Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Yet it always amazes me that I can find two different startups, seemingly working on the same problem, with one having a burn rate several times higher than the other. They understand startup realities. Desperate entrepreneurs lose their leverage and die young.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

To grow your brand and increase revenue, here are some handy tips on how to optimise your affiliate marketing strategy. This is because consumers tend to search for them when shopping for a product. You need to know the risk factors when picking affiliate partners, otherwise you run the risk of losing revenue. Source: Pixabay.

Affiliate 186

Affiliate Marketing Technical Review Software Review 186

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Cashflow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Yet it always amazes me that I can find two different startups, seemingly working on the same problem, with one having a burn rate several times higher than the other. They understand startup realities. Desperate entrepreneurs lose their leverage and die young.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” How much is NewCo worth to investors at this point (pre-money valuation)? This is the most concrete valuation element, usually called the asset approach.

Valuation 270

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation NPV Intellectual Property 270

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2011

Money to build the business is the number one challenge for most startups. A large percentage of startups never apply to either. You need to explore more common and more productive approaches for getting your startup moving forward. Self-funding is the preferred source of cash for your startup – if you can do it.

Technical Review 233

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Venture Capital 233

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 22, 2020

One of the biggest myths I have found in the entrepreneur community is that every startup needs one or more outside investors for credibility and success, and perhaps is even entitled to at least one. Searching LinkedIn, for example, is a must for contemporary entrepreneurs. Maybe it’s time to rethink your startup funding strategy.

Stealth 434

Stealth Startup Angel Investor Bootstrapping 434

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

There has been a lot of public debate over the past several weeks about whether it’s a good thing to be “gross margin positive” or not and commentary always reminds me that some people at startups don’t quite understand financial metrics or even how to think about which ones are healthy. I’m guessing much of this was 101 to many readers.

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2012

Money to build the business is the number one challenge for most startups. A large percentage of startups never apply to either. You need to explore more common and more productive approaches for getting your startup moving forward. Self-funding is the preferred source of cash for your startup – if you can do it.

Technical Review 257

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 257

VC Cafe

JANUARY 24, 2021

billion gamers worldwide will help the global games market generate revenues of $189.3 billion in revenue last year. According to Ark Invest’s research , revenue from virtual worlds will compound 17% annually from roughly $180 billion today to $390 billion by 2025. Fortnite alone made $1.8 Twitch stats in 2020.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Audio Forecast Social Media 207

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. What They Do: Travel search engine. How They Do It: Aggregate data from travel data warehouses like ITA as well as indexing travel providers websites, provide this information to consumers in a highly customizable search engine. Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $170 million.

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 18, 2015

All a little startup has is a decent idea and extremely greasy elbows. The insight is: The profitable revenue stream is a prison. A company with a large, profitable, growing revenue stream betrays facts useful to a startup: There’s a huge market to be had (else it wouldn’t be large and growing). Will that strategy work?

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Valuation Flash Revenue 120

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 6, 2010

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” How much is NewCo worth to investors at this point (pre-money valuation)? This is the most concrete valuation element, usually called the asset approach.

Valuation 234

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation NPV Startup 234

Gust

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” How much is NewCo worth to investors at this point (pre-money valuation)? This is the most concrete valuation element, usually called the asset approach.

Valuation 187

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation NPV Intellectual Property 187

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 5, 2023

One of the biggest myths I have found in the entrepreneur community is that every startup needs one or more outside investors for credibility and success, and perhaps is even entitled to at least one. Searching LinkedIn, for example, is a must for contemporary entrepreneurs. Maybe it’s time to rethink your startup funding strategy.

Angel Investor 246

Angel Investor Stealth Bootstrapping Early Stage 246

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 1, 2010

Money to build the business is the number one challenge for most startups. In reality, there are multiple more productive approaches you should explore in getting your startup moving forward. Yet, I find that startup founders often fixate on one or two sources, often to the detriment of their business. Startup incubators.

Technical Review 149

Technical Review Bootstrapping Startup Venture Capital 149

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 22, 2023

For example, a startup SaaS company can use a specialized app to create a good product management process and keep track of the project's progress. In recent years, eCommerce companies have begun to increase revenue by selling products directly via social media networks. Thanks to Sean Stevens, Immerse Education ! #5-

Artificial Inteligence 124

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Entrepreneur Social Media 124

Tim Keane

JANUARY 12, 2010

Startups and angels: Along the way to success. Term-sheets and Valuations: Thinking about Negotiations. The Valuation Question. When companies seeking their first round of serious funding are good enough to receive a term-sheet from an investor, the first issue that always arises is valuation. Let’s start at the end.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Valuation Dividend Liquidation Preference 68

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 5, 2021

In startup business plans, a bubble is too many entrepreneurs and too many investors chasing the latest “next big thing,” like Google search engine, Facebook social network, or Amazon e-commerce site. In startups, a great success like Google causes busts by stimulating more supply, without regard to demand. Overconfidence.

Demand 362

Demand Government Venture Capital Valuation 362

VC Cafe

MAY 29, 2022

Building on my post on ‘ Advice for startups in a downturn (May 2022 edition) ‘, this week I continued to follow with interest the impact of the current correction on startups and venture capital, particularly in early stage. Which Startup Investors Pulled Back The Most So Far In 2022? The bull market is over.

Venture Capital 183

Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation Startup 183

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 13, 2013

Thomas Clayton has started and run numerous high-tech startups in Silicon Valley. He is currently CEO of Bubbly , a social media startup backed by Sequoia Capital, SingTel Innov8, and JAFCO. The company is one of the largest VC–backed startups in Southeast Asia, having raised over $60M in funding. Sequoia , Accel , NEA , etc.).

Asia 132

Asia Silicon Valley India Term Sheet 132

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2015

Startups focus on speed since they are burning cash every day as they search for product/market fit. While technical debt is an understood problem, it turns out startups also accrue another kind of debt – one that can kill the company even quicker – organizational debt.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Salary Early Stage Software Review 120

Gust

JUNE 17, 2012

Money to build the business is the number one challenge for most startups. A large percentage of startups never apply to either. You need to explore more common and more productive approaches for getting your startup moving forward. Self-funding is the preferred source of cash for your startup – if you can do it.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review Bootstrapping Venture Capital Incubator 164

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Just look at the disruptive challenges that businesses face today– globalization, China as a manufacturer, China as a consumer, the Internet, and a steady stream of new startups. Perhaps that’s because where established companies might see risks or threats, startups see opportunity.

Private Equity 329

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 329

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 13, 2019

A pivotal startup milestone? Bootstrap if you can, for as long as you can As a startup you’ll likely fail. Location was a major factor in our search, wanting to ensure geographical diversity as the board took shape. Not really. The first one relates to the most important investor…you, the founder(s)!

Strategic Investors 49

Strategic Investors Austin Angel Investor Bootstrapping 49

Tim Keane

MARCH 9, 2011

Startups and angels: Along the way to success. It’s a deceptively simple question:  what is the optimal way to finance a new startup? It’s a deceptively simple question:  what is the optimal way to finance a new startup? By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. « Leaving a Trail | Main. |

Finance 83

Finance Bootstrapping Startup Equity 83

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

But I’m working on a large team of people trying to figure out how to make micro improvements to a paid-search algorithm. So as a startup CEO you constantly have to suspend disbelief. ” A startup CEO’s job is to absorb stress so the team doesn’t have to. The startup CEO was not the original founder.

Startup 417

Startup Dilution San Diego Stock Options 417

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 12, 2020

That leaves me out raising with two funds under my belt and no big exit and no unicorn valuations. One just got a seed term sheet for twice the valuation I put in at in the pre-seed and the other is doing $200k/month in revenue. There are others, but they’re still pretty young. Honestly, I hate fundraising.

LP 147

LP Technical Review Software Review Valuation 147

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

Based on my experience as a mentor and an entrepreneur, if you fail on your first startup, you are about average. Every young entrepreneur knows implicitly that startup success is a long hard road. Statistics show that the failure rate for new startups within the first 5 years is higher than 50 percent. Inexperienced team.

Intellectual Property 251

Intellectual Property Startup Viral Early Stage 251

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. Thats why eBay advertises on search engines, and Facebook doesnt. Choose one. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) One last thought.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 4, 2016

There is a universal truth: fewer than one in a thousand start-ups meet or exceed their projected revenues in the periods planned. So how do you use financial projections as valuation metrics when you know the odds of those being accurate predictors of the future are so very unreliable? But a lot of time has passed since then.

Valuation 48

Valuation North Carolina Oklahoma City Silicon Valley 48

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 24, 2024

The higher the velocity, the more predictable and scalable the revenue becomes. A good starting point would be to follow the SEO guide for a startup that provides tips and tricks to optimize content. Ultimately, it will boost your SERP (Search Engine Results Page), making your website pages (blog, services, knowledge bank, etc.)

B2B 132

B2B Forecast Entrepreneur Analytics 132

Hippoland

JULY 24, 2016

Valuation is a nebulous topic amongst early stage startups, so I thought I’d really spell it out in detail. In short: Valuations for seed stage companies are fairly arbitrary and driven solely by supply and demand. Your startup’s valuation is not based on a proforma of your revenue.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Valuation Vertical Demand 48

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups. Salesforce.com is a startup with 76,000 subscribers (over 2.1M I also joke with Reid Hoffman that this was back in the days before he was “Reid” Reid’s an incredible entrepreneur, startup investor, and human being. How to Evaluate Firms for a Seed VC. May 26, 2011.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” How much is NewCo worth to investors at this point (pre-money valuation)? This is the most concrete valuation element, usually called the asset approach.

Pre-Money Valuation 246

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation NPV Intellectual Property 246

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 6, 2017

Too few entrepreneurs are searching for the next bubble, so too many funding requests I see as an investor are yet another “me too” solution, with low odds. In addition, I always recommend the following strategies for critically evaluating every startup opportunity: Let Google warn you about entering a crowded space.

Valuation 139

Valuation Social Media Revenue Search 139

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

I work with a lot of startups. It goes like this, “If your next round investor can see how fast you’re scaling then you can raise money based on your user traction and your valuation can hit the sky. The company with no revenue and a $150k burn rate that raised $2.5 Nobody seems to want to make money any more.

Burn Rate 412

Burn Rate Dilution Revenue Valuation 412

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2016

One of the biggest myths I have found in the entrepreneur community is that every startup needs one or more outside investors for credibility and success, and perhaps is even entitled to at least one. Searching LinkedIn, for example, is a must for contemporary entrepreneurs. Maybe it’s time to rethink your startup funding strategy.

Stealth 120

Stealth Startup Angel Investor Bootstrapping 120