Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2020

Most new teams are geographically dispersed these days anyway, so paying rent for an office should be differed to later stages when revenue is plentiful. Defer your desire for expensive perks and vacations until later when you have time for them. Favor profitability over revenue and user growth.

Hockey Stick 423

Hockey Stick Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 423

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

Investors and partners now look only for a framework of your business essentials, within the context of your opportunity, solution, and financials. Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation. Building your public image and presence should start even before product development, through your website, logo, and blogging.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. as a distribution channel have vastly reduced the amount of capital a startup needs at the early stage when the risk is greatest. Large regionally based early stage funds have mostly failed.

Early Stage 290

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 290

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 12, 2023

Angels are more likely to fund new entrepreneurs, and early-stage or seed rounds, while VCs tend to focus on entrepreneurs with a successful track record, and later stage rounds. In fact, the reality is quite the opposite. Of course, between these extremes is a large overlap of interest and potential.

Angel Investor 246

Angel Investor IRR Venture Capital Valuation 246

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

But in business, you want a lot of partners. In the private equity universe, most Partners have primary training as deal-makers, not as managers. See Bessemer Venture Partners’ A comprehensive guide to security for startups. Cobalt for General Partners helps GPs to optimize their fundraising strategy. 1) Manage the firm

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

PEVCTech is partnering with Blue Future Partners to run the first large-scale survey of VCs’ technology stack. Johann Kratzer of Blue Future Partners , a fund of funds, observed, “The majority of the hundreds of funds we’ve diligenced rely predominantly on their relationships to source deals. Greylock Partners.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 13, 2020

Angels are more likely to fund new entrepreneurs, and early-stage or seed rounds, while VCs tend to focus on entrepreneurs with a successful track record, and later stage rounds. In fact, the reality is quite the opposite. Of course, between these extremes is a large overlap of interest and potential.

Angel Investor 314

Angel Investor Entrepreneur IRR Valuation 314

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

Use good judgment, talk to your co-founders/investors/lawyers, and partner with a bank that values transparency and relationships such as SVB.]. Especially in the early stages, so much about the company may change in how they think about product or go-to-market — and change multiple times — before raising an institutional round.

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. The test is: If you add one more sales person or spend more marketing dollars, does your sales revenue go up by more than your expenses?

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 334

Reid Hoffman

JUNE 11, 2020

I met Jeff through one of my other partners at Greylock , James Slavet , who had worked for him at Yahoo. I gave a critique of Yahoo’s products and strategy, and explained all the things that I thought Yahoo should do differently. So he called the product lead and said, “There’s something wrong with your product.”

Cofounder 36

Cofounder Leadership Metrics Later Stage 36

OnlyOnce

MARCH 14, 2011

In Part Two, I’ll talk about some of the practices we’re using in our product management and development teams. We all knew if the feature or function that the client was asking for was within the realm of the possible. • We were very, very focused on creating customers and revenue —We were a startup. For one, there are the profits.

Software Review 67

Software Review Development Team Review Later Stage Technical Review 67

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 9, 2021

Far too often, people think that innovation is limited to the product, service, and technology. Over and over, he has gambled on products and product areas where no current market existed. Products like the Kindle and Amazon Web Services created entirely new markets, which Amazon now dominates or leads.

Leadership 42

Leadership Technical Review Cofounder Later Stage 42

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

I’ve written on the expert network industry a fair amount in the past: see How to Earn More Consulting Revenue from Expert Networks and How Executives Can Work with Private Equity and Venture Capital Portfolio Companies. We’re backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Silver Lake Partners, and individual investors like Ron Conway, among others.

New York 114

New York Technical Review Networking Advisory Board 114

Berkonomics

AUGUST 3, 2023

Certainly, bootstrapping is a preferred method of funding growth if it does not hold back the speed of growth or hobble the quality of product or service to the extent that better-funded competitors can overtake the business. It is most often a win-win for both you and the strategic partner.

Private Equity 118

Private Equity Valuation Cap Table Accredited Investor 118

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. The test is: If you add one more sales person or spend more marketing dollars, does your sales revenue go up by more than your expenses?

Venture Capital 226

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 226

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2012

These people are highly focused on investment areas they know, which have a large opportunity for growth, revenue projection of $20M or more in five years, and a high return that can be realized via an exit within five years. Entrepreneurs in an unfamiliar domain better find a partner who has been there before they apply for funding.

Angel Groups 237

Angel Groups Angel Investor Early Stage Startup 237

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 6, 2016

Most new teams are geographically dispersed these days anyway, so paying rent for an office should be differed to later stages when revenue is plentiful. Defer your desire for expensive perks and vacations until later when you have time for them. Favor profitability over revenue and user growth.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Hockey Stick Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 120

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

As the former Head of Product at Blue Apron where I also built and led our Analytics & Data Science team (I know enough SQL to be dangerous), I have an intuitive sense for the “when” and “what” of this role. Similar to Product Managers, a strong Analytics hire requires a diverse set of skills.

Analytics 149

Analytics Hiring SQL Forecast 149

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 2, 2014

Angels are more likely to fund new entrepreneurs, and early-stage or seed rounds, while VCs tend to focus on entrepreneurs with a successful track record, and later stage rounds. In fact, the reality is quite the opposite. Of course, between these extremes is a large overlap of interest and potential.

Angel Investor 266

Angel Investor Entrepreneur Venture Capital IRR 266

VC Cafe

JULY 5, 2010

To learn more, VC Cafe interviewed Brian Rosenzweig, one of the managing partners in the new fund and the former marketing director at 21Ventures. Secondly, we are selling a fixed investment product – a fixed number of investors, a fixed buy-in and a fixed number of portfolio companies. Janvest: Yes.

Technical Review 106

Technical Review Software Review Seed Stage 106

Austin Startup

JUNE 26, 2019

We tried, and opted out of, potentials for pivots; we pitched for game-changing partners and acquisitions that did not ultimately convert. You might notice what’s not on that list above: revenue, investors. If you’re a founder/product manager/business owner, I encourage you to find that out! and the outcomes. “If We pitched.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup B2C Sweat Equity 54

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 14, 2011

These people are highly focused on investment areas they know, which have a large opportunity for growth, revenue projection of $20M or more in five years, and a high return that can be realized via an exit within five years. Entrepreneurs in an unfamiliar domain better find a partner who has been there before they apply for funding.

Angel Investor 217

Angel Investor Angel Groups Early Stage Startup 217

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2012

If your startup is at the wrong stage for the investor you are approaching, fishing for money is a waste of time for both of you. For instance, if your company is only a few weeks old and you have zero customers and your product offering is still in design, don’t expect someone to hand over $10 million to fund your efforts. Exit stage.

Investment Bankers 241

Investment Bankers Venture Capital Startup Initial Public Offering 241

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

As the check size increases, investors tend to look for more traction, established revenue models, proven unit-economics, and other metrics that were previously associated with later stage companies. If it doesn’t have the product fully baked yet? The change in thinking is a natural and logical thing. Well, yes they do.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

The Equity Kicker

NOVEMBER 28, 2016

Most VCs will say that to evaluate deals they look at the market size, the product and the quality of the team. Different investors place different weights on the three elements but as a rule earlier stage investors place more emphasis on the team and later stage investors place more emphasis on the market.

Seed Stage 60

Seed Stage Later Stage Early Stage Partner 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

Certain VC’s like the new class of Super-Angels and small VC funds specialize in the early stage of a startup where you are searching for a business model. And some larger funds that specialize in later stage deals may have a partner or two who likes to invest at this stage.

Founder 232

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 232

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

If you truly believe that you, your company and your products are exceptional and your company will be valuable then you’re actually doing them a FAVOR by helping them invest in your startup. Like any sale you first need to plan your “prospects” and qualify whether or not they’d be a good fit for your product?—?an

Term Sheet 332

Term Sheet Due Diligence Campaign Sales 332

View from Seed

JUNE 16, 2015

My conviction in investing in a company is a function of my belief in the team, the traction of the company, and how the product/opportunity resonates with me personally. My POV is that every VC has a core product. For NextView specifically, we say that we are a one-product company.

Boston 120

Boston Syndicate Syndication eCommerce 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 5, 2016

Angels are more likely to fund new entrepreneurs, and early-stage or seed rounds, while VCs tend to focus on entrepreneurs with a successful track record, and later stage rounds. In fact, the reality is quite the opposite. Of course, between these extremes is a large overlap of interest and potential.

Angel Investor 120

Angel Investor IRR Valuation Startup 120

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 13, 2010

If your startup is at the wrong stage for the investor you are approaching, the courting is a waste of time for both of you. For instance, if your company is only a few weeks old and you have zero customers and your product offering is still in design, don’t expect someone to hand over $10 million to fund your efforts. Growth stage.

Investment Bankers 231

Investment Bankers Venture Capital Startup Initial Public Offering 231

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

Anything from intense customer love despite barely even having a product, pre-sales, a deal for access to data that creates a moat that no one else has—the list goes on. It’s the “hook” that gets a team noticed in a partner meeting. What are the characteristics of this product? What counts as a rabbit? Both things can be true.

Venture Capital 190

Venture Capital Cofounder Deal Flow Later Stage 190

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 17, 2018

A firm like ours has almost 100 different investments across all the various partners so we get to see some businesses very intimately. " Revenue doesn't pay your bills, GM does  —  @msuster 2/ Founders obsess with revenue as a vanity metric. Some even grow "bad" revenue just to show growth.

Founder 242

Founder Dilution Software Review Later Stage 242

Up and Running

MAY 13, 2015

Noah describes this as this idea of like if you’re early stage you need some money to get off the ground. Maybe a later stage business might need some money for working capital and that kind of thing. We sell our product exclusively at the banana stand, which is an eye catching and fun location. Jonathan: Yeah.

Business Plan 60

Business Plan Marketing Oregon Small Business 60

Gust

NOVEMBER 22, 2011

If your startup is at the wrong stage for the investor you are approaching, fishing for money is a waste of time for both of you. For instance, if your company is only a few weeks old and you have zero customers and your product offering is still in design, don’t expect someone to hand over $10 million to fund your efforts. Exit stage.

Venture Capital 171

Venture Capital Investment Bankers Angel Investor Initial Public Offering 171

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 3, 2010

These people are highly focused on investment areas they know, which have a large opportunity for growth, revenue projection of $20M or more in five years, and a high return that can be realized via an exit within seven years. Entrepreneurs in an unfamiliar domain better find a partner who has been there before they apply for funding.

Angel Groups 121

Angel Groups Angel Investor Early Stage Later Stage 121

VC Cafe

JANUARY 10, 2011

As a result of this round, Harel Beit-On, Founder and General Partner at Viola Private Equity will be joining Zend’s board of directors. Zend has shown significant traction, having reached record revenue growth in 2010, while servicing large enterprise clients such as NYSE Euronext, GE and Cisco.

Private Equity 87

Private Equity Equity PHP 87

Berkonomics

JUNE 8, 2017

Certainly, bootstrapping is a preferred method of funding growth if it does not hold back the speed of growth or hobble the quality of product or service to the extent that better-funded competitors can overtake the business. It is most often a win-win for both you and the strategic partner.

Private Equity 106

Private Equity Valuation Cap Table Accredited Investor 106