Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In an ecosystem, each participant acts according to its own imperatives, but these selfish actions have an aggregate effect. In an entrepreneurial situation, this is hard, because artifacts that we are creating (products, code, marketing campaigns, even revenue) are of secondary importance.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 7, 2019

Aggregate VC investment in 2009 hits a low of roughly $20B, a figure last seen in 2003 in the wake of the bursting of the dotcom and telecom bubble and 2001 recession. Companies are retrenching, VC firms are going through their own upheavals, and IPOs are non-existent. Image from Sequoia Capital presentation.

IPO 202

IPO Early Stage Cofounder B2C 202

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

What is the right revenue model? Aside from the dramatically shorter development cycle that browser games enjoy, the split testing of features (which is intuitive to web application makers) is something that propelled Zynga's games and revenues to the top of the social games vertical. August 24, 2009 2:17 PM Norbert Mocsnik said.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Up and Running

MAY 1, 2014

Instead, they prefer to buy through large distribution companies that aggregate products from lots of suppliers and then make that inventory available to retailers to purchase. A typical P&L will be a spreadsheet that includes the following: Sales (or Income or Revenue). Retail Distribution. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

Business Plan 163

Business Plan Forecast Balance Sheet Distribution 163

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

They had previously all worked together at a very successful company in the “telecoms meets Internet&# space, CallWave, which IPO’d 5 years ago or so. There are also people like Clicker and OVGuide who are trying to capture the “video portal&# space where they can command referral revenues in the way that Yahoo!

Advertising 284

Advertising Las Vegas Affiliate RSS 284

View from Seed

MARCH 5, 2019

2019 is shaping up to be the year the dam broke for decacorn IPOs, with Lyft, Uber, AirBnB, Pinterest, et al in the queue. There are a variety of quick write-ups on the Lyft S-1 for basic figures like annual revenue, rider growth, or who the largest shareholders are. Revenue per rider has more than doubled from 2016–2018 (from $15.88

Aggregator 120

Aggregator IPO .Net Revenue 120

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 7, 2019

Aggregate VC investment in 2009 hits a low of roughly $20B, a figure last seen in 2003 in the wake of the bursting of the dotcom and telecom bubble and 2001 recession. Companies are retrenching, VC firms are going through their own upheavals, and IPOs are non-existent. Image from Sequoia Capital presentation.

IPO 100

IPO Early Stage Cofounder B2C 100

Agile VC

MARCH 5, 2019

There are a variety of quick write-ups on the Lyft S-1 for basic figures like annual revenue, rider growth, or who the largest shareholders are. Lyft helpfully provides the number of active riders, total number of rides, and average revenue per rider on a quarterly basis. Here’s one from Pitchbook and one from TechCrunch.

Aggregator 100

Aggregator .Net Revenue IPO 100

Cracking the Code

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

12 cloud IPOs in the past 2 years: One from Europe SaaS companies are thriving in the public markets, with their aggregated market cap grew 350% since 2011, and 12 cloud companies going public in the past 24 months. These 12 have performed well, with an aggregate $2.6 Out of the 12 IPOs, Mimecast is the only company from Europe.

Europe 83

Europe Cloud API Israel 83

Gust

DECEMBER 12, 2011

They are mentioned in any print, website, or television content concerning beauty, startups, New York, great entrepreneurs, women leaders , or the next generation of IPOs. OK, read the next two words slowly: generate revenue. Sorry, yes, I know how retro this sounds. Worrying about revenues (or wolves) can slow you down.

IPO 70

IPO Social Network Revenue Aggregator 70

Andrew Payne

SEPTEMBER 3, 2019

You have to be living under a rock to miss all of the punditry & chatter about WeWork’s IPO filing. If you haven’t read their S-1 , it’s a piece of work: it’s the most audacious tech IPO I’ve ever seen, by far. Ironically, Ben’s AWS analogy neatly highlights the missing parts.

IPO 63

IPO Aggregator Stock Cost 63

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 13, 2012

He is on the board of the Angel Resource Institute, and is a partner with Montlake Capital (a late stage growth capital fund) and with Revenue Capital Management (a royalty based lender). When you aggregate all of the data, these angel investors (across the U.S. A little less than one-third of IPOs are of venture capital-backed firms.

Angel Investor 103

Angel Investor Venture Capital Seed Stage Silicon Valley 103

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 23, 2014

According to a study of 3,000 mobile searchers by Google & IPOS, nearly half indicated that they are more likely to convert elsewhere if they can’t call a business directly from the search result. Outleads’ platform shows a heat map report that aggregates all calls, as well as the element click associated with each individual call.

Mobile 117

Mobile Analytics Lead Generation Web 117

David Teten

MARCH 2, 2013

Moreover, VC funds on average earn approximately 2/3 of their revenue from fixed fees. Counting IPOs gets us only a short distance to an Answer. Firstly, “fund size” can be misleading as some firms prefer to raise a large aggregate amount split between several concurrent funds. This is a difficult question to study.”.

LP 114

LP Securities and Exchange Commission Silicon Valley Venture Capital 114

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

Typically, Pre-Seed rounds are less than $1M in aggregate capital raised. Seed is the new Series A. (~$2M used get for building product, establishing product-market fit and early revenue). 6M-$15M used to scale customer acquisition and revenue). It used to be that a company could go public when it hit $20M in revenue.

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

ConversionXL

AUGUST 23, 2020

According to a study of 3,000 mobile searchers by Google & IPOS, nearly half indicated that they are more likely to convert elsewhere if they can’t call a business directly from the search result. Outleads’ platform shows a heat map report that aggregates all calls, as well as the element click associated with each individual call.

Mobile 112

Mobile Analytics Web Conversion 112

Rob Go

JANUARY 29, 2012

The entire Tech world is waiting with baited breath for the filing of Facebook’s IPO next week. Facebook’s success is largely based on its ability to aggregate the biggest audience on the internet and understand and monetize that audience. Facebook’s impressive revenue relies largely on advertising.

Advertising 59

Advertising Mobile Aggregator Distribution 59

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 23, 2017

Here digital intercepts of consumer activities are aggregated into large data sets, analysed, and assessed versus market expectations. According to research from JP Morgan, revenues from investment banking peaked in 2009 at $207.7 Today employment in the sector is comparable to levels from 2005-2006 when revenues were also similar.

Technical Review 154

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Software Review IPO 154

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

GameFly filed in 2010 and remains in registration, though 2011 has seen a positive start for VC-backed IPOs with 14 in Q1 2011. Now that Google’s acquisition of ITA is closed, following lenghty FTC review, it would appear Kayak is poised to proceed with their IPO in the coming months. =. Quinstreet priced at $15.00/sh

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 2, 2021

On March 26, SoFi announced that “it will be offering its members (at least those with $3K in their account) the ability to invest in IPOs for companies going public, an investment opportunity that has traditionally been reserved for large institutional investors or ultra-high-net-worth individuals.”

IPO 82

IPO Customer Matching Silicon Valley 82

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process. 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. Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $713M. in net revenue and passes $0.58

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Meanwhile, the rash of early liquidity and recent IPOs — unsatisfying as they were — gave liquidity to thousands of employees at large companies, and a subset of those made very real money. This time around, there has been an explosion at the early stages, and the very late pre-IPO growth stages. Source VentureBeat ]. -

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93

Duct Tape Marketing

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

And I’m guessing one of them certainly is a lot of, “What’s the revenue? So what’s your top-line revenue? The more revenue you have, the more valuable your company is going to be, generally. The more revenue you have, the more valuable your company is going to be, generally. Here’s why.

Entrepreneur 69

Entrepreneur Switzerland Revenue Differentiation 69

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 20, 2016

The pressures of lofty paper valuations, massive burn rates (and the subsequent need for more cash), and unprecedented low levels of IPOs and M&A, have created a complex and unique circumstance which many Unicorn CEOs and investors are ill-prepared to navigate. In Q1 of 2016 there were zero VC-backed technology IPOs.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

on medical device revenues, regardless of profitability delays or cash-flow breakeven. Because device IPOs are rare, and M&A is much tougher, liquidity for investors is hard to find. Moreover, the absence of recent IPOs and public companies benchmarks creates uncertainty for VCs evaluating later investments too.

Startup 303

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 303

Agile VC

MARCH 8, 2012

Tech IPOs Are Back – So Now What? Three of the five “blockbuster” tech IPOs I predicted have happened (LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga) and the biggest of all (Facebook) has filed and will likely go public within the next 90 days. I see several dynamics at work in today’s IPO markets. March 8, 2012.

IPO 100

IPO Silicon Valley Revenue Seed Stage 100

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Save Asia for post-IPO Single instance, multi-tenant, single datacenter - Have only one version of the code in production. Be prepared to cross the desert - SaaS requires R&D and sales expense up front for a multi-year stream of revenue, so it demands enough investment capital to fund 4+ years of runway. Great list!

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2020

This was supposed to be Airbnb's biggest year by many measures, including its IPO, which was one of the most anticipated since the 2008 financial crisis. A complete collapse of revenue that simultaneously affects your employees and your customers, your partners, your investors, everyone all at once and all the news is bad.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Hosting Cofounder Employee 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Designed for large businesses, the channels let a company share several types of documents, brand the channel with their own design elements, and then include display advertising, contest promotions, blog aggregation, social media integration and metrics reporting. The idea seemed to SlideShare to be a natural direction.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 4, 2008

2007 was a turning point for the SaaS industry with the successful IPOs of NetSuite, SuccessFactors, DemandTec, Salary.com, Aprimo and Constant Contact. This introduction was also the opportunity to illustrate the amazing growth of our software and saas portfolio in the past years, with aggregated revenues reaching $1.2B

Software Review 48

Software Review South Korea IPO Portfolio 48