Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2012

Both companies generate direct revenue from their platform in the form of a revenue share / platform tax (typically 30%) on software and digital goods sold through the respective platforms. Facebook’s direct platform revenue accounted for about 15% of the company’s overall sales whereas Apple’s was less than 1%.

Java 170

Java Flash Software Azure 170

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Each sale requires us to handhold the customer and takes way too long to close. He took a deep breath, looked around the boardroom table and then proceeded to outline a radical reconfiguration of the product line (repackaging the products rather than reengineering them) and a change in sales strategy, focusing on a different customer segment.

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Reid Hoffman

AUGUST 6, 2020

But for us, revenue is not a hard prerequisite because some of our bets are based on our conviction around technology or platforms that might take a little more time to build out and get going.”. At the seed stage, we have backed very non-obvious, non-pedigreed entrepreneurs, in spaces that weren’t obvious, who ended up being amazing.

Technical Review 69

Technical Review Seed Stage Software Review Early Stage 69

View from Seed

AUGUST 3, 2021

As seed stage investors here at NextView Ventures , we have the privilege of working with a wide profile of founders at the company conception stage — from early-career first time entrepreneurs , to seasoned execs turned founders , to repeat successful entrepreneurs.

Cofounder 156

Cofounder Seed Stage Portfolio Revenue 156

View from Seed

AUGUST 3, 2021

As seed stage investors here at NextView Ventures , we have the privilege of working with a wide profile of founders at the company conception stage — from early-career first time entrepreneurs , to seasoned execs turned founders , to repeat successful entrepreneurs.

Cofounder 156

Cofounder Seed Stage Revenue Acquisition 156

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2023

Here is a summary of the key stages along the way: Idea and seed stage. In this first stage, a specific idea or passion is solidified into an executable plan. The development stage normally begins with designing and prototyping a product or service, and creating the company legal entity. Funding and rollout stage.

Matching 270

Matching Entrepreneur Startup Seed Stage 270

View from Seed

AUGUST 3, 2021

As seed stage investors here at NextView Ventures , we have the privilege of working with a wide profile of founders at the company conception stage — from early-career first time entrepreneurs , to seasoned execs turned founders , to repeat successful entrepreneurs.

Cofounder 136

Cofounder Seed Stage Portfolio Revenue 136

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. Flexible VC 101: Equity Meets Revenue Share. By tying payments to actual revenues, founders and investors remain aligned around the company’s real-time performance, good or bad. Flexible VC: Revenue -based. Of the Inc.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

Yet our initial customer success didn’t translate into big revenue growth and we faced issues such as: Do we support developers, end-users or both? I have a very public seed stage investment policy and awe.sm Yet with major advances in our product infrastructure we still hadn’t proven we could scale sales.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

Gust

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

In my own portfolio I have companies that are generally perceived to be extremely successful with high profile customers and lots of sales…but they just happen to have a liquidation preference ladder of $25 million!

Seed Stage 131

Seed Stage Hockey Stick Cap Table Liquidation Preference 131

Gust

OCTOBER 20, 2011

In 2011, the valuation of pre-revenue, start-up companies is typically in the range of $1.5–$2.5 Such comparisons can only be made for companies at the same stage of development, in this case, for pre-revenue startup ventures. As can be seen the average (mean) pre-money valuation for recent pre-revenue deals is $2.1

Valuation 146

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Intellectual Property Technical Review 146

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 10, 2020

Here is a summary of the key stages along the way: Idea and seed stage. In this first stage, a specific idea or passion is solidified into an executable plan. The development stage normally begins with designing and prototyping a product or service, and creating the company legal entity. Funding and rollout stage.

Matching 317

Matching Seed Stage Angel Investor Business Model 317

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

Thirty-four VC firms in OpenVC call themselves “early-stage” Yet, 30% of those don’t actually invest in pre-revenue startups. For example, Point Nine Capital focuses on B2B SaaS and marketplaces at the seed stage, across many industries. Real sees 80% of all seed deals in Canada. .

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

You don’t have to hire as many sales people because much can be sold online. Many angels and some seed funds will get burned – In good times it’s great to be an angel or seed investor. Revenue must come from a primary source (as opposed to advertising or other third party sources).

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

During the down market they were able to double down on recruiting, sales, outsourcing, new market entries and marketing (yes, with Tiger ads ). Since that date the S&P 500 is up 2.45% while Accenture stock is up 206% with revenue of $23 billion and a market cap of $32 billion.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

In many instances, you raise an institutional round to either fulfill a product strategy or go-to-market strategy or you’re increasing sales and marketing hires, so you have better visibility into what needs to happen in the next six, 12, 18 months. NVV: Let’s talk about the seed stage specifically. Traction and revenue?

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

Etc… At the pre-seed stage, a big way to stand out is if you have a V3 statement (as opposed to a V1 statement). At a high level, business is simple! :) You bring revenue in and your costs send money out the door. You want your revenue to be higher than your costs. But the execution is hard. And that’s ok.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

Etc… At the pre-seed stage, a big way to stand out is if you have a V3 statement (as opposed to a V1 statement). At a high level, business is simple! :) You bring revenue in and your costs send money out the door. You want your revenue to be higher than your costs. But the execution is hard. And that’s ok.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

Almost seven years ago, I wrote a post about the difference between a “no” answer and a “no yet” when pitching early-stage VCs. This was back in January 2012, a simpler time… when there was only one kind of seed round, when Series A firms invested pre-revenue, etc. No, this is not some waxing nostalgic post.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Early Stage Differentiation Lead Investor 120

David Teten

JULY 10, 2019

Briefly, we think there’s a substantial market for a business which helps enterprises to execute initiatives which require coordination across diverse stakeholders, e.g., make a large sale to a critical client, or lobby for a change in regulation. This work is unpaid, as with any other startup at the pre-seed stage.

America 60

America Technical Review Advisory Board Due Diligence 60

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

Let’s start out with the basic functions of a tech company: 1) Engineering 2) Marketing 3) Sales 4) Business development 5) PR 6) Design 7) Product Management 8) HR 9) Operations 10) Finance Ok, that's just overwhelming. Let’s take sales and business development. Ready to start simplifying? The last two are pretty basic.

PR 144

PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 144

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. All of these questions can be addressed in an additional slide that take a closer look at the (sales &) marketing function of the organization and the results to date.

Seed Stage 166

Seed Stage Retention Restful Valuation 166

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

Along these lines, we are starting to hear serverless more and more from the Fortune 500 and see this trend reflected in the sales pipeline at iopipe which has gone from mostly startups to larger companies. The 10 year bull market where every company’s revenue chart is up and to the right is over.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

They’ve grown from nothing to >$2B in revenue in 30 months time, making the company among the fastest growing businesses in the histroy of the world. How They Make Money: Groupon keeps a share of the coupon value (typically 40-50%) as its net revenue (1). Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $713M. to the merchant.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

I'm a mentor and investor in CapitalFactory , a seed-stage startup mentorship program in Austin, TX. Twenty entrepreneurs who have actually been in your shoes — creating companies from scratch, growing to millions in revenue, and often selling them. No posers, no one who was "there for the ride." Leave a comment.

Seed Stage 211

Seed Stage Startup PR Programming 211

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 20, 2016

Here is a summary of the key stages along the way: Idea and seed stage. In this first stage, a specific idea or passion is solidified into an executable plan. The development stage normally begins with designing and prototyping a product or service, and creating the company legal entity. Funding and rollout stage.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Startup Angel Investor Business Model 120

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 27, 2014

As an example, a new restaurant may get valued at 3-4x EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) and a hot dot com business with meteoric traffic growth could get valued at 5-10x revenues. Sophomores are beta site to full production site with initial users (seed stage angels—raise $500K to $1MM).

Valuation 167

Valuation Forecast Seed Stage .Net 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2011

Long before others, they saw that these applications could have hundreds of millions of users with “off the chart&# revenue and profits. The awareness phase is where other later-stage investors start to notice the momentum, bringing additional money in and pushing prices higher. million in 2010 sales). billion (on $76.5

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley Stealth Valuation Mississippi 327

View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

He’s dubbed the approach “ pretotyping ,” and it shares many of the same principles as both its similar-sounding (if later-stage) cousin, prototyping, as well as the more well-known lean startup movement. Before you invest big money on producing 100,000 feet of this line and put it on sale, you should test your assumption.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

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. Having just moved to Austin from Boston, she thought adding African car sales could help, maybe thinking Africans looking for used cars can use it to find car deals.

Delaware 62

Delaware SEC New York City New York 62

Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

Today, a lot of the PLG SaaS tools require sales motion upfront because nobody understands those tools. Those types of tools actually require work in the initial days of the sales motion. So for early-stage founders, those are the two scenarios where PLG might be a great fit. You need a lot of education. That’s the success.

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Startup Fractional CTO 78

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 16, 2020

As a seed stage investor, I know the math. The business will be much simpler, focused on our strength—the growing revenues and customer loyalty at our shops, which are profitable when you subtract the costly overhead of a big factory. Half the companies I invest in won’t provide a financial return.

Bankruptcy 95

Bankruptcy Private Equity Seed Stage Dilution 95

YoungUpstarts

JULY 29, 2013

But they’ll sit up and pay attention when you talk about the customers and revenues of the business. Hero mentors” have exited their businesses through a trade sale or IPO, sometimes multiple times; they offer inspiration to your team and coaching on strategy and tactics. Do we understand the conversion mechanics of our sales FUNNEL?

Asia 207

Asia Singapore Cofounder Incubator 207

VC Adventure

APRIL 18, 2019

And most major investors will also require annual audits (we sometimes waive this for seed stage companies, although even then it can make sense). From there it does scale up, but is dependent on factors such as the complexity of your revenue recognition, the number of jurisdictions you operate in, etc.

Seed Stage 83

Seed Stage Portfolio Revenue Finance 83

Austin Startup

MAY 19, 2018

The bottom line is that being a seed stage founder is mostly a very thankless job. When founders get told to “come back when you have X customer or N revenue”, sure some of them will, but probably not the ones you’d really want to invest in. A good CEO is likely a sales person by nature. 90% of what we sell is a vision.

Founder 75

Founder Early Stage Software Review Deal Flow 75

Hippoland

JANUARY 23, 2018

I thought it might be useful to do a high level overview of what fundraising in 2018 looks like at the pre-seed / seed stage. This means that traction bar has gone up for both pre-seed and seed stage companies. Of course, this is just my prediction / $0.02 The market had definitely shifted. Cons: Slow.

Early Stage 48

Early Stage Convertible Security Seed Stage SEC 48

Hippoland

JANUARY 23, 2018

I thought it might be useful to do a high level overview of what fundraising in 2018 looks like at the pre-seed / seed stage. This means that traction bar has gone up for both pre-seed and seed stage companies. Of course, this is just my prediction / $0.02 The market had definitely shifted. Cons: Slow.

Early Stage 48

Early Stage Convertible Security Seed Stage SEC 48