Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

I’m honored to be at a university noted for knowledge, and in a city with 2000 years of history – home of Gaudí one of the 20 th century’s greatest innovators. Companies horde cash and squeeze the most revenue and margin from the money they use. These innovations do not require change in a company’s existing business model.

Private Equity 330

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 330

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 6, 2012

The Sandbox is designed to accelerate the process of business creation through a 12-week experiential-based program, producing either investment-ready firms or ready-to-go, revenue-generating entities.

Incubator 202

Incubator New York City Boston Intellectual Property 202

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2019

Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is up from the dead zone, but is still half the rate back before 2000. As best, you should reserve this option for later stage VC discussions, once you have a well-proven business model, large market following, and substantial revenue.

IPO 210

IPO SEC Prospectus Startup 210

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I know that most people who are close to them tend to deny their existence, as we saw in the great housing bubble of 2002-2007 and the dot com bubble of 1997-2000. Ah, but today’s Internet companies have real revenue! Those with strong business models suddenly stand out when the tide goes out. and profits!

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

After running Microsoft for 25 years, Bill Gates handed the reins of CEO to Steve Ballmer in January 2000. If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter to quarter or even year to year revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. Services (Cloud, ads, music) have a very different business model.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

After running Microsoft for 25 years, Bill Gates handed the reins of CEO to Steve Ballmer in January 2000. If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter to quarter or even year to year revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. Services (Cloud, ads, music) have a very different business model.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 4, 2012

Max Delivery does the same, with one big difference: Kozmo was free and was killed by its high-cost, low-revenue business model. (In In 2000 its revenues were $30 million, delivery costs $35 million and net loss $120 million.) Max Delivery charges a fee and makes a profit.

Technical Cofounder 152

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Video New York City 152

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Best practices in software development started to move to agile development in the early 2000’s. Luckily Alexander Osterwalder’s business model canvas presents a visual overview of the nine components of a business on one page. revenue streams generated by the value proposition(s). Microsoft Windows 3.0).

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

But next the question is, ‘What happens to my business?”. The questions every startup or small business CEO needs to ask now are: What’s my Burn Rate and Runway? What does your new business model look like? Next, take a look at your actual revenue each month – not forecast, but real revenue coming in each month.

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 5, 2013

Of course incumbents cannot be expected to jeopardize their revenue streams or investments in CRM platforms with new concepts that wipe out the need for their current solutions. Too much was at stake, we couldn’t afford the risk of destabilizing everything and losing substantial revenue.

Programming 150

Programming Turkey Social Media Redemption 150

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 4, 2012

Max Delivery does the same, with one big difference: Kozmo was free and was killed by its high-cost, low-revenue business model. (In In 2000 its revenues were $30 million, delivery costs $35 million and net loss $120 million.) Max Delivery charges a fee and makes a profit.

Technical Cofounder 96

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Video New York City 96

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

TripAdvisor may be one of the most fascinating companies I know and so I was excited to dig into their business model as part of my series on scaling. TripAdvisor is more of a classic consumer Internet success story, but with even more powerful network effects and an amazing business model. Big Data meets travel…in 2000.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 15, 2020

Up until late August, Lightning Labs had capped the channel capacity and payment size for users of their popular implementation of the network to ~$2000 USD and ~$500 respectively to better protect user funds with experimental software. . And >40% of that revenue is coming from in-game purchases.

Networking 168

Networking Global OTC Security 168

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 7, 2005

Frictionless sales means reducing the pain for customers to adopt and use a service/product and consequently reducing the cost of sales and marketing to get a customer and generate revenue. As I mention in an earlier post, " The less friction you have in your sales and delivery model, the easier it is to scale.

Sales 78

Sales Java Open Source Software Review 78

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The Golden Age (1970 – 1995): Build a growing business with a consistently profitable track record (after at least 5 quarters,) and go public when it’s time. Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The two decades from 1979 when pension funds fueled the expansion of venture capital to 2000 when the dot-com bubble burst were the Golden Age for entrepreneurs and venture capital firms. Until 1995 startups going public typically had a track record of revenue and profits. Number of Venture Backed Liquidity Events 1991-2000.

Venture Capital 306

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 306

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. They made other assumptions about the type of sales channel, partnerships and revenue model they would need. Lessons Learned.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 7, 2005

Frictionless sales means reducing the pain for customers to adopt and use a service/product and consequently reducing the cost of sales and marketing to get a customer and generate revenue. As I mention in an earlier post, " The less friction you have in your sales and delivery model, the easier it is to scale.

Sales 60

Sales Java Open Source Software Review 60

www.usatoday.com

JULY 16, 2012

Americas new business model: Sharing. The dot-com boom of early 2000 saw a proliferation of similar anything-at-your-service start-ups. What distinguishes the latest generation of start-ups is a confluence of new technologies and more-efficient business models that leave much of the logistical heavy-lifting to peers who share.

San Francisco 105

San Francisco Technical Review Zimbabwe New York City 105

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

What is the mix of revenue between ads, subscriptions, digital downloads & ecommerce. My favorite quote of the show, “Gregg, what’s the mix of revenue types?&# JibJab doesn’t do ad revenue at all. They never did any PR or marketing to get their videos to first get shown on the news during the 2000 election.

Viral 303

Viral Investment Bankers Video Business Model 303

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 4, 2010

It was not until October 2000 that Google offered its version of a pay per click advertising system -AdWords -allowing advertisers to create text ads for placement on the Google search engine. Google is a $25 billion dollar company with most of its revenue from AdWords. Overture was acquired by Yahoo for $1.6 It’s pretty simple.

Silicon Valley 324

Silicon Valley Differentiation United States Customer Development 324

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 4, 2012

Max Delivery does the same, with one big difference: Kozmo was free and was killed by its high-cost, low-revenue business model. (In In 2000 its revenues were $30 million, delivery costs $35 million and net loss $120 million.) Max Delivery charges a fee and makes a profit.

Technical Cofounder 60

Technical Cofounder Video Cofounder New York City 60

Occam's Razor

MAY 2, 2017

Outcomes: Revenue | Ideas Funded Behavior: Path Length | Cart Abandonment Rate Acquisition: Assisted Conversions | Share of Search. Every ecommerce site has to obsess about Revenue. After a consideration of their business evolution, I picked Ideas Funded for their micro-outcome. It is not hard to pick New Subscriptions.

Metrics 143

Metrics Acquisition eCommerce Analytics 143

ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

The best drivers apply the brakes just ahead of the curve (they take out excess costs), turn hard toward the apex of the curve (identify the short list of projects that will form the next business model), and accelerate hard out of the curve (spend and hire before markets have rebounded). Image source ). Accepting that is key.

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 13, 2015

Often your best estimate of any metric or market behavior or business model component is at best accurate within a power of ten, for example “expected conversion rate between 0.5% and 5%” or “cost to acquire a customer between $50 and $500″ or “average monthly revenue per customer between $20 and $200.”

Business Model 120

Business Model Affiliate Startup Bootstrapping 120

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

The typical quota for a sales rep varies by type of business model (SaaS vs. perpetual), product gross margin (e.g., If the customer is a recurring customer, then they are more valuable and a lower quota might be tolerated, although a separate group of account reps are often accountable and paid commissions for the renewal revenue.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Jumpstart was one of Grahams first clients; it signed on shortly after he founded Arizona Bay, in 2000. But with the help of Grahams company, which specializes in creating tech systems for start-ups, Jumpstart grew to more than $50 million in revenue--enough to make it an attractive acquisition for media conglomerate Hachette Filipacchi.

Arizona 40

Arizona Equity Iowa Venture Capital 40

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 23, 2012

invested, IPO’ed in 2000 for $32/share — stock price now $2. After I sold Smart Bear, that division has increased revenue and profit every year, for five years, even through the 2008/2009 economic disaster. Freeloader — On $3m invested, sold for $38m in 1996 — shut down in 1997. Support.com — On 2.5m

IPO 240

IPO Flash Bootstrapping Private Equity 240

Cracking the Code

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

The fact that SaaS valuations are being more affected by the downturn than the Nasdaq can be surprising given the supposed resiliency of the SaaS model (recurring revenues) but it translates the public investors belief that SMB software spend is going to be hit very hard by this recession. With this decline, the average EV/08 rev.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Valuation Portfolio 48

K9 Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

2) New market (less common form, examples are Lyft and eShares) and 3) New business model (least common, non-K9 portfolio examples are PriceLine and SolarCity). Direct Revenue, meaning no three-way business models and no advertising, media, or content. Frighteningly Early. I started my first company when I was 20.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Early Stage Portfolio Software Engineering 48

SVPG

SEPTEMBER 30, 2016

Those were the technology-powered innovations that enabled the new, much more desirable business model. Yet the team got the new service up and running and used this to power and grow their business for another 7 years, until they disrupted themselves again by moving aggressively to the streaming model.

Product 60

Product Technical Review Software Review Engineer 60

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

-Company grew by more than “400% each year” for past few years [assume growth metric = revenues]. Competition: Chegg (has raised $144 in debt and equity)—estimated by Steven Carpenter ( TechCrunch ) to be 10x more unique visitors than BookRenter (during peak book renting seasons) with nearly $140mm in revenues for 2010.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Los Angeles Oakland Asia 217

ConversionXL

MAY 16, 2018

Revenue, downloads, and sign-ups are all examples of lagging indicators. Common examples are Revenue and Conversions. Some business models use experimentation to great effect already. After conducting the test, the revenue gained from the additional foot traffic to the store was nullified by increasing margins.

Marketing 133

Marketing Metrics Programming Design 133

Scalable Startup

DECEMBER 15, 2011

innovation is heavily suffering right now – almost anything is a business model. when many vaporware and vapor-businesses crash or fade away they leave damage, possibly fueling the recession (remember 1999-2000? Eventually it also needs revenue growth and profits.

Angel Investor 24

Angel Investor Startup IPO Software Developers 24

SoCal CTO

MARCH 5, 2007

However, Elgg could power 100,000 networks and it would make no difference - there is no revenue stream as we give everything away under a GPL license. There are quite a few other Software Development Companies in Southern California working on open source and/or freemium business models. I understand his frustration.

Open Source 150

Open Source Business Model Technical Cofounder Southern California 150

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Your business works as intended if you can attract customers that fit into the context of your operation. Do they perceive enough value to pay prices that create for you a profit margin that matches your business model? I am very surprised when that cool thing actually meets a customer need or drives revenue.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Software Review Cap Table Securities and Exchange Commission 48

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

Is 2012 going to be 2000 all over again? The difference between many of these companies and what we saw back in 1999 is that there are real revenues and revenue growth at many of these companies--and their costs are largely in people, which can always be trimmed down. Facebook is doing billions in revenues. Valuations.

Angel Investor 104

Angel Investor Valuation Startup Revenue 104