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!&# This is an interview you’re not going to want to miss, I promise. Contest details here :

Semantic 302

Semantic Acquisition Valuation Angel Investor 302

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

Kayak was started here in my backyard of Boston… co-founder & CTO Paul English and the product/engineering team is based here in Concord MA. Co-founder & CEO Steve Hafner and the business team are based in Norwalk, CT. Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $170 million. 2010 Net Income: $8 million.

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

million at a $15 million pre-money valuation. My co-founder and other management team members wanted us to hold off and see whether we could get the deal done at a higher price. Morgan Stanley had proposed a higher valuation to let them in. million at a $15 million pre-money valuation. Yes, this was stupid.

Technical Review 301

Technical Review Term Sheet Due Diligence Venture Capital 301

Hunter Walker

DECEMBER 13, 2020

If things are going great, you still may get a lower valuation or smaller round. It doesn’t matter what industry, what product, what revenue model, what stage of development. Can your lack of interest or skill in “selling” be counter-balanced by a cofounder or team that’s great at it? How does this harm occur? Yes and No.

Technical Cofounder 151

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Startup Matching 151

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2018

Those that do it right also have the unprecedented opportunity to join the elite ranks of 250 unicorns (relatively new companies with a current valuation of over $1 billion). Co-mingling personal and business funds and accounts creates legal risk and tax liability, and makes your efforts look like a hobby.

Technical Cofounder 184

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Silicon Valley LLC 184

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

The past year was a wild ride for startups and founders, giving a whole new meaning to the ”rollercoaster” aspect of being an entrepreneur. Patrick Collison , self-made billionaire founder of Stripe. Bill Gates , founder of Microsoft. ValuatIon should be a function of value, not ego. Our goals, their goals.

Founder 187

Founder Startup Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 187

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Companies horde cash and squeeze the most revenue and margin from the money they use. Look at the valuations of companies like Tesla, Illumina, and Twitter. The companies that can show “startup-like” growth rates of 50% plus per year will get stratospheric market valuations. This never ends well.

Private Equity 330

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 330

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

5 great viral marketing campaigns (and what small businesses can learn from them!) - crowdSPRING Blog , September 13, 2010 At crowdSPRING we talk a great deal about how we can leverage our limited marketing resources to drive traffic and revenues and build strong community. How To Pick A Co-Founder , by Naval Ravikant (Venture Hacks).

Technology 191

Technology Product San Francisco CTO Hire 191

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. Revenue-Based Investing (“RBI”) is a new form of VC financing, distinct from the preferred equity structure most VCs use.

Revenue 60

Revenue Cofounder Founder Venture Capital 60

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

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

How else can you explain this headline matching a story about a professional social network still trying to explore revenues raising $17mm on an $80mm valuation? Did I mention it only took the founder a month? venture capitalists are now asking tougher questions about start-ups' revenue and profits.". Is this an opinion?

Venture Capital 130

Venture Capital Marketing Term Sheet Software Review 130

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 27, 2013

Quoting an inflated valuation. . When your valuation is too high, investors think you are either greedy or you don’t know what you are doing. In both cases, a high valuation can end a conversation. If you’ve accomplished very little and are still a few years away from revenue, VCs aren’t going to invest in your deal.

Venture Capital 180

Venture Capital Technical Cofounder Milwaukee Valuation 180

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 25, 2017

They come at the early stage while a startup has no revenue or valuation, so professional investors are hard to find. Provides networking with cofounders and strategic partners. In today’s fast moving market, the basic product development cost and time are critical to survival.

Technical Cofounder 153

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Wiki Cofounder 153

Lightspeed Venture Partners

OCTOBER 7, 2012

The founders were very sympathetic; a man, laid off from his job, and his very pregnant wife, who sold their house and investing $150k into the business and are working hard to make a go of it. At this point, the very pregnant cofounder was weeping. They won a design award at a trade show, but have no revenue and no orders.

Technical Review 110

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 110

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 11, 2023

Analysts perform a valuation of the company in question before the beginning of any round of funding. The management of a company, its established track record, the size of the market, and the level of risk all play a role in determining a company’s valuation. What is the Evaluation of the Funding?

Seed Stage 147

Seed Stage Technical Review Early Stage Due Diligence 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

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2015

That’s why I recommend that they find a co-founder who loves business challenges, including marketing and finance. Thus it’s a waste of time for most entrepreneurs to be looking for investors until they have a product and some customer revenue. Most founders bootstrap product development.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Intellectual Property Cofounder Bootstrapping 120

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 16, 2024

Sierra AI , founded by Bret Taylor (former co-CEO of Salesforce, CTO of Facebook and current chairman of OpenAI) is currently raising hundreds of millions of dollars at $4 billion valuation, just a year or so from launch after unlocking AI voice agents for companies. billion to re-hire the founders of Character.ai

Vertical 170

Vertical Generative AI B2C CTO Hire 170

Gust

JULY 23, 2014

So even if my own mother asked me to meet with you, and you were pitching me a biotech opportunity for a $10 million investment at a $90 million valuation, I might take the meeting, but it wouldn’t be particularly useful for either of us. Now comes the really tricky part: getting me to review all that stuff you just neatly uploaded.

Angel Investor 153

Angel Investor Elevator Pitch Pre-Money Valuation Technical Review 153

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 22, 2018

by Thomas Smale, founder of FE International. What if there was somewhere you could go where you can be surrounded by founders just like you? Or where you can network with established, successful founders and investors? Or where you can network with established, successful founders and investors? Here are the top 10: 1.

Las Vegas 124

Las Vegas Software Review Affiliate Cofounder 124

Lightspeed Venture Partners

OCTOBER 29, 2012

The company sought to raise $125,000 for 25% of the comapny, implying a $375,000 pre money valuation. Unsurprisingly, all the sharks passed, based on market size and valuation expectations. The founder, Shelton Wilder (in the middle below), sought to raise $60,000 for 20% of the company to build inventory.

Pre-Money Valuation 97

Pre-Money Valuation Offshore Valuation Cofounder 97

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

Revolution is a “stage agnostic&# fund (means they invest early or late) funded entirely by Steve Case , the founder of AOL and co-founded by two other individuals, Tige Savage (yes, pronounced like the golfer, minus the “r&# ) and Donn Davis. And we also talked about what it’s like to work with Steve Case.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

ReadWriteStart

MAY 30, 2022

While investors can seem like a solution to countless problems you encounter as a founder, don’t be too hasty to start eating from their hands. Your employees and cofounders deserve their stakes since they’ve helped you scale to an exit. If you’re in a rush to sell, will your investors allow you to accept less than your valuation? .

Bootstrapping 147

Bootstrapping Startup Equity Silicon Valley 147

Ben's Blog

APRIL 28, 2010

In this post, I describe why we prefer to fund companies whose founder will run the company as its CEO. As we looked at the history of great technology companies, we discovered that founders ran an overwhelming majority of them for a very long time, including: Acer—Stan Shih. Siebel—Tom Siebel. Sony—Akio Morita. Sun—Scott McNeely.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 78

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 24, 2011

Our co-host for the program was TiE Midwest, based in Chicago. Additional work in figuring out the precise go-to-market consumer, academic institution, or enterprise - each is a different business), and consequent business model and pricing model will help enhance the company's valuation. You can register for the next roundtable here.

Illinois 114

Illinois Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Chicago 114

VC Cafe

JUNE 29, 2012

When I met Instagram, Kevin (the founder) had great numbers, but he wasn’t even thinking about revenue. I invested in a company called Yobongo – the founder blew me away, he ended up selling his company and I made most of my money back. Lots of founders are college dropouts. The top 10-15 we manually review.

Developer 103

Developer Silicon Valley Software Review Mexico 103

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

When we pivoted from fabulis to Fab, we pivoted towards building a business around the unique tastemaker talents of one of our founders, Bradford Shellhammer. Have amazing co-founders who are better at what they do than you could ever be. Founders need to personally own something big themselves. It’s that important.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2015

I had lunch last week with Tom, the CEO of a startup that was quickly becoming a large company – last year’s revenue was $40M, this year likely to be $80M maybe even $100 million in ad revenue. to drive traffic to their site, which they then turned into ad revenue.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Salary Early Stage Software Review 120

BeyondVC

APRIL 3, 2006

Kinnernet is a techie geek camp organized and run by Yossi Vardi (cofounder of ICQ). One of the discussion groups that I led with Simon Levene (heads up Corp Dev in Europe for Yahoo and Yair Goldfinger (founder and CTO of ICQ and Dotomi) was titled "Are Internet VCs Dead."

Technical Cofounder 60

Technical Cofounder CTO Hire Fractional CTO Israel 60

BeyondVC

APRIL 3, 2006

Kinnernet is a techie geek camp organized and run by Yossi Vardi (cofounder of ICQ). One of the discussion groups that I led with Simon Levene (heads up Corp Dev in Europe for Yahoo and Yair Goldfinger (founder and CTO of ICQ and Dotomi) was titled "Are Internet VCs Dead."

Technical Cofounder 60

Technical Cofounder CTO Hire Fractional CTO Israel 60

Up and Running

AUGUST 19, 2014

I have pitched to hundreds of angel investors over the years as a result of co-founding two tech companies and raising just shy of $1M in angel capital. I’m impressed when entrepreneurs know their numbers inside and out and are realistic about their valuations. My favorite part of pitching to them was the due diligence process.

Angel Investor 161

Angel Investor Technical Review Due Diligence Startup 161

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

The Founders Lie About Comfort Zones – [link]. Investors Need to Lose Their Egos and Founders Need to Gain Some Confidence – [link]. 10 adjustments to make when working for a Big Co. … Checking In on Foursquare’s Valuation – [link]. Red All Over: Newspaper Revenues Fall In Q3 – [link].

Social Media 100

Social Media Small Business Central African Republic Design 100

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 7, 2015

Companies were being bought (and valued) at 10x forward revenue only to be valued at between 0.5x revenue several years later. We were bought for a more reasonable 1x revenue (and about 4x pre-tax income) when the value of the AmeriData stock, options, and cash we took out were factored in. I’d argue the 0.5x

Stock Options 70

Stock Options Cofounder Revenue Hosting 70

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

They come at the early stage while a startup has no revenue or valuation, so professional investors are hard to find. Network with potential cofounders and strategic partners. Here are some key positives from an entrepreneur perspective: Shorten the time and cost from idea to prototype.

Startup 397

Startup Cofounder Incubator California 397

Up and Running

MAY 15, 2019

Word of mouth is no substitute for market research , says Ben Price, co-founder of Hard Knocks Brewing, a small brewpub in its second year of operation. Co-founders Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge leased their startup system from a family running a German restaurant out of a former brewpub. Metrics: Know your numbers.

Oregon 24

Oregon Jordan Software Review Distribution 24

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

What is it, and how should founders think about it? note: We’d like to be extra clear that founders should not take on venture debt if they don’t have 100% visibility into repaying the loan, as banks that need to recoup their loan my force the company or you as the guarantor into liquidation or bankruptcy. Business model?

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

It goes like this, “If your next round investor can see how fast you’re scaling then you can raise money based on your user traction and your valuation can hit the sky. The company with no revenue and a $150k burn rate that raised $2.5 I often wonder why they didn’t find a way to bring in some revenue to cover costs.

Burn Rate 412

Burn Rate Dilution Revenue Valuation 412