A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 21, 2017

Revenue multiples, profit multiples, premium over the previous financing — these are metrics used by sellers to help determine a minimum acceptable price. In terms of acquisition, they ask more specifically: “How can we trade balance sheet assets (cash, equity) in exchange for executing our strategy better?”.

Balance Sheet 242

Balance Sheet Vertical Acquisition Revenue 242

Hunter Walker

APRIL 17, 2025

Joe Hyrkin: I first started learning about and paying attention to Bending Spoons when they announced their acquisition of Evernote in January 2023. Exits come in many forms, from an IPO at the high end, to secondary sales, private to private merger, strategic or PE acquisition, or sometimes, an acquihire or bankruptcy.

Covenant 77

Covenant Acquisition IPO Artificial Inteligence 77

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

Quigo Lands Overture as Client, Rejects Their Acquisition Offer. After rejecting the offer, Mike had a team of his best people waiting to ‘kill’ him for turning down an acquisition that would have changed their lives forever financially. Lesson Learned From Rejecting Acquisition Offers. The secret to the software sales process.

Semantic 302

Semantic Acquisition Valuation Angel Investor 302

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2013

Finance has homes in New York, Hong Kong, and London. Finding talent and financing isn’t the only hurdle to overcome on the road to startup success. Wessel measures a 39% acquisition advantage to being in-state. Today, Silicon Valley is the consumer and enterprise software capital of the world. The list goes on and on.

Silicon Valley 256

Silicon Valley Las Vegas Phoenix Montana 256

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

Finance has homes in New York, Hong Kong, and London. Finding talent and financing isn’t the only hurdle to overcome on the road to startup success. Wessel measures a 39% acquisition advantage to being in-state. Today, Silicon Valley is the consumer and enterprise software capital of the world. The list goes on and on.

Las Vegas 243

Las Vegas Silicon Valley Arizona Montana 243

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

. - 500 Hats , January 10, 2010 Developing new startup ideas - Chris Dixon , March 14, 2010 Batch Processing Millions and Millions of Images - Code as Craft , July 9, 2010 jQuery Plugin: Give Your Characters a NobleCount - The Product Guy , March 23, 2010 How do the sample Series Seed financing documents differ from typical Series A financing documents? (..)

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 30, 2020

Mergers and acquisitions are an integral part of the business world. An acquisition can fulfill these needs while bringing a company a new market share and better opportunities for growth. The Basic Principles of Mergers and Acquisitions. The Basic Principles of Mergers and Acquisitions.

Acquisition 116

Acquisition Operations Merger Forecast 116

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

How long does it take me to pay back my original customer acquisition costs? This financial leader could well have come through the finance org at another startup or at a larger company but they often also can come from strategy consulting (Bain, BCG or McKinsey) or through investment banking (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc.).

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Yes, it’s true that FOMO (fear of missing out) is driving some irrational behavior and valuations amongst uber competitive deals and well-financed VCs. Try charging customers for your product when you have 12 competitors giving the product away free finances by $20 million of VC. The Exit Problem.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

“The benefits of using DataRails can clearly be seen in the rapid customer acquisition the company is experiencing and the overall excitement for the product among users.” By reducing inefficiencies, software startup DataRails aims to free up time for business finance teams, empowering them to focus on higher-value tasks instead.

Hiring 172

Hiring Software Review Customer Israel 172

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Facebook’s ~$20 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, a 5-year-old startup that had $10 million in revenue, made no sense until you realized that Facebook was paying to acquire 300 million new users.). A 20th century VC was likely to have an MBA or finance background. 2. Information is everywhere. 4. Founder-friendly VCs.

Founder 281

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 281

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

As I’ve highlighted I believe we’re in a unique period similar to 2005-08 where the biggest tech firms of Silicon Valley (and some media companies) are scooping up small software companies as “talent acquisitions&# versus accretive revenue / profit generators. This is actually the norm.

Cap Table 283

Cap Table Angel Investor Liquidation Preference Dilution 283

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 4, 2018

This week we closed $250M in financing from Silver Lake , the premier technology private equity firm. That revenue is in on 75,000 customers, earned through the hard work of 500 employees across six offices on three continents. Every day, 5% of the entire online world visits a customer running on the WP Engine Digital Experience Platform.

Engineer 152

Engineer Revenue San Francisco Security 152

VC Cafe

JULY 21, 2022

billion is attributed to the pending Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard Besides Activision Blizzard, the big deals included Take-Two’s purchase of Zynga, Sony’s acquisition of Bungie, and the ESL and FaceIt acquisition by Savvy Games Group Mobile was the most active segment with 47 deals. The rise of Blockchain gaming.

Forecast 190

Forecast IP Mobile Acquisition 190

Steve Blank

JANUARY 11, 2022

We wanted to give our students hands-on experience on how to deeply understand a problem at the intersection of our country’s diplomacy, information, its military capabilities, economic strength, finance, intelligence, and law enforcement and dual-use technology. And we and they would end up with something quite valuable. Team Apollo.

Technical Review 330

Technical Review Technology Taiwan Venture Capital 330

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

Most importantly we talked about my good friends at Okta who were financed by Andreesen Horowitz. We covered the week’s M&A deals : Playdom and Kongregate and why Disney and GameStop made the acquisitions. They have a great user proposition and a phenomenal team. Check ‘em out! I talk about the company in the video.

Venture Capital 282

Venture Capital Term Sheet Valuation Stock Options 282

Steve Blank

JANUARY 5, 2023

” Team 3: Acquisition. We wanted to give our students hands-on experience on how to deeply understand a problem at the intersection of our country’s diplomacy, information, its military capabilities, economic strength, finance, intelligence, and law enforcement and dual-use technology. national security issues.

Technical Review 376

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Technology China 376

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2017

Finance has homes in New York, Hong Kong, and London. Finding talent and financing isn’t the only hurdle to overcome on the road to startup success. Wessel measures a 39% acquisition advantage to being in-state. Today, Silicon Valley is the consumer and enterprise software capital of the world. The list goes on and on.

Silicon Valley 149

Silicon Valley Las Vegas Arizona Montana 149

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

IdeaLab has created 75 companies, leading to 8 IPOs, 35 or so acquisitions and more than 5 companies worth in excess of $1 billion. It also is how they financed their entry into the United Nations. And when I say this I don’t mean they funded billion dollar companies – they literally created them.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

The benefit is that we work together for a common goal, taking care of the needs of support, sales, marketing, engineering, product, and even finance, rather than solving for one department’s goals at the expense of another. At WP Engine we’re extremely collaborative across teams.

Engineer 264

Engineer Framework Social Media Acquisition 264

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 9, 2019

I’ve spent countless hours looking at historical finances, budgets, forecasts and future projections. We see companies that do large acquisitions and have to figure out how to consolidate companies and staff. I fund startups for a living and before that I ran two software startups that I founded.

Product 214

Product Software Review Technical Review Security 214

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

The main B2C benchmarks have to do with traction: growth in user acquisition, user retention/churn, monetisation, as well as the effectiveness of consumer marketing + virality. Example of Baremetrics revenue per user benchmarks. Consumer apps and services. 500 Startups created a helpful primer on key B2C metrics.

B2C 141

B2C Technical Review Startup Retention 141

The Startup Magazine

MAY 27, 2024

Planning also includes developing a comprehensive financing strategy to fund your self storage business and creating a marketing plan to attract customers. Financing Your Self Storage Business Financing is a crucial aspect of starting a self storage business in Leesburg, FL.

Security 130

Security Operations Finance Advertising 130

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 7, 2018

This means finance, operations, sales, and marketing departments as well as leadership can all access the same data. Predictive analytics help determine the most effective markets for adspend, suggesting areas where the product is being well-received and those where the cost of customer acquisition is unreasonably high.

Artificial Inteligence 164

Artificial Inteligence Analytics SCRUM Cofounder 164

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 2, 2017

This keeps them aligned with their investors since a $250m exit with modest venture financing raised can be wonderful for all parties, but the same transaction can look awful if your last round was $60m on $300m pre! Here the acquisition becomes more metric-driven and the assumptions around growth and multiples drive the offer.

Technical Review 131

Technical Review Cap Table Acquisition Startup 131

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

Until recently it was headquartered 2 blocks from our offices in Santa Monica so we literally saw it emerge under our feet and we proudly invested in the last 3 rounds of financing. But it is even more rare for a company to do that while also scaling its revenue at such an impressive clip and with no paid customer acquisition.

San Francisco 256

San Francisco Valuation Los Angeles Technical Review 256

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 18, 2020

In the context of COVID-19, banks try to keep their customers safe, educating them on how to make contactless payments, use remote channels, and leverage digital tools to manage their finances and complete transactions. According to Digital Commerce 360 , 36% of retailers said they adjusted their marketplace strategy as a result of COVID-19.

Global 179

Global Technical Review Mobile Analytics 179

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 20, 2020

One of your first and potentially biggest roadblocks will be financing. Client acquisition will be a major focus for you moving forward, so you need to have a solid marketing strategy. You should also take some time to look for an insurance company that provides bundled packages for your law firm launch. Crunch the Numbers.

Technical Review 156

Technical Review Social Media Reputation Salary 156

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

Yes, you have to figure out how to finance inventory and sure, it’s harder to iterate products when it involved physical production?—?but Traditional investors are so focused on “quantitative marketing” that he got a lot of advice that this money was better spent on online customer acquisition.

Security 247

Security Los Angeles Silicon Valley Video 247

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 16, 2015

Finance has homes in New York, Hong Kong, and London. Finding talent and financing isn’t the only hurdle to overcome on the road to startup success. Wessel measures a 39% acquisition advantage to being in-state. Today, Silicon Valley is the consumer and enterprise software capital of the world. The list goes on and on.

Las Vegas 120

Las Vegas Silicon Valley Phoenix Montana 120

Up and Running

MARCH 14, 2018

Customer acquisition: Marketing and sales strategy. Your financials should easily allow you to calculate your customer acquisition costs. Will you need to raise multiple rounds of financing? Impress the investors with what you and your team have accomplished to date (sales, contracts, key hires, product launches, and so on).

Hockey Stick 164

Hockey Stick Exit Strategy Technical Review Angel Investor 164

The Startup Magazine

MAY 1, 2023

Modern technology has made it possible for fleet managers to optimize operations, streamline vehicle acquisition, and leverage telematics innovations to their advantage. Many automakers provide special pricing and financing options for businesses purchasing multiple vehicles at once.

Technical Review 157

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Management Software Review 157

The Startup Magazine

JULY 8, 2022

These days, many businesses are adopting the freemium model as their primary strategy for customer acquisition, and it’s easy to see why. After all, the freemium pricing model is an excellent way to launch new products and gain exposure quickly.

Startup 158

Startup Technical Support Software Developers Software Development 158

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Very few people turn up with a strong sense of “what we should be doing” or ready to lean into a productive conversation The financials were prepared by the VP of Finance / CFO. In town board members also only scan it because they, too, have morning meetings before the board meeting starts. There are too many pages. It passes the weight test.

Stock Options 226

Stock Options Metrics Stock Valuation 226

Hearpreneur

MARCH 21, 2021

7- I was the victim of a horrible acquisition. I started my business because I was the victim of a horrible acquisition (can you name a good one?). In addition, this horrible acquisition took place while my wife and I were 3 months into our first pregnancy. Thanks to Omid Semino, Diamond Mansion ! #7- Photo Credit: ????Jay

Entrepreneur 154

Entrepreneur Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 154

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

billion 2013 figure) have been massive financings at Honest Company ($70mm), JustFab ($85mm), ZipRecruiter ($63mm) and lord only knows how much SnapChat has actually accumulated. Over the past 4 years LA’s tech fundings have growing at a 30% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) which is > 4 times the US average VC CAGR (7%).

Los Angeles 376

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 2, 2021

Lower tax rates allow an LLC to be more flexible with finances. If a founder’s goal is to grow the business for some time and exit by selling the company, through merger/acquisition, or through IPO, then the corporation (C-Corp) structure might be the best.

Technical Review 158

Technical Review LLC IPO Stock 158