Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. Looking ahead at the next decade I am excited by what I believe will be viewed as one of the best and most rational investment periods for venture capital due to seven discrete factors: 1.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

There are two reasons to raise money: You have a killer idea that is only partially validated, that you think can get to $50M+ of revenue in 5 years with 80%+ gross margins (if margins are lower, you need a lot more revenue)and you need money to get to product-market fit, or. Not all startups need outside investment to grow.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

As the venture capital business has come roaring back in the last 5 years, startups are awash in available capital. Companies horde cash and squeeze the most revenue and margin from the money they use. Instead of measuring success in dollars of profit, …firms focus on measuring capital efficiency.

Private Equity 326

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 326

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . Lean Case provides standard business models & metrics, so you can apply a standard approach to business planning, modeling, and profitability tracking. See their blog post on multiples.).

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

On a public stock market that is the value that investors place on future free cash flows of the business discounted to today’s date to account for the time value of money. The price of public stocks change instantly in reaction to news that is perceived to affect the future value of that company. Here’s what I mean.

Pre-Money Valuation 336

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Stock 336

VC Cafe

MAY 18, 2022

After a 13 year bull market run, anywhere you look in the stock market these days, it’s mostly RED. The tech companies that have been stock market darlings, breaking new records, are struggling, many missing analysts expectations. venture capital and private equity) the VC index (by Refinitiv) shows a nearly 40% decline.

Term Sheet 190

Term Sheet Startup Valuation Ukraine 190

David Teten

AUGUST 7, 2019

The second strategy is Value Investing , a strategy which “seeks to maximize returns by finding stocks that are undervalued by the market…Investors assess a stock’s intrinsic value…and compare that value with the stock price. LTV / CAC, revenue growth, etc.) A tiny number of winners drive VC returns.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Valuation Stock NDA 60

BeyondVC

APRIL 4, 2018

Look at the Dropbox IPO which priced above its initial value and came out white hot at the end of one of the worst weeks in stock market performance. Couple that with Mulesoft being bought for 21x TTM revenue ( see Tomasz Tunguz analysis ) at $6.5 Their growth to over $509mm of revenue from $281mm 2 years ago is a case in point.

Cloud 60

Cloud Agile Architecture Azure 60

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

To answer the first question, take stock of your current gross burn rate i.e. how much cash are you spending each month. Next, take a look at your actual revenue each month – not forecast, but real revenue coming in each month. Subtract your monthly gross burn rate from your monthly revenue to get your net burn rate.

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

Our revenues have increased every quarter for the past two years. Knewton's Online Marketing Director is the key partner to the VP, Online Marketing and is responsible for helping the team drive customer acquisition and revenue growth through SEM (paid search), SEO, Affiliate Marketing, and Email.

San Francisco 92

San Francisco CTO Hire Developer EC2 92

Austin Startup

MARCH 26, 2019

Important metrics to track include customer count, average order value (AOV), retention or repeat purchase rate, ad spend, paid CAC, weighted average CAC, rolling LTV estimates, and more. Many of the venture capital firms that have historically invested in consumer tech have now branched into direct-to-consumer brands.

Technical Review 49

Technical Review Software Review China Acquisition 49

Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2010

The customary vesting model has founders vest their stock over 4-years , and when the founding CEO gets in over their head the VC’s bring in professional management. Not only is this unfair it has the founding CEO focussed on the wrong goal – hanging on as long as they can to vest their stock. Filed under: Venture Capital.

Vesting 255

Vesting Liquidity Event Venture Capital Founder Vesting 255

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Here are four reasons: First, companies bought into the false premise that they exist to maximize shareholder value – which said “keep the stock price high.” As a consequence, corporations used metrics like return on net assets (RONA), return on capital deployed, and internal rate of return (IRR) to measure efficiency.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

JUNE 10, 2010

Once they found a profitable business model they realized that scale required external venture capital to fuel rapid expansion. With venture capital came accountability to board members, forecasts, and other people’s agendas. Success for this new division meant generating substantial revenue and profit for company.

Silicon Valley 329

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur United States New York City 329

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

For a founder there’s nothing worse than searching for a business model day after day and then sitting in a board meeting with a VC who asks about some detail of year 5 of your revenue plan. Do they have metrics and a methodology they use for early stage companies that differs from companies that have already found a business model?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 9, 2009

This strong recovery has highlighted the resiliency of the recurring revenue model in a downturn as well as the stength of the shift to soaftware-as-a-service and cloud computing. In other words, how much of the decline in revenue growth is due to signing up fewer customer vs lower revenues from each new customer. internet. (6).

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Cloud Europe 48

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

It is intriguing to see the M&A dynamics in the space, highlighting the interest of tech companies for recurring revenue streams - even SAP announced in their analyst call earlier this month that they were moving from perpertual licenses to five year term licences. The stock was very well received, jumping 25% on its first day of trading.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review IPO Cloud 48

abovethecrowd.com

OCTOBER 17, 2013

While I am extremely proud of that team’s accomplishments (the parent company recombined Nordstrom.com in 2002 and the direct division now has revenue of over $1.25B and is the fastest growing unit inside of Nordstrom ), I built a healthy respect for the complexities and difficulties of managing women’s fashion inventory.

eCommerce 62

eCommerce Technical Review North America San Francisco 62

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Those customers are fairly easy to sign up, but if I look at where most of the money comes from, and those are the larger licenses of five or ten users, that is according to your definition then the small businesses and small businesses include actually the Mexican Stock Exchange, Chamber of Commerce. For venture capital, right?

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2010

Plus, we’re all allured by the false sense that our contract with BigCo is going to “make us&# because once they start using us it will spread like wildfire and the revenue will flow in. They negotiate a “master agreement&# to work with your company with some maybe minimum guarantees in terms of revenue.

Warrant 298

Warrant Dilution Startup Stock Options 298

www.readwriteweb.com

MARCH 7, 2011

Since most companies have little to no revenue, who else has already invested in the deal is heavily weighted to prove value. Index vs. Concentrated Investing In the traditional stock market an index is a small sample of the market that represents the stock market as a whole. Follow McCann on Twitter @Mccannatron. social proof?

Technical Review 50

Technical Review Due Diligence Startup Angel Investor 50

Gust

SEPTEMBER 17, 2014

Me: So, you raised venture capital? There were no metrics. Him: On metrics. Revenue multiple? If we priced it based on any metrics your company would likely be worth less than 7 figures at your A round. Less than you’ll probably grant your most junior employees in stock options? Stock Option plans.

Liquidation Preference 153

Liquidation Preference Valuation Term Sheet Stock 153

Tim Keane

JANUARY 12, 2010

  I’ve sat down with entrepreneurs and a copy of a term sheet guide I like [ “Term Sheets & Valuations - A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Venture Capital Term Sheets & Valuations ” by Alex Wilmerding, Aspatore Press.]   Say I invest $1MM in a company and receive 40% of the stock.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Valuation Dividend Liquidation Preference 68

Cracking the Code

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Deutsche Bank report has a very interesting chart on the topic presenting the Free Cash Flow margins vs. the revenue growth four years post IPO for select software leaders: As you can see, with 20% Free Cash Flow margin and a 50% growth rate, Salesforce is well positioned in the pack! 2002, the stock price went from $17.5

Software Review 48

Software Review Software Technical Review Cloud 48

Haystack

NOVEMBER 25, 2018

venture capital deals, a spike in mega-financings where it’s common to see not only $100M private rounds, but companies that raise two or three types of financings like this in the same calendar year! 5/ The Enduring Allure Of Platform Potential: Revenue is important. Revenue acceleration is, too.

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Open Source Software Review Venture Capital 127

Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We’re looking at our lean business planning is about strategy, tactics, concrete specifics including milestones, metrics, tasks and schedule, and essential numbers to run a business, all of which lead to managing cash flow. You need metrics because we’re human. It is a very difficult proposition. Are we recruiting?

Lean 60

Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

This discussion expands on my Quora answer to a specific question: “ Why were the stock options of MySpace employees worthless even though the company was sold to News Corporation for hundreds of millions? ” The complete story includes a startup-within-a-startup, investments and exits by two VC firms, and some genuine corporate drama.

Valuation 98

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Merger Vesting 98

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

From section #6 in Aileen’s post: “Given how much capital our private companies have raised in the past few years, most likely have cash to fund 2-4+ more years of runway. If private capital is no longer available in the future, these companies will seek a public offering or acquisition. Don’t feel bad for me.

Liquidation Preference 70

Liquidation Preference Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net 70

Pascal's View

DECEMBER 19, 2012

Seller financial performance: acquisitions remain heavily weighted toward Sellers with revenue, and Sellers in the aggregate continue to show improved earnings since 2009. Cash vs. stock deals: cash is still king in M&A as long-term interest rates decline. That’s for sure!

Acquisition 31

Acquisition Merger Dilution Aggregator 31

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 20, 2016

A high performing, high-growth SAAS company that may have been worth 10 or more times revenue was suddenly worth 4-7 times revenue. The same thing happened to many Internet stocks. About this same point in time, the journalists that focus specifically on the venture capital industry noted something quite profound.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40