Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

One of the most successful incubators is Y Combinator in Silicon Valley. Scaling is the holy grail of every new venture – from local to global, from online to brick-and-mortar to partners to mergers and acquisitions, from a private company to a public company, from cash-flow-positive to the next unicorn.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

The Rise of Mergers and Acquisitions -– March 2003 -2008 After the dot.com bubble collapsed, the IPO market (and most tech M&A deals) shutdown for technology companies. In the Fall of 2008, the credit crisis wiped out mergers and acquisitions as a path to liquidity as M&A collapsed with the rest of the market. So what’s left?

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 19, 2020

Examples of some leaders in this space include Ron Conway in Silicon Valley and Jeff Bezos , CEO of Amazon, who each may have over 500 startups in their portfolio. A major chunk of this activity is provided by the newer class of “super angels,” who often look more like micro-VCs, except that they are investing their own money.

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David Teten

JULY 29, 2011

Franklin Bi became passionate about venture capital and entrepreneurship after he spent a summer in Silicon Valley, working on an information services startup focused on innovation management. You’ve already heard from some of them, and you’ll be hearing more over the course of the summer. Franklin Bi.

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Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

There couldn’t have been a worse choice for CEO in Silicon Valley. Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley was an Oxymoron A key premise of our new company was that our video compression and authoring technology would revolutionize how games were made and played. This wasn’t just some random Silicon Valley fantasy.

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Austin Startup

MARCH 3, 2018

Friday, March 9 Attracting VC Funding Outside Silicon Valley Panel with HomeAway founder Brian Sharples & Capital Factory Director Gordon Daugherty We do a lot of things differently in Texas, including fundraising. Just this week they announced a merger with a Greek shell company as a fast track to going public.

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Diego Basch

JUNE 21, 2012

I believe that Silicon Valley is like Las Vegas, except they make you pass a number of tests before they let you gamble. The purpose of this post is to analyze the folowing problem: Joe Founder comes to Silicon Valley with a laptop full of dreams, but no money. What should Joe do? The quarterly report must look good.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2014

Examples of some leaders in this space include Ron Conway in Silicon Valley and Brian Cohen , chairman of the New York Angels, who each may have over 500 startups in their portfolio. This helps the startups with the most opportunity move forward quickly to greater success.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

The lesson was learned over 30 years in Silicon Valley: you create ecosystems where third-parties can innovate and thrive and you become the legitimate center of it all and can tax the system later. In April of 2000 there were fears that the AOL / Time Warner merger would create a monopoly on the Internet.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2015

The focus of our first segment is how Silicon Valley and the U.S. military and are now helping government agencies operate with the speed and urgency of Silicon Valley. military can work together – for access to advanced technology and to learn how to move with agility, speed and urgency.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

A few, like Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), actually do provide management services to startups, invest in startups, or provide early-stage venture capital, but that is not called an investment service and is part of a function called Emerging Technologies, or sometimes Private Equity.

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Pascal's View

AUGUST 12, 2009

I liked the Friday, August 7 Wall Street Journal editorial, Washington vs. Silicon Valley , but it does not go far enough. Between 2001 and 2008 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) accounted for 87% of venture-backed company exits, up from an average of 44% in between 1992 and 2000. years over the same time frame.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

You may have heard that venture capitalists in Silicon Valley no longer read business plans. The options here include going public (IPO), merger/acquisition, liquidate, or no exit, just paying off investors. For the rest of us, we need a business plan, as well as a product plan. Most investors don’t want long-term commitments.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2011

A few, like Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), actually do provide management services to startups, invest in startups, or provide early-stage venture capital, but that is not called an investment service and is part of a function called Emerging Technologies, or sometimes Private Equity.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. Carpe Diem. Breathtaking Scale.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Assuming no early liquidity (via an IPO or merger) for the company, more fund raising is required. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. Building the sales channel and supporting the marketing can burn a lot of cash. Order Here.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 9, 2016

When the legend becomes fact…print the legend” The Hollywoodization of Silicon Valley startup stories “prints legends,” but for most startups those stories are pure fiction. After the merger people were asking, “Why am I working for these people now? “This is the West, sir.

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Austin Startup

AUGUST 8, 2020

Over that time period, this newsletter has emerged as a must read for the city’s startup community because of its aggressive coverage of investments, IPOs, launches, Central Texas re-locations, mergers, founder-related events and (more recently) COVID-related layoffs. though perhaps 20% or so are from Silicon Valley, New York and other hubs.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Read part one on the Evolution of Corporate R&D , part two on Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley , and part three The 6 Decisions to Make Before Setting up an Innovation Outpost. Silicon Valley, Boston). Successful Innovation Outposts typically develop over a period of time through three stages.

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VC Adventure

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

Can you talk a little bit about the growth of the Boulder startup community and what makes it unique to other startup communities such as Silicon Valley, NYC, Boston, etc.? We’ve all seen the global statistics – August was an unusually strong month for mergers and acquisitions. Do you see a window developing?

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2010

A few, like Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), actually do provide management services to startups, invest in startups, or provide early-stage venture capital, but that is not called an investment service and is part of a function called Emerging Technologies, or sometimes Private Equity.

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Reid Hoffman

OCTOBER 3, 2018

People always talk about how Silicon Valley is a great place to start a company,” Reid pointed out, “But I seldom hear them talk about why Silicon Valley is a great place to scale a company.” The instant he told me, I was drawn to that core idea, which resonated with my own experience. We decided to pursue the concept.

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abovethecrowd.com

AUGUST 23, 2020

If you are looking past or through Covid — and why not, all of Wall Street is — the topic du jour in Silicon Valley is Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs. The traditional way of going public is systematically broken and is robbing Silicon Valley founders, employees, and investors of billions of dollars each year.

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Early Growth Financial Services

DECEMBER 11, 2013

After graduating from Georgetown University with degrees in accounting and finance, today’s guest started his career on Wall Street doing mergers and acquisitions and then went on to earn his MBA from the University of Washington.

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Scott Edward Walker

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Question We launched our venture about six months ago, and we’ve been using a big Silicon Valley law firm to handle our legal work. Big firms are great for huge, complicated corporate projects – like an initial public offering, a tender offer or a public company merger. The problem is we’re getting killed on fees.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

Convergent Technologies When I was in my 20’s I worked at Convergent Technologies , a company that was proud to be known as the “Marine Corps of Silicon Valley.” Reply mikev , on June 15, 2009 at 12:03 pm Said: What happened to Convergent Technologies work ethic and business ethics after the merger with Unisis? Order Here.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 6, 2022

The best known ones, like YCombinator , started by Paul Graham in Silicon Valley, and TechStars , located in Boston, provide excellent networking to investors, and on-site technical leadership, which can make your investment less risky. Do your homework before investing.

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Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

But unless Airbnb agreed to a merger, it had only two options. Here in Silicon Valley, some might fantasize about floating cities in international waters, but the fact is that our successes rely on the rule of law, robust financial markets, and an education system that produces talented employees and a healthy market of consumers.”.

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Pascal's View

AUGUST 21, 2011

I will post separately on valuation metrics and the implications of the dichotomy between recent public company valuations and merger & acquisition statistics. As Primack points out in his post: “Law firm Fenwick & West reports that valuations for Silicon Valley venture financings rose 61% in Q4 2010.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 8, 2015

Read part one on the Evolution of Corporate R&D and part two on Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley. . Today, large companies are creating Innovation Outposts in Innovation Clusters like Silicon Valley in order to tap into the clusters’ innovation ecosystems. W hat would be the charter for our Innovation Outpost?

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

The lesson was learned over 30 years in Silicon Valley: you create ecosystems where third-parties can innovate and thrive and you become the legitimate center of it all and can tax the system later. My view is if they were based in Silicon Valley they would be hot, hot, hot. If you look at the power of Bit.ly

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

The best known ones, like YCombinator , started by Paul Graham in Silicon Valley, and TechStars , located in Boston, provide excellent networking to investors, and on-site technical leadership, which can make your investment less risky. Do your homework before investing.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

The founders felt that having a legitimate site for content would discourage Silicon Valley VC’s from funding entrepreneurs to create the next big TV killer. As NBC (founding shareholder at Hulu) and Comcast complete their merger I suspect the pressure on and control of Hulu will be even firmer. The Road Ahead?

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Startup Company Lawyer

APRIL 23, 2009

The current customary form of venture financing documents has not changed much since with mid-1970s when they first became widely adopted in Silicon Valley. Adeo was focused on creating mechanisms to protect founders who may lose control of the companies they created after raising financing from investors.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015

Out of college, he briefly worked as an investment banker in New York, but before long heard the siren song from Silicon Valley. Here’s what happened: I started my career in Chase Manhattan Bank … then quickly made my way over to Bear Stearns because I really wanted to be an investment banker and do mergers and acquisitions. …

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2017

The best known ones, like YCombinator , led by Paul Graham in Silicon Valley, and TechStars , located in Boston, provide excellent networking to investors, and on-site technical leadership, which can make your investment less risky. Do your homework before investing. It’s a lot easier to buy stock in a startup than it is to sell it.

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Professor VC

JUNE 20, 2011

The last blogger in Silicon Valley. While my ownership stake in the company has been diluted through these financings (and the merger with uControl), my carried interest (paper value of my equity) has been going up with each increase in valuation. ProfessorVC. Monday, June 20, 2011. How much is enough? Financing, that is.I

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