Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

They had wasted a lot of money because they had raised a lot of money and therefore hired a large staff. I just knew that our sales sucked wind and we were burning through tons of cash. I advocated LOUDLY at the board that we needed to cut our burn rate. A new and experiened CEO was brought in and cleared house.

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Cofounder Sales 306

Transformify

AUGUST 27, 2017

All of the above is true, but it is also true that many startups have failed because they hired too early, too fast, or fired too late. Many of the points below can be found among the best hiring practices for startups and there is nothing wrong with them in general. Then the hiring begins. Hire full-time employees.

Hiring 64

Hiring Software Review Burn Rate Startup 64

YoungUpstarts

MAY 19, 2016

by Gadiel Morantes , chief revenue officer at Early Growth Financial Services. Use burn rate as an example. If you don’t understand how much money your company is burning through each month, how can you expect to intelligently talk about your fiscal health? A Jenga tower is a precariously built one. Speaking of which….

Technical Review 124

Technical Review Burn Rate IP Intellectual Property 124

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 10, 2016

From my perspective as an investor, I recommend that every founder needs to know the answers to these questions, be open and honest in answering them thoughtfully, and without making excuses: What is the current runway and burn rate? Look for examples of similar companies and revenue multiples achieved from acquirers.

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Burn Rate Technical Review Intellectual Property 120

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 8, 2015

From my perspective as an investor, I recommend that every founder needs to know the answers to these questions, be open and honest in answering them thoughtfully, and without making excuses: What is the current runway and burn rate? Look for examples of similar companies and revenue multiples achieved from acquirers.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Due Diligence Sweat Equity Burn Rate 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

The questions every startup or small business CEO needs to ask now are: What’s my Burn Rate and Runway? Burn Rate and Runway. To answer the first question, take stock of your current gross burn rate i.e. how much cash are you spending each month. What does your new business model look like? How do you know?

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

Companies with less than $2 million in revenue were asking for $50-60 million valuations and getting them. Companies raised too much money in 2005-08 and had high burn rates. When I first got into the industry it was 2007. Valuations were enormous relative to progress in companies. was still a term being bandied about.

Stock 305

Stock Technical Review Marketing Greece 305

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 24, 2014

Benchmarking SaaS Startup Efficiency with Revenue per Employee Metrics | by @ttunguz – crowdspring.co/1sRVdjm. What is the Right Burn Rate at a Startup Company? | Hire the Right Type of VP Marketing ?Or How to Ruin Your Company with One Bad Process | by @bhorowitz – crowdspring.co/11FYS9R. 1vOh10w.

Social Media 95

Social Media Small Business Design Media 95

crowdSPRING Blog

OCTOBER 10, 2014

. “the people you fire are more important to your [company''s] culture than the people you hire.” Refocusing the Startup Burn Rate Debate | OpenView Blog – crowdspring.co/1n8paLq. 5 Things I Learned Analyzing Buffer’s Revenue Dashboard | Ivan Kreimer – crowdspring.co/1xfTwMG. 1ptyfds.

Social Media 97

Social Media Small Business Design Media 97

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 1, 2010

If they *all* turn you down, then I strongly advocate that you either try to get revenues to prove them wrong, bootstrap user traction, spend your own cash, go with friends/family, or maybe, just maybe, take another look at your model. That being said, is low burn rate really what you should be optimizing for?

New York City 114

New York City New York Startup Burn Rate 114

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) The Revenue Plan – The Third Fatal Assumption. Notice that the traditional product introduction model leads to a product launch and the execution of a revenue plan. Albert Einstein. Ritualized Crises.

Burn Rate 252

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 252

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). The key is to be able to refute as many major hypotheses as you can.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business 6 months. If you don’t have a strong balance sheet and can’t hire more people that’s fine — but understand this may lead to slower growth.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

View from Seed

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Examples of housekeeping include the following list, though not every item will appear every time: Finance: Cash out date, burn rate, 409A valuation, cap table, common/preferred stock dashboard. Team: Hires, fires, departures, responsibility changes, major promotions, and your org chart. The seed stage is all about traction.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Investors check your burn rate to assess your efficiency, and project your remaining runway before you run out of money and into a brick wall. It doesn’t take a financial genius to recognize that you need to keep your burn rate low. Cash flow out equates to burn rate, and the runway depends on your reserves.

Burn Rate 223

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

But like many companies over the past five years it hired aggressively and probably had some degree of straying off of a core strategy and some amount of excess jobs relative to its current revenue forecasts and opportunities. ” It goes like this: What is your net burn rate? What is your cash balance?

Burn Rate 150

Burn Rate San Francisco Private Equity LP 150

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2020

Investors check your burn rate to assess your efficiency, and project your remaining runway before you run out of money and into a brick wall. It doesn’t take a financial genius to recognize that you need to keep your burn rate low. Cash flow out equates to burn rate, and the runway depends on your reserves.

Burn Rate 310

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Salary Angel Investor 310

K9 Ventures

MAY 28, 2015

At K9 we invest in companies which have a clear/direct revenue model and typically don’t invest in companies that follow the Ubiquity first Revenue Later (URL) revenue model made famous by Eric Schmidt in 2007. I call this Revenue Development and have written about it before. >$0/month.

Revenue 48

Revenue Startup Burn Rate Cofounder 48

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 30, 2020

Many fail because they fail to keep their burn rate in check and then run out of investors who are willing to fund their operations. They treat their startup’s burn rate like it’s etched in stone. That money would be better spent on creating products and services that drive revenue, however.

Burn Rate 107

Burn Rate Management Startup Early Stage 107

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Investors check your burn rate to assess your efficiency, and project your remaining runway before you run out of money and into a brick wall. It doesn’t take a financial genius to recognize that you need to keep your burn rate low. Cashflow out equates to burn rate, and the runway depends on your reserves.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 14, 2023

Investors check your burn rate to assess your efficiency, and project your remaining runway before you run out of money and into a brick wall. It doesn’t take a financial genius to recognize that you need to keep your burn rate low. Cash flow out equates to burn rate, and the runway depends on your reserves.

Burn Rate 258

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Management Salary 258

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 9, 2020

If your business is growing and you decide to expand into a new location or hire several new employees, you may have negative cash flow until your new location or new employees can start bringing in new revenue. When you have negative cash flow, you should also keep track of your burn rate and runway.

Burn Rate 83

Burn Rate Forecast Cash Position Employee 83

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 6, 2006

Rather than go into a step-by-step walkthrough of this process, I thought it would be more helpful if I share with you the number one mistake I see made year in and year out – companies putting together plans and revenue targets which are unattainable. What this does is speed up cash burn without delivering the desired results.

Burn Rate 79

Burn Rate Cloud Hiring Sales 79

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 6, 2006

Rather than go into a step-by-step walkthrough of this process, I thought it would be more helpful if I share with you the number one mistake I see made year in and year out – companies putting together plans and revenue targets which are unattainable. What this does is speed up cash burn without delivering the desired results.

Burn Rate 78

Burn Rate Cloud Hiring Sales 78

The Next Web

JUNE 15, 2015

Take Airbnb’s expansion into Europe as an example, a market that now generates over half of the company’s revenue. Airbnb’s experience shows how local engagement strategies such as these do not have to increase a startup’s burn rate considerably. Talent-Driven Expansion.

Global 60

Global Burn Rate Startup CPA 60

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Let’s take your revenue line. If you’re a consumer destination the revenue and COGS lines should tell me about how big your funnel is, how you fill the top end of the pipe and what your conversion rates will be. How many people will you hire in the first 24 months and in which sequence. Here’s why.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Hippoland

DECEMBER 18, 2016

Raised $500k-$1.5M : In this range, you probably have a slightly bigger team – say 4-8 people, and some of these later hires are going to be commanding closer to market-rate salaries. On the flip side, you may be generating some revenues to offset costs. You are likely paying yourself $75k-$125k at this point.

Las Vegas 48

Las Vegas Salary Burn Rate San Francisco 48

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

You have been at five startups, you had an exit at your last company where you were the Chief Revenue Officer. And for every time I’ve felt hugely stressed that our burn rate was getting too high, and I didn’t know who else was going to fund the company, and I’m all in on this company, right?”

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Startup San Diego 337

Hearpreneur

JULY 7, 2019

I see companies transitioning to hiring more freelancers and remote workers. When they outsource they are hiring professionals for a certain number of hours per month and not 40 hours per week in addition to benefits, workers comp, etc. We want every hire to be for life, and the way we treat employees makes them want to stay.

Entrepreneur 102

Entrepreneur Distribution Employee Arizona 102

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

He just hired Meg Whitman. Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. Startups wrote business plans, generated expansive 5-year forecasts and executed (hired, spent and built) to the plan.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Investors check your burn rate to assess your efficiency, and project your remaining runway before you run out of money and into a brick wall. It doesn’t take a financial genius to recognize that you need to keep your burn rate low. Cash flow out equates to burn rate, and the runway depends on your reserves.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

In fact, they were screaming at them to dramatically reduce their burn rates. In a capital scarce environment following the Dot Com crash, startups needed to do more with less and survive long enough to generate revenue. It was a nuclear winter for startup capital.” ” Steve Blank, “Is the lean startup dead?”

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Instead of a Sales team and organized to sell with a consistent and successful sales roadmap generating revenue, it is a disorganized and unhappy organization burning lots of cash. Because the company based its headcount and expenses on the expectation that the Sales organization will bring in revenue according to plan.

Customer Development 233

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 233

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

You would think that would be enough to get wrong, but entrepreneurs and investors compound this problem by assuming that all startups grow and scale by executing the Revenue Plan. All discussion focused on “missing the revenue plan.”. Revenue Plan Needs to Match Market Type. They don’t. What went wrong?

Revenue 232

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 232

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. The same thing happened to many Internet stocks.

IPO 40

IPO Term Sheet Silicon Valley Valuation 40

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

There never has to be atime when you have no revenues. For example, a seed firmshould be able to give advice about how to approach VCs, which VCsobviously dont need to do; whereas VCs should be able to giveadvice about how to hire an "executive team," which is not an issuein the seed stage. So theyre going to raise $200,000.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

spent $20 million to get back to the same revenue that I had when I was CEO. created a vastly higher cost structure; I had 80 people mostly on base salaries under $100,000 and was bringing in revenue at the rate of $20 million annually. .”). Post-Mortem Title : My eHarmony for Hiring Failure. During this year they.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79