Berkonomics

JANUARY 3, 2013

Most every business can take advantage of continuing, recurring revenues from its customer base. Sometimes, products are designed to make all of their profit upon the recurring revenues from supplies or support. Usually that amount exceeds 50% of total revenues, and is often much more.

Revenue 79

Revenue Software Review Vertical Valuation 79

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Deferred payments start with stretching the payables period but, more importantly, include giving employee equity in lieu of a higher salaries and negotiating vendor deferred payments out of future revenues. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2017

In today’s fast moving market, the basic product development cost and time are critical to survival. They come at the early stage while a startup has no revenue or valuation, so professional investors are hard to find. Quick low-cost design and fabrication alternatives are extremely valuable.

Technical Cofounder 153

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Wiki Cofounder 153

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

In today’s fast moving market, the basic product development cost and time are critical to survival. They come at the early stage while a startup has no revenue or valuation, so professional investors are hard to find. Low-cost design and fabrication tools are extremely valuable.

Startup 397

Startup Cofounder Incubator Early Stage 397

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

Who would not want to joint the unicorns (recent startups with a current valuation of over $1 billion)? Before you bring on partners, develop intellectual property, raise capital, or generate revenues, you need to establish an official business entity. Establishing your brand with interactive social media.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2015

Outside investors are most interested in scaling a proven business model, not research and development. Thus it’s a waste of time for most entrepreneurs to be looking for investors until they have a product and some customer revenue. Most founders bootstrap product development.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Intellectual Property Cofounder Bootstrapping 120

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 22, 2023

In recent years, eCommerce companies have begun to increase revenue by selling products directly via social media networks. This trend is only set to increase in the coming years, and I expect to see more companies focusing on sustainability in their product development and business practices.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Entrepreneur Social Media 120

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Snyk was founded with the mission to help developers make their code secure, providing a platform to automatically assess and remediate open source vulnerabilities. The company’s success has been largely driven by its developer-led freemium model, going from Series A funding to a valuation of $2.6B in just 30 months.

Early Stage 62

Early Stage Open Source Development Team Review Security 62

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

On the other hand, if you arrive at a VC pitch without a comprehensive understanding of the industry you’re hoping to compete in, or without a clear path to profitability or a thoughtful product-development road map, you’ll likely leave empty-handed. You may be able to generate revenue, but VCs want exponential growth.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

Asset valuation. The concept of asset valuation may seem counterintuitive, but it is an important idea. Most financial valuation formulas value an asset by discounting the asset using the cost of capital (interest rate) to the present day. It has never paid out dividends, and clocks around $200 billion in revenue.

Founder 118

Founder Valuation Dividend Startup 118

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

especially if the startup already has a product and revenue? Everyone moved to earlier stage – part of the decline in late stage investing is the ‘baggage’ of companies that previously raised money at inflated valuations that they would struggle to justify in today’s market.

Valuation 186

Valuation Software Review Generative AI Technical Review 186

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

Reporting in the Harvard Business Review on a major study of growth stalls they conducted, Olson and his colleagues cite the case of the iconic brand Levi Strauss, which hit a historic high mark of sales in 1995, reaching revenue of $7 billion, but then, starting in 1996, saw a decline in sales so precipitous that by 2000, revenue was down to $4.6

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

You can read various articles out there which will give you the cursory facts about Airbnb like their overall revenue or profitability or how their business has faired here in 2020 in the COVID environment. But ops & customer support is another 17-20% of revenue and arguably you couldn’t run the business if you took that away.

North America 401

North America IPO Prospectus Europe 401

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

And, oh by the way, we also really like the idea of the 1M/1M entrepreneurs building valuation and negotiating leverage through these business development efforts, instead of signing off large chunks of their company in form of equity early on. million in revenue. The business is already profitable with $2.9

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Berkonomics

MARCH 21, 2019

If you are a going business with a track record of revenues, then the importance of accurate current financial statements cannot be overstated. If there is no record of revenues, see the “The Berkus Method” available with any search query for valuing the business before revenues. Let’s start with the basics.

Hockey Stick 63

Hockey Stick Liquidity Event Valuation Balance Sheet 63

Up and Running

JUNE 14, 2017

Some believe in the all-in approach to product development: build an advanced app. The problem was that building out all the features in the premium version would take four to six months and many thousands of dollars in app development that I didn’t have. They matched buyers with these businesses manually on-demand.

Technical Review 96

Technical Review Distribution Redemption Demand 96

The Startup Toolkit

AUGUST 30, 2012

The valley only has about 4x more VC deals than London (although average valuations are admittedly 2x higher): The valley is not 1000x better. The vast majority of VC rounds go to revenue generating companies. 25% during product development. 60% are for revenue generating companies with a sellable product.

Silicon Valley 52

Silicon Valley San Francisco New Jersey India 52

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 21, 2014

In today’s fast moving market, the basic product development cost and time are critical to survival. They come at the early stage while a startup has no revenue or valuation, so professional investors are hard to find. Low-cost design and fabrication tools are extremely valuable.

Entrepreneur 246

Entrepreneur Detroit California Cofounder 246

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 27, 2019

The massive shift in revenue models in recent years. Application developers once considered their products as licensed in what would closely be allied to a single sale. Sometimes, products are designed to make all their profit upon the recurring revenues from supplies or support. Call it “predictable revenue”.

Revenue 62

Revenue Software Review Application Development Valuation 62

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Keep the valuations consistent with company progress. The bottom line is that the pedigree of your investors will have much to do with your ultimate valuation and with your enjoyment of the startup experience. Your Product Plan must fit into context of your overall business mission.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

Focus on Product Development First. Venture funding isn’t real validation – market traction and continued profitability and revenues are. We prioritized validation from our customers by listening carefully to what our customers wanted and focusing on early-stage product development. It certainly was for us.

Early Stage 85

Early Stage Venture Capital Bootstrapping Pre-Money Valuation 85

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

That’s because a company’s value is a composite of all of the quantitative and qualitative factors that comprise a company: revenues, expenses, risks, growth prospects, quality of the management team, competitive advantages, strength of the intellectual property, and so forth. In business, one important measure is the value of the company.

Intellectual Property 223

Intellectual Property .Net Valuation Distribution 223

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Examples of housekeeping include the following list, though not every item will appear every time: Finance: Cash out date, burn rate, 409A valuation, cap table, common/preferred stock dashboard. Instead, smart founders focus on learning and on accelerating that feedback loop to gather data, iterate, and find initial product/market fit.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

Austin Startup

JANUARY 25, 2020

I remember enjoying reading his book “ Delivering Happiness ,” the story behind how he led Zappos and drove it to a billion dollars in revenue before Amazon bought it. I didn’t say much after that, but I thought of what that encounter meant, or could mean. Scratching an itch One day I was lying in my apartment, and a craving hit me?—?I

Delaware 62

Delaware SEC New York City New York 62

Software By Rob

APRIL 2, 2014

With SaaS businesses the majority of revenue will be through monthly, quarterly or annual billing recurring payment plans. This is a common issue and the best mitigation strategy is to source an affordable, reliable, independent third party to work on the product for 3-6 months before the sale. Choose your payment processor carefully.

Affiliate 67

Affiliate Valuation Reputation Sales 67

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2020

Maybe they’ll pivot to something great eventually, but in the interim period, the valuation goes sideways – and that’s not a good place for a VC to be. They find a niche in the market where they can grow some revenues and then they raise some more money. We have been crucial in getting the product to market.

Partner 68

Partner Early Stage Portfolio Metrics 68

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

Unless every aspect of product development is covered by founders who are only receiving equity, there are other parts of building a product that will require hiring highly qualified people. Seed is the new Series A. (~$2M used get for building product, establishing product-market fit and early revenue).

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Software By Rob

APRIL 2, 2014

With SaaS businesses the majority of revenue will be through monthly, quarterly or annual billing recurring payment plans. This is a common issue and the best mitigation strategy is to source an affordable, reliable, independent third party to work on the product for 3-6 months before the sale. Choose your payment processor carefully.

Affiliate 27

Affiliate Valuation Reputation Sales 27

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

This post describes how companies using the Customer Development model can increase their credibility, valuation and probability of getting a first round of funding by presenting their results in a “Lesson Learned&# venture pitch. Is there a profitable business model? Can it scale?” Great post!

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 3, 2012

With over $1 billion in revenue, 2000 employees and a market capitalization of over $6 billion, Akamai has become a role model for scalable start-ups. billion in revenue, over $1 billion in gross profit and $500 million in EBITDA. The first year of revenue (1999) was $4 million – a remarkable achievement. Gross Profit. $(60).

Distribution 49

Distribution Lean Massachusetts Cofounder 49

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

Tim Keane

APRIL 24, 2006

The product development cycle was excellent. However, the distribution channel we had planned to use lacked the sophistication ultimately required by the product design, and the manufacturers adoption cycle was insufficient. The product development cycle was excellent. Then, quickly validate the thesis.

Wisconsin 60

Wisconsin Angel Investor Bootstrapping Venture Capital 60

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

I firmly believe that in this age where the product development life-cycle is so short and user feedback comes so quickly, you will know within a year whether you are focusing on a worthwhile one thing. Never, ever, choose your investors based on valuation. 10M post-money valuation = $100M target.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Software By Rob

AUGUST 18, 2010

The only thing that seemed to be consistent about my growth was that my revenue was relatively flat while my user base kept growing. This turned out to be a good move since it doubled their revenue that month. He has a great stats page that shows everything from monthly revenue to the breakdown of users by plan type.

Software Review 78

Software Review Software Revenue Cofounder 78