Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2020

He comes from a background in venture capital from inside and outside the Valley, as well as entrepreneurship work with startup efforts around the world. I second his list of top innovation challenges and strategies to capitalize on untapped global startup opportunities: Create new markets rather than disrupt existing ones.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Indonesia Venture Capital Global 312

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. There was nothing suggesting that startups and new ventures needed their own tools and techniques, different from those written about in HBR or taught in business schools.

Technical Review 331

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 331

Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2023

He said that from what he read, the path to building and funding a company seemed to be: 1) come up with an idea, 2) form a team, 3) start testing minimal viable products, 4) raise seed funding, 5) then obtain venture capital. Venture studios create startups by incubating their own ideas or ideas from their partners.

Technical Cofounder 368

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 368

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2021

I like the summary of the competitive reality in a new book, “ Rethinking Competitive Advantage: New Rules for the Digital Age ,” by Ram Charan, who relates a wealth of current experience from global clients: Customers expect a personalized experience. Features, availability, and brand are just the price of entry.

Software Review 355

Software Review Algorithm Global IPO 355

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. It’s the time when you create tremendous value out of nothing.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 283

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2023

and watched as new industries, markets and customers created literally overnight. Simultaneously, new startups are forming, and venture capital is already pouring money into the field at an outstanding rate that will only accelerate the impact of this generation of AI. With ChatGPT I might be seeing one more.

ChatGPT 424

ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Intellectual Property API 424

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 26, 2015

One of the least understood parts of the venture capital industry and venture capital firms is how investment decisions actually get made. The beauty of venture capital is that on any given deal I can only lose one times my money.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Detroit Early Stage Partner 150

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

If you had huge customer growth but just didn’t focus on revenue that’s a different story. And when you’re looking at even earlier-stage companies (as VCs do) you might be even more focused on customer growth than revenue growth. They raised $5 million in venture capital to fund growth.

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2019

As Venture Capital emerged as an industry in the mid 1970’s, investors in venture-funded startups began to give stock options to all their employees. And Mark Suster of Upfront Capital has a great post that summarizes these changes. It’s called Growth capital. On its surface this was a pretty radical idea.

Stock Options 335

Stock Options Stock Vesting Common Stock 335

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened?

Valuation 466

Valuation San Francisco Ratchet Liquidation Preference 466

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 29, 2020

Maintaining your team’s passion and freedom to focus first on innovating for customers are only a couple of the reasons for thinking hard before you seek money from crowdfunding, angel investors, venture capital organizations, or attempt to qualify for a public stock offering.

Bootstrapping 310

Bootstrapping Advisory Board Startup Venture Capital 310

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

If you are approaching a recognized venture capital group, or even an accredited angel investor, a non-disclosure agreement is counter-productive. If that doesn’t get their attention, it probably won’t get any customer attention either, and that’s the best feedback you can get at that stage. Marty Zwilling.

Non-disclosure Agreement 399

Non-disclosure Agreement Technical Review Due Diligence Angel Investor 399

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 4, 2022

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. It’s the time when you create tremendous value out of nothing.

Intellectual Property 261

Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator Bootstrapping 261

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

At our mid-year offsite our partnership at Upfront Ventures was discussing what the future of venture capital and the startup ecosystem looked like. We could talk with customers, meet the entire management team, review financial plans, review customer purchasing cohorts, evaluate the competition, etc.

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

So mostly we just had to listen to customer feedback from founders, VCs and LPs. Venture capital is about backing the leaders of tomorrow who imagine the world as it should be and aren’t constrained by what it is today. Kara is a natural leader and loves taking ownership of tasks and over-performing.

Partner 361

Partner Management Cofounder San Francisco 361

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' They are the signs of a leadership frightened not by external enemies but by their own people. It usually doesn’t end well.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 328

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 25, 2020

The resulting entity will gain complementary skills, economies of scale, new customer sets, and hopefully a larger growth opportunity. According to National Venture Capital Association statistics , only 16% of venture-backed startups recently used this alternative, due to high liability concerns, demanding shareholders, and high costs.

Exit Strategy 376

Exit Strategy Startup Private Equity Equity 376

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan. Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels.

Technical Review 345

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Offshore 345

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2020

They aren’t operating on big bankrolls of venture capital (at least initially), and they don’t have trust funds to fall back on if the business fails. Yes, there are scaling costs like customer service and bandwidth, but they are very different from opening a chain of bookstores. If they don’t come through, who will?

Entrepreneur 205

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Silicon Valley Bandwidth 205

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2020

Finally I realized that venture capital and angel investors are actually humans, despite some views to the contrary. Message delivery must be customized for each investor. As a startup mentor, I’m always amazed that some entrepreneurs seem to be an immediate hit with investors, while others struggle to get any attention at all.

Intellectual Property 316

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Early Stage Venture Capital 316

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

“After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. what you think they might need) by talking to customers and testing every aspect of the product features, pricing, etc.

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 26, 2022

Maintaining your team’s passion and freedom to focus first on innovating for customers are only a couple of the reasons for thinking hard before you seek money from crowdfunding, angel investors, venture capital organizations, or attempt to qualify for a public stock offering.

Cost 267

Cost Bootstrapping Advisory Board Startup 267

VC Cafe

JANUARY 22, 2021

The Alexa Fund also provides up to $200 million in venture capital funding to fuel voice technology innovation. AWS Marketplace Startup Program – the ‘app store’ for B2B startups who are interested to sell their product to AWS customers. Below are the Amazon and AWS outreach programs in no particular order.

Technical Review 174

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital Incubator 174

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. The functions of an early-stage board are pretty obvious and well understood: Providing introductions to customers, biz dev partners, recruits, the press, other investors, etc. In the Early Days.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2019

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. It’s the time when you create tremendous value out of nothing.

Intellectual Property 219

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 219

View from Seed

APRIL 14, 2020

This led to a number of repercussions that most VC’s have lamented during this time, including higher prices, larger rounds, shoddy due diligence, and many companies raising large sums of venture capital that probably aren’t suited to VC funding.

Early Stage 374

Early Stage Software Review Technical Review Due Diligence 374

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 11, 2020

Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan. Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels.

Technical Review 310

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Offshore 310

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2022

Your character, as a business leader, will determine your perceived reputation by peers in business, team members, and customers. Build positive psychological capital to sustain your business. Without a store of this psychological capital, your performance and leadership will wane, and your satisfaction will dwindle.

Leadership 285

Leadership Reputation Venture Capital Global 285

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2019

They have a unique insight about the nature of interactions between customers and service providers I’ve never heard before. If they are correct, they’ve found a unique combination of customers and value proposition that made these customers want to immediately pay and repeatably engage. Why did those fail?

Bandwidth 302

Bandwidth Database Venture Capital Demand 302

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 15, 2022

Finally I realized that venture capital and angel investors are actually humans, despite some views to the contrary. Message delivery must be customized for each investor. As a startup mentor, I’m always amazed that some entrepreneurs seem to be an immediate hit with investors, while others struggle to get any attention at all.

Intellectual Property 278

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Early Stage Venture Capital 278

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

In response, venture capital firms like Sequoia and Andreessen/Horowitz are hiring new partners just to work with their portfolio companies and match them to corporations. A business model is all the parts of a strategy necessary to deliver a product to a customer and make money from it.

Acquisition 334

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 334

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 6, 2014

Finally I realized that Venture Capital and Angel investors are actually humans, despite some views to the contrary. Message delivery must be customized for each investor. As a startup mentor, I’m always amazed that some entrepreneurs seem to be an immediate hit with investors, while others struggle to get any attention at all.

Angel Investor 268

Angel Investor Intellectual Property Entrepreneur Early Stage 268

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Others may not have the experience you want and they fill up a seat that makes retaining founder control more difficult if you ultimately raise large rounds of venture capital in the future. What happens at the A-round of venture capital? With that said, no venture capital firm really wants to replace a CEO.

Venture Capital 236

Venture Capital Startup Angel Investor Silicon Valley 236

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

None of this was law, and nothing in writing required this; this was just how these firms did business to protect their large institutional customers who would buy the stock. This required a repeatable and scalable sales process, which required a professional sales staff and a product stable enough that customers wouldn’t return it.

Founder 281

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 281

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 17, 2018

Payback periods on customer acquisition way more important to you in the near-term. As a founder I'd take healthier revenue (higher GM, faster paybacks) any day of the week  —  @msuster 3/ Stop obsessing about LTV/CAC ratios. Usually a terrible idea as runway extension.

Founder 242

Founder Dilution Software Review Later Stage 242

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2014

Kathryn has been the founding VP of Marketing of Oracle , a successful recruiter, a world class Venture Capitalist, a co-founder of a Venture Capital firm, a great board member, one of my mentors and most importantly a wonderful friend. The answer of course, was Venture Capital, but that was not in the cards—as yet.

Venture Capital 335

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Chicago Cofounder 335