Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

Provide specifics on the customer business model. All startups, including non-profits, need revenue to thrive, such as such as from subscriptions, retail, online, licensing, or services. They want to see revenue to share in the return. Here I recommend a 5-year projection of revenues, expenses, and funding requirements.

Business Plan 423

Business Plan Product Intellectual Property Elevator Pitch 423

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 22, 2013

While you are working away on your business plan, looking for ways to raise capital, finding the right people to hire, etc., But have you ever had the opportunity to pick the brains of founders who created amazingly successful startups and companies like Envato , Backblaze , Simple , or Treehouse ? Things snowballed from there.”.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Founder Startup Bootstrapping 164

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2007

The articles I cited there around finding co-founders suggests that Ben is on the money. ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? What I mentioned in Events and Networking in Los Angeles was that its somewhat hard in LA to count on networking events to build networks. No small task Ben.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Networking Southern California Los Angeles 150

VC Cafe

MARCH 16, 2025

Mention that you do “Consumer tech” as a startup founder and you’d be limiting your funding options to one third of the venture capital funds (in Israel that figure is probably closer to 10%). Until now, consumer tech was perceived as a risky binary investment. But don’t just take it from me.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review B2C Generative AI IPO 78

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2011

It’s “ Loveline for startups ,&# where entrepreneurs get to ask any question about their startup and have me and a rotating co-host tackle the problem and devise constructive next-actions. When should a company should focus on growth only, ignoring the business model and revenue?

Cofounder 226

Cofounder Angel Investor Hosting Software Review 226

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

A version of this article appeared in the Harvard Business Review. The entrepreneur who founded and grew the largest startup in the world to $10 billion in revenue and got fired is someone you have probably never heard of. If you’re following Tesla, you might be interested to know that Sloan wasn’t the founder of GM.

Michigan 301

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 301

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

I'm a great example of someone who wasn't an authority on anything , but built that authority over time to the point where now my company (Smart Bear) is untouchable as the leader in both revenue and ideas in the area of peer code review. But how does authority convert to revenue? The Dream Team. Existing customers.or

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 21, 2020

by Kathryn Petralia, cofounder of Kabbage. Businesses and consumers alike are finding ways to adapt and stay resilient during these unprecedented times. Diversifying revenue streams (35%). It would be difficult to find a small business that didn’t need to adapt their operations in some form due to the pandemic.

Small Business 147

Small Business Cofounder United States Technical Review 147

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 30, 2011

93% of startups that scale prematurely never break the $100k revenue per month threshold. It can also helps diagnose startups for premature scaling by mapping the startups’ progress along 5 core interdependent dimensions: Customers, Product, Team, Business Model and Financials and finds any inconsistencies.

Silicon Valley 189

Silicon Valley Software Review Startup Cofounder 189

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 4, 2012

asks event co-organizer Leo Newball Jr. “No 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.) We won’t judge you one way or another.

Technical Cofounder 152

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Video New York City 152

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Companies horde cash and squeeze the most revenue and margin from the money they use. The first will be commodity businesses that are valued for their ability to execute their current business model. The second class will be firms with a demonstrated ability to continually innovate and reinvent their business models.

Private Equity 330

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 330

SoCal CTO

MARCH 9, 2007

► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? MyShape Article - Analyst Misses the Point Map of VC Investments Open Source Business Model Entreprenuer Network ► February (10) Southern California Tech Central Southern California Tech Central Loading.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? MyShape Article - Analyst Misses the Point Map of VC Investments Open Source Business Model Entreprenuer Network ► February (10) Southern California Tech Central Southern California Tech Central Loading.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles 150

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 17, 2024

Yet, everyone’s got an opinion about how a company measures up, especially the founder. ( The other day, I had a difficult conversation with a founder who clearly felt like VCs were the problem in her fundraising process. I don’t need to remind such a founder how the world is stacked against them. Then, there are nuances.

Technical Review 165

Technical Review Cofounder Startup Equity 165

SoCal CTO

MARCH 13, 2007

► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? MyShape Article - Analyst Misses the Point Map of VC Investments Open Source Business Model Entreprenuer Network ► February (10) Southern California Tech Central Southern California Tech Central Loading.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles Internet 150

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? MyShape Article - Analyst Misses the Point Map of VC Investments Open Source Business Model Entreprenuer Network ► February (10) Southern California Tech Central Southern California Tech Central Loading.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Search Engineer 150

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Depending on the composition of the founding team, you might or might not have near-term holes in certain functions at the exec level – e.g. you’ll most likely need to bring on a CTO/VP of Engineering shortly after the seed round if you don’t have a technical co-founder.

Part-Time VPE 195

Part-Time VPE Seed Stage CTO Hire Forecast 195

View from Seed

JANUARY 24, 2018

The concept our Guilds is simple: We want to bring together small groups of Product and Go-to-Market experts to lend their time to support our portfolio company founders and key operators. Pierre Valade, Co-Founder of Sunrise & Mobile Designer at Microsoft. Brian Balfour, Founder & CEO of Reforge. Product Guild.

Operations 176

Operations Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 176

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 The three drivers of growth for your business model. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

David Teten

AUGUST 20, 2019

A new wave of Revenue-Based Investors are emerging who are using creative investing structures with some of the upside of traditional VC, but some of the downside protection of debt. I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital.

Revenue 60

Revenue Cofounder Founder Venture Capital 60

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2007

► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? MyShape Article - Analyst Misses the Point Map of VC Investments Open Source Business Model Entreprenuer Network ► February (10) Southern California Tech Central Southern California Tech Central Loading.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? The Proof Is In The Revenue.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

From Lean Startup Machine , Lean LA and San Diego Tech Founders , to countless speeches and workshops, I have seen the impact that their leadership has had first hand. Market segments drive your business model. The market segment you pursue is inextricably linked to the other aspects of your business model.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? MyShape Article - Analyst Misses the Point Map of VC Investments Open Source Business Model Entreprenuer Network ► February (10) Southern California Tech Central Southern California Tech Central Loading.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Welcome back to Smart Bear Live … the show were Jason speaks with entrepreneurs looking to improve their businesses. Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

Mike is a no BS guy, has all the attributes I look for in a founder and says things like, openly shares knowledge and opines without a filter including this one, “whoever invented uncapped convertible debt should be spanked!&# Of course, monetization of search became one of the best business models in the history of business.

Semantic 302

Semantic Acquisition Valuation Angel Investor 302

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. II: Who are the major Revenue-Based Investing VCs? IV: Should your new VC fund use Revenue-Based Investing?

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 4, 2024

Our deep dive into the world of email newsletters unveils tactical strategies for transforming subscribers into revenue-generating assets. As the founder of The Clikk, Russell has witnessed the evolving landscape of newsletters, recognizing them as a powerful intersection of content marketing and direct response promotion.

Revenue 96

Revenue Advertising Email ChatGPT 96

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Paring down products, target customers, business models etc takes courage, but it must be done to have any chance of success. Eric, As you touch on, the lean venture has been the basic model employed by entrepreneurs throughout history until the past 12 years or so when venturing became institutionalized.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

Open Source Business Models, speakers for Web 2.0 ► February (2) CTO Founders / Cofounders Part-Time Startup CTO? Where I use LinkedIn: * I definitely use LinkedIn for Specific Requests - Ex. event I did last fall. LinkedIn has been great to keep track of people I know and their current contact information.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

So you’re interested in raising capital from a Revenue-Based Investor VC. A new wave of Revenue-Based Investors (“RBI”) are emerging. I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. Rational burn profile, up to 50% of revenue at close, scaling down.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 4, 2019

At Wildcat, we recommend benchmarking your startup against the four core architectural pillars of the Traction Gap Framework: product , revenue , team and systems. Revenue Architecture. A comprehensive revenue architecture should be designed to enable a startup to generate and monetize awareness, engagement and usage.

Framework 127

Framework Architecture Cleveland Early Stage 127

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2010

He and his co-founder were both PhD’s in applied math who believe they can make some serious inroads on next generation search. Why a business plan is different than a business model. Instead of writing a full-fledged business plan, they had focused on building and testing a business model.

Business Model 332

Business Model Business Plan Customer Cap Table 332

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 4, 2012

asks event co-organizer Leo Newball Jr. “No 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.) We won’t judge you one way or another.

Technical Cofounder 96

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Video New York City 96

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Wanting to create impact is great.

Cofounder 147

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 147

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. From RBI, Flexible VCs borrow the ability to reap meaningful returns without demanding founders build for an exit. Flexible VC 101: Equity Meets Revenue Share.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78