Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Three months in, the burn is now at $70k/month. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. Heads down on product, they say. Had the company created a board and run it properly, they would have ratified a budget, reviewed compensation plans, and agreed on spending levels during early product development.

Burn Rate 153

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 153

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. A seed-stage mobile startup’s housekeeping section might look something like this: Section 3: Core Metrics.

Seed Stage 331

Seed Stage Cap Table Metrics Burn Rate 331

VC Adventure

MARCH 17, 2022

With the markets down significantly, financings (at least at the later stages) slowing down, and inflation and interest rates on the rise, perhaps now is a good time to talk about your burn rate. Your underlying business metrics should.

Balance Sheet 92

Balance Sheet Burn Rate Metrics Valuation 92

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 10, 2009

So first and foremost, I let him know that while it was nice to have a well thought out spreadsheet, that the most important thing was getting the product developed and the right team in place. While many SAAS companies may collect cash monthly or quarterly, some collect annual fees by offering discounts by paying upfront.

Churn Rate 112

Churn Rate Burn Rate Startup Metrics 112

BeyondVC

DECEMBER 9, 2009

  So first and foremost, I let him know that while it was nice to have a well thought out spreadsheet, that the most important thing was getting the product developed and the right team in place.    Another area that is quite important is churn rate.    The remainder would go into deferred revenue. 

Churn Rate 78

Churn Rate Burn Rate Startup Metrics 78

The Equity Kicker

JULY 16, 2015

Companies with lots of cash sometimes add people more quickly, but that drives the burn rate up, often without a compensating increase in the chance of success. In the first couple of months the focus should be on making sure the idea is valid, requiring the following activities: Development of the company vision and strategy.

eCommerce 60

eCommerce Burn Rate Early Stage Hiring 60

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2020

It’s got a big burn rate, it’s too big to pivot, and it goes bust. So where we used to talk about Eric Ries’ concept of Minimum Viable Products, we now talk about Minimum Lovable Products: consumers have got to love a product enough to move away from their current alternative. And everyone’s lost a lot of money.

Partner 68

Partner Early Stage Portfolio Metrics 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

The product didnt convert well enough, the mainstream customers we were driving werent ready for the concept, and the event fed expectations about how successful the product was going to be that turned out to be hyper-inflated. Why do startups synchronize marketing launch and product launch?

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

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). Were talking PayPal -sized variations. Work in small batches.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. As far as I know, there are no products that are immune from the technology life cycle adoption curve.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150