Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2019

Startup Compensation Changes with Growth Capital – 12 Years to an IPO. The premise of Growth capital is that if that by staying private longer, all the growth upside that went to the public markets (Wall Street) could instead be made by the private investors (the VC’s and Growth Investors.). That made sense.

Stock Options 335

Stock Options Stock Vesting Common Stock 335

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 26, 2013

Initial Public Offerings (IPO) are back as an exit strategy. That is a 65% increase in the number of IPOs over 2012, and the highest proceeds raised since the year 2000. Twitter was one of the most notable, with a market capitalization now up to $38 billion all by itself. in 2013, with aggregate proceeds of over $38 billion.

IPO 273

IPO Entrepreneur Social Media Startup 273

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 25, 2020

Equity is stock, but private company stock has no market value until the company goes public or is sold or merged with another company. IPO – public company initial public stock offering. Here are three important reasons for the question: Good investment paybacks normally require an exit event. You can kick-off your next startup.

Exit Strategy 376

Exit Strategy Startup Private Equity Equity 376

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Success depends on finding startups that have identified acute customer pains in large markets where conditions are ripe for a new entrant. Startups still need capital to scale once they find good product-market fit and a repeatable-scalable business model.). Part 3: Engineering a Regional Tech Cluster. Here’s Part 2 of Dino’s story….

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

As a result of the IPO window shifting we saw a massive inflow of public-market capital into the latest stages of venture. In this post I set out to explain why the seed market emerged as its own category in the first place and why it’s declined as of late. ( The “A Round” of my startup in 1999 was $16.5

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage IPO 328

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

Equity is stock, but private company stock has no market value until the company goes public or is sold or merged with another company. IPO – public company initial public stock offering. entrepreneur exit IPO lifestyle m&a startup' Equity investments are not loans, so there is no loan payback period or interest payments.

Exit Strategy 289

Exit Strategy Entrepreneur IPO Startup 289

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. I can’t control the market. Private markets for stocks are the opposite.

Pre-Money Valuation 336

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Stock 336

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

He taught me, amongst other things, the benefit of “ top down thinking &# that changed the way I analyzed markets, companies and people. We worked together at Andersen Consulting between 1996-99 when the markets were booming. See, Mark, in a booming market you can never tell the winners from the losers.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” If you have a market lead then raising capital and making investments now will help you as others enter the market.

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

Quantify the market opportunity in business terms. For example, “Nielsen projects that the market for smart phones will double every year for the next five years.” Include marketing, sales, and customer rollout plans. This summary if often extracted as marketing collateral, with text and graphics for pitch handouts.

Business Plan 423

Business Plan Product Intellectual Property Elevator Pitch 423

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

There are obvious reasons the industry has had less-than-desirable returns, including: massive over-funding of the sector, huge increases in inexperienced venture capitalists that took a decade to peter out, and the massive correction in the value of the public stock markets that closed many exit opportunities for half a decade.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2017

Before the rapid rise of Unicorns, (startups with a valuation over a billion dollars), when boards were still in control, they “encouraged” the hiring of “adult supervision” of the founders after they found product/market fit. And those early employees got rewarded as their stock turned into cash. Postscript. And of the other 30 who left?

Part-Time VPE 329

Part-Time VPE Liquidity Event Stock Engineer 329

VC Cafe

MARCH 16, 2025

Attractive Consumer Opportunities in 2025 and Beyond While there hasn’t been a blockbuster IPO for consumer tech companies (mobile apps, B2C model startups) that matches the scale of Uber, Airbnb, Roblox, DoorDash, or Unity over the past 5 years, it feels like the momentum for consumer tech is rapidly changing.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review B2C Generative AI IPO 78

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

If you want the full SlideShare deck with many slides not in either post it’s in this link –> The LA Tech Market. Has it begun to mature or is it just better marketed than in was say 5 years ago? Given how efficient markets are when a large market like LA starts to blossom it attracts capital pretty quickly.

Los Angeles 376

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 20, 2019

Initial Public Offerings (IPO) are back as an exit strategy. Investors are showing an increased appetite for new stocks, with a good percentage of deals pricing above the marketed share price range. The world is a now single market, both homogeneous and heterogeneous. The median deal size is back over $100 million.

North America 320

North America Incubator Initial Public Offering Valuation 320

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 30, 2011

In the last 90′s it was impossible to charge fair prices for products & services in a market where you had 5 competitors giving away free products to acquire “eyeballs&# and fueled by an excess of venture capital. Hedge funds and growth equity firms returning to their traditional segments of the market.

Venture Capital 289

Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation Angel Investor 289

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 25, 2023

Equity is stock, but private company stock has no market value until the company goes public or is sold or merged with another company. IPO – public company initial public stock offering. Here are three important reasons for the question: Good investment paybacks normally require an exit event. You can kick-off your next startup.

Exit Strategy 264

Exit Strategy Private Equity Equity Technical Review 264

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

In 1995 Netscape IPO’d and browsers started to become more prevalent. IdeaLab has created 75 companies, leading to 8 IPOs, 35 or so acquisitions and more than 5 companies worth in excess of $1 billion. they can build teams that really focus on building & marketing great products. That gave Google a huge cost advantage.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

abovethecrowd.com

AUGUST 23, 2020

But in light of where we are in 2020, especially with regard to the degrading efficiency and sky-rocketing cost of capital through the structurally broken IPO process, SPACs may emerge as a legitimate third option for helping Silicon Valley companies efficiently and cost-effectively transition into the public markets.

IPO 118

IPO Silicon Valley Warrant Matching 118

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

The important lesson in order to gain market share was that in order for new users to try Microsoft Excel, they had to be able to work with the files their coworkers were creating. Juno IPO’d while Joel was there, and it was the first “broken&# IPO of the dot-com era. Marketing materials. Pricing information.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software St. Louis API 285

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

The frantic pace of technology cycles, the amount of tech news, the blogs, the conferences, the demo days, the announcements, the fundings, the IPOs. You’re the person bringing people together so your value as a “market maker” should be apparent to those in the room. It’s exhausting. Perhaps unsustainable.

Technical Review 317

Technical Review Incubator IPO Email 317

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 25, 2022

I was pleased to see this approach highlighted as well in a new book for startups, “ Zero to IPO ,” by Frederick Kerrest. In my experience, most technical entrepreneurs have little interest or expertise in the financials, or marketing. Thus they benefit hugely from finding a partner who has skills and interest in the these domains.

Technical Review 313

Technical Review Due Diligence Partner Cofounder 313

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

The tech market is filled with many stories of early-stage funding. Lyn Kirby ran Ulta Cosmetics from its early days through its successful IPO. It’s even more exciting when you can report an exit of a company that is a major win. ” Let me explain all three. I don’t want to give us any unique credit.

Partner 285

Partner Las Vegas San Francisco Baltimore 285

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2013

Angels expect at least a working prototype and a hint of market acceptance (traction) before investing. The target market better be a big one, like over a billion dollars, with a double-digit growth rate, large enough to absorb multiple entrants. That means merger and acquisition (M&A), not initial public offering (IPO).

Angel Investor 269

Angel Investor Cram Down Intellectual Property Venture Capital 269

VC Cafe

JANUARY 14, 2022

There are two main forms of exits for startups: trade sale/M&A or IPO. SPACs had their moment in the sun in 2021, with a record number of companies choosing to go public using the SPACs in favour of traditional IPOs. A burst in the global financial markets will certainly have an impact on funding for Israeli startups.

Israel 158

Israel Technical Review Lock-up Period South Korea 158

View from Seed

MARCH 3, 2015

Ellie Mirman was the first marketer hired by the CMO of HubSpot, the Boston-based marketing software startup that IPOed in 2014. Below, she shares lessons learned from the earliest days of marketing the company and how this has translated to her second startup role as VP of Marketing at Toast.

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

At the Upfront Summit in early February, we had a chance to have many off-the-record conversations with Limited Partners (LPs) who fund Venture Capital (VC) funds about their views of the market. I suspect those days will end soon, and 61% of LPs polled said they felt VCs were coming back to market too quickly.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital LP Silicon Valley Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

But why did Ring succeed when the entire market kept saying that Nest was going to be the winner? Why did Ring become an enormous success when it produced a hardware product and the market keeps saying, “hardware is too difficult to scale?” We had this discussion many times and with Jamie it wasn’t a marketing slogan?—?it

Security 247

Security Los Angeles Silicon Valley Video 247

View from Seed

JANUARY 24, 2018

The concept our Guilds is simple: We want to bring together small groups of Product and Go-to-Market experts to lend their time to support our portfolio company founders and key operators. Go-to-Market Guild. Jessica Meher, VP, Marketing at Notarize. Jared is Blue Apron’s Chief Marketing Officer. Jared holds a B.A.

Operations 176

Operations Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 176

View from Seed

JUNE 13, 2019

I know some of the investors in Chewy prior to the PetSmart acquisition, but I am not a shareholder nor do I intend to purchase shares in the IPO. Much of the press on the company’s IPO highlights this fact, which is easy to discern from a casual read of the S-1. I’ll break down Chewy’s business based on their recent S-1 filing here.

Leadership 214

Leadership .Net Revenue Aggregator 214

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Inox India’s initial public offering ( IPO ) opened on Dec. 18, with the IPO scheduled to be allotted on Dec. It will make its stock market listing debut on Dec. crore (Rs 14593200000, or $175,110,373.74) with the IPO, with the company itself receiving nothing for the sales. Photo credit: DALL-E.

IPO 60

IPO India Initial Public Offering Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve seen the Valley grow from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara to today where it stretches from San Jose to South of Market in San Francisco. For life sciences it was the Genentech IPO in 1980 that proved to investors that life science startups could make them a ton of money. And while new markets were created (i.e.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 24, 2021

2021 promises to be a great year on the IPO market, as there are some amazing upcoming IPOs to keep an eye on. The post 3 IPOs To Watch In 2021 appeared first on Young Upstarts. Here's a look at 3 of them.

IPO 217

IPO Marketing 217

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2015

Initial Public Offerings (IPO) are back as an exit strategy. Last year was the most active year for IPOs in the United States since 2000. 275 IPOs were completed in 2014, topping the 2013 total of 222 by more than 23%. IPO proceeds also shattered 2013’s high-water mark of $55 billion, with an impressive $85 billion in proceeds.

IPO 120

IPO Angel Investor Startup Incubator 120

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is at an all-time low, and most entrepreneurs avoid this option like the plague, knowing the process is painful, and public company executives are seen as greedy sharks. Violent market swings usually hit public companies first. Going public is an expensive process.

IPO 242

IPO SEC Prospectus Startup 242

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 30, 2012

Even though the Initial Public Offering (IPO) alternative for a successful startup seems to be coming back into vogue, it is relatively rare. IPOs in 2008, the market was up to a still trivial 159 in 2011. Consider the recent example of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. After a record low of 39 U.S.

Exit Strategy 239

Exit Strategy IPO Investment Bankers Entrepreneur 239

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 3, 2019

The challenge for marketing and sales professionals in business-to-business markets is breaking through the cacophony of noise and clutter to not only capture buyers’ attention, but powerfully communicate your unique value. Three years later their IPO valued the company at more than $2 billion. This presents your unique value.

B2B 170

B2B Sales Cycle Technical Review IPO 170