company.

Intellectual Property 60

Intellectual Property Investment Bankers Exit Strategy Sales 60

Growthink Blog

JULY 11, 2011

These could be the practices and habits of a top sales person, a pay-per-click advertising campaign with positive ROI, an invoice collections best practice, a particularly profitable partner or affiliate. But a focus on simple to do list management, in the modern world, is far from sufficient.

Investment Bankers 89

Investment Bankers Affiliate Forecast Campaign 89

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2011

Inbound calls from partners, people who want to join, atta boys from friends. We just landed the biz dev partner we’ve been working on for 9 months. Google DID NOT just acquire our main biz dev partner. My SVP of Sales & Marketing quit 30 minutes before an important board meeting. Sit back and watch usage.

Entrepreneur 384

Entrepreneur Startup Salary Egypt 384

Growthink Blog

APRIL 19, 2012

Now, when selling a sub $2 million business, you often use a business broker (versus using an investment banker to sell a larger business). And most business brokers among other things, will list your business for sale on several websites. Specifically, if they invest $Y, they will get X% ownership in your business.

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Investment Bankers Angel Investor Sales Entrepreneur 75

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 26, 2015

As a former investment banker who followed the markets closely once upon a time (especially when I was in the midst of public market M&A transactions), I now have the luxury of watching from an arm’s length. Build solid relationships with strategic partners and customers. Don’t be penny wise, pound foolish.

Marketing 40

Marketing Investment Bankers Valuation China 40

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 26, 2015

As a former investment banker who followed the markets closely once upon a time (especially when I was in the midst of public market M&A transactions), I now have the luxury of watching from an arm’s length. Build solid relationships with strategic partners and customers. Don’t be penny wise, pound foolish.

Marketing 40

Marketing Investment Bankers Valuation China 40

thebarefootvc

JULY 26, 2015

As a former investment banker who followed the markets closely once upon a time (especially when I was in the midst of public market M&A transactions), I now have the luxury of watching from an arm’s length. Build solid relationships with strategic partners and customers. Don’t be penny wise, pound foolish.

Marketing 40

Marketing Investment Bankers Valuation China 40

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 21, 2014

You’ll be seen by clients as a trusted partner rather than an expense to be managed. I threw out the conventional sales wisdom and evoked the CEO’s curiosity by bluntly mentioning several important risks his new initiative faced. The meeting ended up lasting 15 minutes, and I got the sale. Prospects will become eager buyers.

Investment Bankers 145

Investment Bankers Social Media Networking Lean 145

Ben's Blog

MAY 24, 2021

Editor’s Note: This testimony was delivered by a16z managing partner Scott Kupor to the U.S. By way of background, I am the Managing Partner for Andreessen Horowitz, a $16.5 billion multi-stage venture capital firm focused on IT-related investments… I also serve on various investment committees, including for the St.

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SEC Accredited Investor IPO Technical Review 36

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2011

Inbound calls from partners, people who want to join, atta boys from friends. We just landed the biz dev partner we’ve been working on for 9 months. Google DID NOT just acquire our main biz dev partner. My SVP of Sales & Marketing quit 30 minutes before an important board meeting. Sit back and watch usage.

Entrepreneur 176

Entrepreneur Startup Salary Egypt 176

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

The McMicking’s bought 50% of Ampex for $365,000 (some liken this to the first VC investment in the valley.) McMicking and Terman introduced Ampex to the National Security Agency, and Ampex sales boomed when their audio and video recorders became the standard for Electronic Intelligence and telemetry signal collection recorders.

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Silicon Valley SBIC San Francisco RSS 125

BeyondVC

NOVEMBER 17, 2006

On the book is Thomas Weisel Partners, William Blair, Needham, Pacific Crest, and Wachovia. Our direct sales group markets and sells our solutions primarily using the telephone and web-based demonstrations. I am not sure if you saw the news , but Salary.com recently filed for an IPO to raise up to $50 million.

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IPO Investment Bankers Demand Revenue 60