Up and Running

AUGUST 18, 2014

In comparison to traditional business ventures, startups are expected to grow rapidly, at a rate of between 5% and 7% per week in their initial stage – Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator. As the cofounder of Y-Combinator – an American seed fund accelerator – he’s a great source of information.

Small Business 154

Small Business Exit Strategy Cofounder Angel Investor 154

VC Cafe

MARCH 11, 2010

T aking a company through an initial public offering (IPO) is not an easy task. It’s also an uncertain exit for the entrepreneurs, as they are typically restricted to sell any of their stock in the first 180 days following the IPO, and even then they can sell no more than 1% of stock a month. million in 2009. percent). —

IPO 68

IPO SEC Initial Public Offering Stock 68

David Teten

MARCH 5, 2021

(co-written with Katherine Boe Heuck , a MBA candidate at MIT Sloan (class of 2022); past intern at Versatile VC ; and a current intern at Metaprop NYC.). All of the 40 companies’ 92 founders were male. Of the 19 Western Europe/Israel-based founders, all were white. Of the 43 U.S.-based Of course, this dataset is incomplete.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Technical Review 78

ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

Clavier began his presentation at the beginning of a company's lifecycle, asking how many co-founders a startup ought to have. If you like this kind of advice, check out my coverage of a talk by Paul Palmieri, Co-Founder and CEO of mobile advertising service Millennial Media, titled " Investing in Your Influencers. ".

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

This slinging of whatever against the wall to see what sticks does not a market make, is to me a sign of too much capital in the wrong hands, and it's already the most over invested area in recent years- in both human and financial capital- particularly relative to revenue. Otherwise it's a great idea.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 25, 2023

Growing Your Audience (And Your Revenue) With A Book written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Marketing Podcast with Matt Briel In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I interview Matt Briel. Questions I ask Matt Briel: [1:29] Could you tell us about the origin story of Lulu and how did it come to be? [2:25]

Audience 98

Audience Revenue Distribution Differentiation 98

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Many assume it was a cakewalk, based on the success LinkedIn has enjoyed over time and the current stature of our founder/CEO Reid Hoffman (now Chairman). Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). Yes… he was a very successful PayPal exec and previously co-founder & VP Product of SocialNet.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

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

View from Seed

OCTOBER 11, 2022

Stephanie is someone that we have known for almost a decade and have respected deeply as a co-investor and collaborator at Uncork. Through all of this, what has been obvious is her hunger to serve founders and desire to work with entrepreneurs to bring about the kind of world changing impact we seek to be a part of at NextView.

Cofounder 156

Cofounder San Francisco Portfolio Limited Partner 156

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Instead, we do everything possible to validate the founders belief. Most people cant sustain more than a few of these iterations, and the founders rarely get to be involved in the later tries. In order to do this, we have our customer development team work hard to find a market, any market, for the product as currently specified.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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

ConversionXL

AUGUST 13, 2019

It’s common for companies to put a revenue figure on what it means to be successful in SaaS. But only 400 software companies have made it to the $500M revenue mark. Here are seven insights on SaaS metrics from successful founders and consultants. . Ahrefs decided to track only monthly revenue growth for their product.

Metrics 117

Metrics SQL Retention Churn Rate 117

View from Seed

JULY 24, 2015

The invite-only event was attended by 300 of the area’s best tech leaders, founders, product managers, designers, developers, investors, engineers, salesmen and women, and more, all of whom are hard at work in consumer tech. The other pillar company CEO to speak closed the Summit — Niraj Shah, Co-founder and CEO of Wayfair: .

Boston 120

Boston Cofounder B2C PR 120

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process. Even for those who don’t care to dive into the numbers, it’s worth a quick glance because co-founder/CEO Andrew Mason wrote a letter which forms the preamble of the full document. Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $713M.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. Small batches also help deliver value earlier in the project. February 25, 2009 8:12 PM Anonymoussaid. Small is beautiful.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 15, 2017

Orcam was created by the founders of Mobileye (NYSE: MBLY and one of Israel’s largest IPOs ), Prof. Co-founders Ami Daniel and Matan Peled both served as naval officers. Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram (great interview with them here ). This interview with Ami sheds more light on the company.

Artificial Inteligence 122

Artificial Inteligence Israel Technical Review Startup 122

YoungUpstarts

MAY 6, 2019

You are looking for cofounders that can help you build a product. You have finally found a cofounder that can take care of the startup. How much revenue are you generating on an annual basis? These partnerships need to bring in more revenue. There is a complete process to go for an IPO. cases you will fail.

Startup 113

Startup Technical Cofounder Merger Early Stage 113

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. The first version of the 3D IMVU client took about six months to build, and as the founders iterated towards a compelling user experience, the user base grew monthly thereafter. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. Naturally, they had just raised money, and their new investors were understandably pissed.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

For startups that are tempted to mimic this behavior, I suggest reading the great account of the early Apple in Founders at Work.) Not even if its generating revenue. But that would be a disaster for Apple, so whatever testing they do has to happen in secret and behind closed doors. Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

online.wsj.com

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

If failure is defined as failing to see the projected return on investment—say, a specific revenue growth rate or date to break even on cash flow—then more than 95% of start-ups fail, based on Mr. Ghoshs research. Consider Daniel Dreymann, a founder of Goodmail Systems Inc., Less than 1% are currently in IPO registration.

Venture Capital 107

Venture Capital Software Review Rhode Island North Dakota 107

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

M&A experience (Morgan Stanley and later co-headed M&A for Barry Diller at IAC). Helped merge company with Seedling – on track to do $20 million combined revenue in 2015 – will now become Chairman). billion IPO), Envestnet (Chicago, $1.25 Investment experience (5 years a VC at Battery Ventures).

Partner 408

Partner Las Vegas Los Angeles Baltimore 408

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

There are a whole range of valid reasons why non-developers would want to dictate the production release schedule (Seasonal/timing issues, marketing, fulfillment concerns, documentation/training, revenue controls, legal/regulatory. " Actually this process works really well in a financial company.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. Some companies and founders refuse to serve existing customers, and are always lurching from one great idea to the next.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

we had no revenue. As a result, we knew that our pitch would need to steer into investors’ biggest concern: the lack of revenue. Instead, our strategy was to steer immediately into the revenue question because that was the top concern of investors in 2004. We made the mistake of listing three different revenue streams.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Viral Revenue Networking 111

Seeing Both Sides

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

The CEOs on the panel were (from left to right): Michael Simon, CEO/founder of LogMeIn (2009 IPO) . Scott Griffith, CEO ZipCar (2010 IPO). Gail Goodman, CEO Constant Contact (2007 IPO). Niraj Shah, CEO/cofounder of Wayfair ($500m revenue). Colin Angle, CEO/cofounder of iRobot (2005 IPO).

Technical Cofounder 45

Technical Cofounder Cofounder IPO Boston 45

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Now, Andrew’s excellent piece that I quoted from above correctly diagnoses two situations where consumer internet companies often get in trouble: They focus too much on short-term revenue, getting caught in a local maximum via constant optimization. Founders struggle with this question. Successful startups don’t.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

www.tangosource.com

MARCH 8, 2012

You are here: Blog > Finding a technical co-founder: Youâ??re Finding a technical co-founder: Youâ??re As a potential technical co-founder, thereâ??s re on your own, with a non technical co-founder just waiting for things to happen. re doing it wrong. re doing it wrong. By Eric Siegfried.

Cofounder 48

Cofounder Founder SEO LLC 48

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

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Lets return to our team thats failing to hit their targets. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Airbnb founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia had difficulty securing funding, so they launched a mini project to build some funds and catch investors' attention. Using this capital , the founders launched and enjoyed exponential growth in their first year, with 10K users and thousands of listings. Photo Credit: Jack Underwood.

Entrepreneur 124

Entrepreneur Bankruptcy Southern California South Africa 124

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

And since a startup thatsucceeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies gettingrich is doable too. A lot ofwould-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is theinitial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute.Venture capitalists know better. Ideally you want between two and four founders.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We just add up the revenue we've made in the past few months from Win98 users, and compare to the pain that Win98 has caused as identified in 5Ys. It's so old and so buggy that it's a real pain to ship 3D software on it. So far, it's been a net win to keep supporting it. Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

For starters let me use “CEO” as a proxy to include her “inner circle” which might mean co-founders or might just mean senior execs of the business. The Mind of the Founder. A cautious person wouldn’t try to pry people out of Twitter right before their IPO to” join my cause!!”

Startup 417

Startup Dilution San Diego Stock Options 417

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

Jack Tankersley, a long time mentor of mine, co-founder of Centennial Funds, and co-founder of Meritage Funds, wrote me a very long response. Many people used it as justification for stuff and there were very few critical responses that dug deeper on the history. This isn’t correct either. A good example is Symantec.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70