The Equity Kicker

MARCH 28, 2013

Moreover, their star is rising, according to Forbes a year ago eMarketer was forecasting Twitter’s 2014 revenues at $540m, 43% less than the $950m they are now forecasting. Over half of ad revenues are on mobile and an IPO could come next year. 100% year-on-year growth for a business of this scale is impressive.

Forecast 131

Forecast Revenue IPO Advertising 131

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Because five whys kept turning up a few key metrics that were hard to set static thresholds for, we even had a dynamic prediction algorithm that would make forecasts based on past data, and fire alerts if the metric ever went out of its normal bounds. You can even read a cool paper one of our engineers wrote on this approach).

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 13, 2020

In that context, I offer the following financial projection strategies, from my own experience: Forecast a business that has plenty of room to grow quickly. They prefer a liquidity event such as an IPO or an acquisition by an existing large industry player, with a valuation at that time of five multiples or more of your projected revenues.

Liquidity Event 308

Liquidity Event Forecast Exit Strategy Bootstrapping 308

www.entrepreneur.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Money Money Home Financing Taxes Accounting Basics Personal Finance Money Management Payments & Collections IPOs and DPOs Will Crazy Market Moves Kill IPOs and Slash VC Investment? Human Resources Play Video Shark Tanks Barbara Corcoran on Bootstrapping a Growing a Business (Video). Financing Some Jobs Act Proposals Make Headway.

Sweat Equity 55

Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

IPOs and M&A have returned – and with them the investment bankers have staged a rebound. There have been a number of high profile tech IPO s in the recent months including companies such as OpenTable and more recently LogMeIn. – IPO-able in any normal market. but I’ll save that for post 3/3).

IPO 255

IPO Investment Bankers Venture Capital Marketing 255

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 13, 2011

Financial forecast and metrics. Going public” (IPO) is another alternative, but not common. The most credible sizing approach is to do your financial model first with the volume, cost, and pricing parameters you want. See where your cashflow bottoms out. Show breakeven and growth assumptions.

Business Plan 290

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 290

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

As an investor myself, I look for a balanced story focused on the major elements that drive profitability, including the following: A 5-year financial forecast achieving a positive cash flow early. At the other extreme, I don’t condone greedy and unethical business practices to unjustly shake down customers and employees alike.

Intellectual Property 48

Intellectual Property Initial Public Offering Merger Acquisition 48

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 13, 2012

Financial forecast and metrics. Going public” (IPO) is another alternative, but not common. The most credible sizing approach is to do your financial model first with the volume, cost, and pricing parameters you want. See where your cashflow bottoms out. Show breakeven and growth assumptions.

Business Plan 283

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 283

Tim Keane

MARCH 9, 2011

How to prepare a sales forecast for a business plan » March 09, 2011. Example four: substantial milestone-based progress that does not generate cash but will attract an acquirer or facilitate an IPO. Example four: substantial milestone-based progress that does not generate cash but will attract an acquirer or facilitate an IPO.

Finance 83

Finance Bootstrapping Startup Equity 83

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Companies that reliably fail to make their forecasted numbers are exceptionally prone to “management retooling.&# ► 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.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

abovethecrowd.com

JULY 10, 2014

Consider the following example from 34 years ago that included the exact same type of prediction error: “In 1980, McKinsey & Company was commissioned by AT&T (whose Bell Labs had invented cellular telephony) to forecast cell phone penetration in the U.S.

San Francisco 111

San Francisco San Jose Marketing Technical Review 111

BeyondVC

NOVEMBER 17, 2006

I am not sure if you saw the news , but Salary.com recently filed for an IPO to raise up to $50 million. I would usually put IPO filings in the nonevent category but as I dug deeper into the company and financial performance, it did raise some interesting questions for me. The post Is the bar lower for a tech IPO?

IPO 78

IPO Investment Bankers Demand Revenue 78

Tim Keane

JANUARY 12, 2010

Next, they carefully consider the range of multiples being used today to value companies being acquired or doing IPOs in the market that the business is in.   In a bottom up approach, the forecast is built from actual user projections.   In a bottom up approach, the forecast is built from actual user projections.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Valuation Dividend Liquidation Preference 68

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

In all these cases, capital is provided to fuel forecasted growth without creating a commitment to a particular vision for future funding rounds, exit goals, and associated blitzscaling. The value ascribed by subsequent investors (in a secondary); buyers (acquisition); or the public markets (IPO). The State of Flexible VC.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

The Equity Kicker

APRIL 11, 2012

I think the answer is pretty clear – it’s all about Facebook’s IPO price. In this case Facebook’s pending IPO make it particularly easy to understand the logic. In this case Facebook’s pending IPO make it particularly easy to understand the logic.

IPO 110

IPO Valuation Forecast Acquisition 110

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

It was the biggest IPO the Australian market had seen all year , and sparked a flurry of subsequent listings – but ‘going public’ was not the only option we considered, and until we had progressed our exit strategy to near completion, it also seemed the most unlikely. An IPO requires special preparation of its own, some of it complex.

Prospectus 121

Prospectus IPO Exit Strategy Private Equity 121

The Equity Kicker

AUGUST 19, 2013

As you can see from the chart below the latest projections for 2013 revenues are 2x what they promised in their 2011 IPO, and EBITDA is forecast at over 2x. On the back of outstripping expectations LinkedIn has had an easy ride from Wall Street and the media and the share price has risen from $93 at the IPO to $227 today.

IPO 94

IPO Forecast Revenue Media 94

YoungUpstarts

MAY 16, 2018

There, he would be showered in venture capital, build a team of similarly brilliant twenty-somethings, acquire millions of customers seemingly overnight, and steer his startup to an IPO and himself to the cover of Inc magazine well before his 30th birthday. Oh, how wrong you would be.

Silicon Valley 157

Silicon Valley Forecast Venture Capital Incubator 157

The Equity Kicker

MAY 2, 2012

Facebook’s ability to make money from mobile is a hotly debated topic in the run up to their IPO.

Mobile 113

Mobile IPO Forecast Valuation 113

BeyondVC

NOVEMBER 17, 2006

I am not sure if you saw the news , but Salary.com recently filed for an IPO to raise up to $50 million. I would usually put IPO filings in the nonevent category but as I dug deeper into the company and financial performance, it did raise some interesting questions for me. The post Is the bar lower for a tech IPO?

IPO 60

IPO Investment Bankers Demand Revenue 60

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2010

Financial forecast and metrics. IPO as an exit strategy is not recommended these days. The most credible sizing approach is to do your financial model first with the volume, cost, and pricing parameters you want. See where your cashflow bottoms out. If it bottoms out at minus $400K, add a 25% buffer, and ask for $500K funding.

Business Plan 186

Business Plan Exit Strategy Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 186

Gust

AUGUST 5, 2012

Financial forecast and metrics. Going public” (IPO) is another alternative, but not common. The most credible sizing approach is to do your financial model first with the volume, cost, and pricing parameters you want. See where your cashflow bottoms out. Show breakeven and growth assumptions.

Business Plan 182

Business Plan Sweat Equity Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 182

The Equity Kicker

OCTOBER 9, 2014

I knew that Zulily , which Crunchbase describes as ‘A daily deal site for mums, babies and kids’ is an amazing ecommerce success story which IPO’d last year with a valuation in the billions. As you can see from the chart below they went from a standing start in Q4 2010 to a forecast $1.1bn in net sales last quarter.

eCommerce 98

eCommerce Flash IPO Forecast 98

The Equity Kicker

OCTOBER 10, 2012

HR software business Workday has just upped the proposed share price in its coming IPO to $24-26, taking its valuation over $4bn. That’s 30x this years forecast revenues of $134m.

Valuation 108

Valuation Acquisition IPO Forecast 108

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

What are your forecasts for revenue, expenses and cash flow? Forecasts are evaluated as a level of commitment and a measure of your business savvy. Technically, this is your exit strategy, usually a merger and acquisition (M&A) or initial public stock offering (IPO). Quantify founder investments, both cash and sweat-equity.

Sweat Equity 120

Sweat Equity Advisory Board Liquidity Event Startup 120

The Equity Kicker

DECEMBER 18, 2012

After the Admob and Quattro deals we had the near $1bn Milennial IPO earlier this year. The other big player was Facebook who went from $0 in mobile ad revenue last year to a forecast $339m this year. I would posit that we may have seen the last big exit from a pure play on the mobile ad market (i.e.

Mobile 100

Mobile Acquisition IPO Forecast 100

VC Cafe

JULY 12, 2011

The recent wave of Internet IPOs seems to remind the Israeli VCs of the previous tech bubble. 50% of them, believe that we’re about to enter a second bubble and 33% claim that Groupon, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Zynga are overvalued, according to the latest Israel VC Indicator Survey for Q2 2011, published by Deloitte.

Internet 84

Internet Israel Venture Capital IPO 84

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2016

Many had started IPO’ing and we started to think about our future. If you want to see what was on my mind – I started foreshadowing change publicly in October 2015 with a forecast of what I expected in 2016 VC funding markets at a presentation I gave at the annual Cendana VC/LP conference hosted by Michael Kim.

Balance Sheet 150

Balance Sheet Burn Rate Valuation Forecast 150

VC Cafe

JUNE 19, 2020

The Forecasted 2016 to 2026 job growth stands at 120%. According to her data, Montanes says impact tech VCs have yet to realize exits: around 100 startups have been acquired (and a few IPOs) with an aggregate value of around $90 billion (excluding $18 billion of Tesla’s IPO). Source: Fundera . Enter Impact Tech.

Israel 174

Israel Venture Capital Global South Africa 174

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Get 18 months or more of cash (runway) in the business against a conservative forecast. ► 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. Act now, act with speed. Use Google Apps.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 13, 2020

On the IPO front, the one word that comes to mind is “supersize”. While the number of IPOs in 2020 is close to 2019, the average valuation has doubled compared to last year, driven in particular by the massive IPO of Snowflake, which reached a $70 billion market cap on its first trading day.

Europe 71

Europe Cloud Silicon Valley Israel 71

Up and Running

APRIL 28, 2015

Investors will expect to see your sales forecast, profit and loss statement, and cash flow forecast for at least three years. Having an IPO and going public is a viable option for some high-growth startups, while other businesses are more likely to be bought by larger players in your market. Slide 9: Financials. Partnerships.

Forecast 60

Forecast Hockey Stick Exit Strategy Intellectual Property 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. That year, right before the IPO, those months mattered a great deal in terms of financial outcomes. Talking about trends is more about trying to forecast the future, like a guru, sometimes it works, sometimes not. I was "lucky" to not be laid off, or so I thought.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 23, 2017

An early example occurred in 2010 when UBS Analyst Neil Currie accessed satellite imagery to monitor activity in Walmart parking lots, running the data thru a mathematical regression to translate it into customer activity for better earnings forecasts. Revisiting our components let’s see why.

Technical Review 154

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Software Review IPO 154

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

As a reminder, the Dot Com bubble was a five-year period from August 1995 (the Netscape IPO ) when there was a massive wave of experiments on the then-new internet, in commerce, entertainment, nascent social media, and search. Massive liquidity awaited the first movers to the IPO’s, and that’s how they managed their portfolios.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 3, 2012

In 2012, analysts forecast the company will achieve nearly $1.5 Looking at the numbers, it's obvious that 2001 was a dramatic year - the company had to cut back head count significantly as the market capitlalization plummeted from the highs of the IPO. billion in revenue, over $1 billion in gross profit and $500 million in EBITDA.

Distribution 49

Distribution Lean Massachusetts Cofounder 49

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). In another we decended into a debate about our 5 year forecasts (I built the models so fielded most of these questions), and it became clear they probably weren’t the best fit for our Series A round (this group is no longer in the early-stage VC business).

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178