Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2012

Assuming your startup takes off, you will probably find that the fun is gone by the time you reach 50 employees, or a few million in revenue. The job changes from creating a “work of art” to operating a “cookie cutter.” Initial Public Offering (IPO). Entrepreneurs love the art of the start. Make it your cash cow.

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Exit Strategy Initial Public Offering IPO Startup 241

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 5, 2011

Assuming your startup takes off, you will probably find that the fun is gone by the time you reach 50 employees, or a few million in revenue. The job changes from creating a “work of art” to operating a “cookie cutter.” Initial Public Offering (IPO). Entrepreneurs love the art of the start. Make it your cash cow.

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Exit Strategy Initial Public Offering Startup IPO 231

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. The reward for doing so was a liquidity event via an Initial Public Offering. The revenue, profits and speed of scale of the winning companies can be breathtaking.

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Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

In the old days, every entrepreneur dreamed of someday taking their startup public, and making it a multi-national powerhouse. Typical costs for startups today range from $250,000 to $1 million, even if the offering does not go through. Startups going public are laid open to competitors and critics.

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IPO SEC Prospectus Startup 242

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2022

In the old days, every entrepreneur planned on taking their startup public, and making it big. Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is finally up from the dead zone of the last two decades, and is now double the rate back in 1999. Constant pressure to increase earnings.

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IPO SEC Prospectus Startup 245

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

Investors look for a team with business, financial, marketing, and operational skills, as well as a social passion. Constituents look for a long-term strategy of continuing return, normally including an initial public offering (IPO) or merger/acquisition, to on-going value or option to cash out.

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Intellectual Property Initial Public Offering Merger Acquisition 48

ReadWriteStart

JULY 20, 2023

While venture-backed startups struggle to find relief amidst a backlog of richly priced ventures, some tech companies are defying expectations and going public with resounding triumphs. Despite the allure of high-margin recurring revenue, many smaller firms that sell software products are struggling to demonstrate sustainable profitability.

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IPO Startup Initial Public Offering eCommerce 107

Growthink Blog

MAY 23, 2011

With this capital, the company propels itself to $50 million+ in revenues, and to either a sale to a strategic acquirer or to an initial public offering. By definition, companies that receive venture capital cannot fund their businesses from operations, and thus need to seek outside capital.

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Angel Investor Venture Capital Sweat Equity Cram Down 112

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Qualtrics, a company purchased for $8 billion by SAP in late 2018 just days before a planned initial public offering, grew rapidly for a decade before taking in VC funding and is only the latest example of a company that found most of its success without VC firms behind the scenes. Certainly.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review Venture Capital San Francisco 48

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 11, 2015

This compensation can come in the form of a stock option , a stock appreciation right, or a similar financial instrument, which can potentially be quite lucrative for employees at the time of a merger, acquisition or initial public offering (IPO). A company can have value, even if there is no current income or revenue.

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Valuation Stock Options CPA Merger 100

VC Cafe

JANUARY 15, 2024

M&A/ Exits – This situation is compounded by a narrowing window for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and initial public offerings (IPOs). There’s a pecking order, and perhaps the right timing will be the end of the year or beginning of 2025.

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IPO Valuation Israel Private Equity 88

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

Necessary machinery, an initial website, your first batch of inventory-things you can't function without. Put everything else on your "wish list" to buy with revenues from sales or additional financing. The average Series A round is between $2 million and $5 million, with the expressed goals of funding early stage business operations.

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Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

Rob Go

OCTOBER 1, 2014

It’s the eve of Wayfair’s Initial Public Offering, and I’m so excited for the company. Big congrats to the entire team there, especially NextView Venture Advisors Niraj and Steve (who were among the first people to get behind NextView in the early days). Congrats Wayfair!

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Initial Public Offering Metrics Revenue Operations 51

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

And from a financial perspective, any investor would be better off buying stock in Amazon than buying and share of a corner bookshop; if you invested $100 in Amazon’s 1997 initial public offering (IPO), those shares would have been worth about $120,000 in 2018. The second is a lack of operational scalability.

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Cofounder Business Model IPO Non-Compete 28

Version One Ventures

JULY 20, 2015

Our rule of thumb is that marketplaces at scale are valued at roughly 1x annualized GMV (typically about 6-8x annual revenue). Consensus estimate of approximately $270M for 2015 revenue. Etsy had a market cap of about $2.22B as of July 20, with a revenue multiple of 8.2 Our assumptions for this valuation: Scale: > $1b GMV.

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Valuation Early Stage IPO eCommerce 60

Berkonomics

JULY 8, 2021

How do roundtables operate? Years ago, a young entrepreneur joined one of the roundtables, and we followed his progress with his issues, many of them directly related to fundraising, as he grew his company from a raw start-up to an initial public offering on the NASDAQ exchange, followed by continued growth in revenues and stock price.

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Initial Public Offering Angel Investor Stock Email 62

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. start-ups fail, he says. Languishing businesses were counted as survivors. Of the 6,613 U.S.-based

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Venture Capital Software Review Rhode Island North Dakota 107

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

For most startups, it’s no secret that a significant part of their long-term plans is to go public and become the next market darling for investors. If you use history as a guide, I’m afraid you’ll find no real consensus on the matter of when to go public with your startup.

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IPO Startup Stock Initial Public Offering 147