VC Adventure

MARCH 17, 2022

With the markets down significantly, financings (at least at the later stages) slowing down, and inflation and interest rates on the rise, perhaps now is a good time to talk about your burn rate. Use time and capital to your advantage, accelerating product development as needed, gaining valuable insight on your go-to-market motion.

Balance Sheet 121

Balance Sheet Burn Rate Valuation Metrics 121

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. It was stressful, but productively stressful and fun. A good example of this is our recent Domain Assurance product, our first product to address phishing and spoofing. For one, there are the profits.

Software Review 67

Software Review Development Team Review Later Stage Technical Review 67

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Remember the whole controversy over Facebook’s Beacon product where a guy bought an engagement ring for his wife and it was published to a stream and ruined the surprise ? So my gut says this will be a youth-oriented product. The investment will be used for product development initiatives. 4mm in Series A.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Hippoland

OCTOBER 9, 2016

If you’re still in the early stages of your entrepreneur-education/journey, you may even think you need to protect your idea and not share it with anyone. Demonstrate that you can pull the trigger on things quickly — whether it be getting customers, hiring / firing employees, or product development.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage CTO Hire Email Later Stage 48

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2013

Minimum Viable Product (MVP). For startup new product development, this is a strategy used for fast and quantitative market testing of a product or product feature, popularized first by Eric Ries for web applications. Startup accelerator. Startup accelerator. Osmosis marketing.

Entrepreneur 274

Entrepreneur Accredited Investor Silicon Valley Angel Investor 274

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. Small batches mean faster feedback.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 30, 2010

We have a good sense of what later stage VCs are going to look for and can help think about how much you need to raise to get additional interest down the line. Sometimes, we even have good product feedback. Here's an area where I think entrepreneurs could make more productive use of LinkedIn. A powerpoint deck, however?

Technical Review 106

Technical Review Due Diligence Venture Capital Later Stage 106

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

NZ Entrepreneur

AUGUST 12, 2020

This includes new methods, products, expressions of ideas, trade secrets, brands and logos. As soon as you have a business or product idea and you’ve spent some time planning what this may look like in reality, start looking into intellectual property protection. What is intellectual property?

Intellectual Property 91

Intellectual Property New Zealand Startup Early Stage 91

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

If it doesn’t have the product fully baked yet? A Seed round today — like the Series A round of yesteryear — requires some kind of traction or product. In contrast, you *don’t* need much to qualify as a Pre-Seed stage company. They shouldn’t even be looking for a fully built product. Those times are long gone.

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

You see, equity capital is raised in stages or rounds. The five main stages include the following: 1. Early Stage Investment (Series A & B) 4. Later Stage Investment (Series C, D, and so on) 5. That is, you'll use the funding to build a product or service and prove that customers want to buy it.

Equity 88

Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

Berkonomics

MARCH 21, 2019

Later stage investors sometimes look for less, since the business has already proven its capability to stay in the game and has already completed its product development cycle, eliminating more risk for the investor. So, you’ve got to play with the numbers to determine your level of comfort.

Hockey Stick 63

Hockey Stick Liquidity Event Valuation Balance Sheet 63

YoungUpstarts

JULY 1, 2016

There’s product development, marketing, sales, and plenty of admin tasks to do to make sure your company survives. If you don’t take H&S seriously, it will come back to bite you at a later stage. Also, consider the safety instructions on your products. It’s no real surprise. Why do you need to do this?

Small Business 113

Small Business Employee Later Stage Restful 113

Up and Running

JANUARY 30, 2014

My partner is a full-time developer and math teacher, and I’m an engineer. Marketing the site and creating a business behind the product proved much more challenging. Accelerators focus on early-stage startups, while incubators are geared toward later-stage startups. Coding the site was straightforward. Accelators.

Incubator 105

Incubator New York City Venture Capital Startup 105

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan realized that the traditional centralized management structures (like General Motors had in 1920) were poor fits for the management of GM’s already diverse product lines. Finally, GM created the notion of perpetual demand within brands by continually obsoleting their own products yearly with new models rolled out every year.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 12, 2009

However, this financial bar has had the effect of excluding one segment of potential customers that Id really like to see there - early stage entrepreneurs who have all the intelligence and vision of their later stage counterparts, but simply cannot afford the cash flow to attend. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Lean 60

Lean Programming San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, December 6, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three Those startups that manage to build a product people want have to deal with the consequences of that success. Lets start with the most important thing you can do to help product teams succeed: make them cross-functional.

San Francisco 74

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. I don’t know any developers. Need proof?

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

VC Cafe

APRIL 9, 2010

The combination of companies looking for capital and investors looking for liquidity put a strain on early stage start ups but seemed to have played favourably for growth equity investments and later stage companies. Some of the deals that drew VC Cafe’s attention are: $10 million C round raised by Wix.

Venture Capital 68

Venture Capital LLC LP 68

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

And to today, when its major product is simply innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Seeing Both Sides

JANUARY 13, 2015

I have been thinking about the challenges of crossing the chasm - that is, taking a cutting-edge product and selling it successfully to the mainstream, not just early adopters who are more tolerant of less complete solutions - and the challenges of scaling in general as many of my portfolio companies are dealing with these issues.

Mezzanine 20

Mezzanine IPO Finance Business Model 20