Remove Cost Remove IPO Remove Revenue Remove Viral
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The unprofitable SaaS business model trap

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

Marketo filed for IPO with impressive 80% year-over-year growth in 2012, with almost $60m in revenue. of revenue, force-feeding sales pipelines with an unprofitable product. I know the argument: The pay-back period on sales, marketing, and up-start costs is long, but there’s a profitable result at the end of the tunnel.

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New Rules for the New Internet Bubble

Steve Blank

Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability. VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter.

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10 Key Business Plan Elements Not In A Product Spec

Startup Professionals Musings

For example, “We just patented a new battery technology that will cut your smartphone charge time and cost in half.” If possible, quantify these in non-technical business terms, such as dollars saved or replacement costs over time. They want to see revenue to share in the return. Use non-fuzzy terms to quantify customer value.

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Cracking The Code: New SaaS 13 Index: Welcome to LogMeIn.

Cracking the Code

While poised with a limited number of transactions this year, the world of public Cloud Computing and SaaS companies has been marked by two events in the past few months: the acquisition of Omniture by Adobe and the high profile IPO of LogMeIn, a leading provider of PC remote access and support with a very interesting freemium model.

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Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

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.

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What Do I Do Now? The Startup Lifecycle

Steve Blank

We’re at 70 people, and we’ll do $40 million in revenue this year and should get to cash flow breakeven this quarter. ” You’ll realize you’re ready to exit the Search step when you have customer validation: You’ve found a sales channel that matches how the customer wants to buy and the costs of using that channel are understood.

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It’s Morning in Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

Cloud computing and the open source movements have brought down the costs of starting a company by more than 90%. They need a combination of capital and experience to separate from the rest of the pack – the low cost of starting a business means it is even more vital to become the market leader more quickly. The Exit Problem.