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

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. There was now a public market for companies with no revenue, no profit and big claims.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

They failed due to: the dearth of deals in the region that have IPO potential and. Today it’s dominated by capital efficient software, web and mobile startups whereas 10 years ago it was dominated by semiconductor and hardware startups that consumed huge amounts of capital before their first dollar in revenue. The Bend Experience.

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

Gust

MAY 24, 2012

Dual-class voting structures are receiving a lot of attention these days along with intense publicity related to the Facebook IPO , following in the wake of other recent tech IPOs with a similar structure such as Zynga and LinkedIn.

IPO 159

IPO Equity Common Stock Stock 159

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

And we feel great about the many companies in LA that have now reached serious revenue growth. How Do I Feel About the Snap IPO Given I Didn’t Invest? We feel very proud about the success of Ring and our investment in Jamie Siminoff who is amongst the most talented tech leaders in LA or the country.

IPO 214

IPO Los Angeles Technical Review Silicon Valley 214

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 25, 2020

IPO – public company initial public stock offering. If you can convince investors that your startup will generate a solid revenue stream, and the market won’t go away any time soon, they may see an opportunity for an ever larger return. You can kick-off your next startup. Position the company as a cash cow to fund spinoffs.

Exit Strategy 376

Exit Strategy Startup Private Equity Equity 376

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2019

We slept under the tables, and pulled all-nighters to get to first customer ship, man the booths at trade shows or ship products to make quarterly revenue – all because it was “our” company. Startup Compensation Changes with Growth Capital – 12 Years to an IPO. Growth Capital” moved the need for an IPO out another five years.

Stock Options 335

Stock Options Stock Vesting Common Stock 335

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

All startups, including non-profits, need revenue to thrive, such as such as from subscriptions, retail, online, licensing, or services. They want to see revenue to share in the return. Here I recommend a 5-year projection of revenues, expenses, and funding requirements. Provide specifics on the customer business model.

Business Plan 423

Business Plan Product Intellectual Property Elevator Pitch 423

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

IPO – public company initial public stock offering. If you can convince investors that your startup will generate a solid revenue stream, and the market won’t go away any time soon, they may see an opportunity for an ever larger return. entrepreneur exit IPO lifestyle m&a startup' You can kick-off your next startup.

Exit Strategy 289

Exit Strategy Entrepreneur IPO Startup 289

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

In an over-funding environment companies are encouraged to eschew revenues in a land grab to acquire eyeballs, clicks, page views or whatever other vanity metrics give VCs the false comfort that they’re sitting on a gold mine. IPO markets had burned an entire cycle of retail stock investors and many institutional investors to boot.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

VC Cafe

MARCH 16, 2025

Perhaps the most powerful content creation of all, which is growing in popularity is coding, catapulting companies like Lovable which hit $17M in annualised recurring revenue in February 2025, up from $7M at the end of 2024. These costs represent an ongoing tax on revenue, requiring careful consideration in business model design.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review B2C Generative AI IPO 78

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 11, 2017

Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is up from the dead zone, but is still half the rate of 15 years ago. According to a recent Ernst & Young global report , the first half of 2017 was the most active first half by global number of IPOs since 2007. Going public is an expensive process.

IPO 218

IPO SEC Prospectus Technical Review 218

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

Cheap, mobile, social, global, massive, always-on, one-click-purchase has led to the most successful companies of our era hitting unprecedented scale early in their development and has massively shifted the value captured from post-IPO investors to pre-IPO investors as is demonstrated in the chart above.

Technical Review 398

Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 398

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

Ah, but today’s Internet companies have real revenue! And this is happening in mezzanine (pre-IPO) deals as well. And post IPO deals, although these tend to correct more quickly. And as you probably guessed the data aren’t any better on IPOs with less than 20 / year average for the past 10 years. and profits!

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

buy out an entire company for its revenue and profits. VCs like acquisitions as much as IPOs because the acquiring companies often can rationalize paying large multiples over the current valuation of the startup. The founding team is testing for the right combination of product, market, revenue, costs, etc. Lessons Learned.

Acquisition 334

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 334

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

Should SaaS companies trade at a 24x Enterprise Value (EV) to Next Twelve Month (NTM) Revenue multiple as they did in November 2021? We drew this conclusion after a meeting we had with Morgan Stanley where they showed us historical 15 & 20 year valuation trends and we all discussed what we thought this meant.

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

Early-stage investors in technology startups are only looking for growth-oriented companies that can achieve an “exit&# someday – either via selling your company to a larger company or via an IPO. million post-money valuation with no revenue. The former is much more likely than the latter. I raised my A round at a $31.5

Pre-Money Valuation 336

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Stock 336

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

Goldman Sachs (an investor in our company) told us we’d IPO within 18 months for $1 billion so not to take any offers. I know that we haven’t brought in revenue as quickly as we had hoped. They haven’t hit their revenue targets. Our company was completely euphoric. We drank our own Kool Aid. Believe me.

PR 331

PR Software Review Ireland Germany 331

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 25, 2023

IPO – public company initial public stock offering. If you can convince investors that your startup will generate a solid revenue stream, and the market won’t go away any time soon, they may see an opportunity for an ever larger return. You can kick-off your next startup. Position the company as a cash cow to fund spinoffs.

Exit Strategy 264

Exit Strategy Private Equity Equity Technical Review 264

VC Cafe

JANUARY 24, 2021

billion gamers worldwide will help the global games market generate revenues of $189.3 billion in revenue last year. According to Ark Invest’s research , revenue from virtual worlds will compound 17% annually from roughly $180 billion today to $390 billion by 2025. Fortnite alone made $1.8 Twitch stats in 2020.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Audio Forecast Social Media 207

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

At some point, this breaks if their isn’t an exit or IPO. We should end the year with a few million in fully recurring revenue and we’re projected to double next year. But more spend = more viral opps = more revenue down the road. >50% of our revenue in now viral. Probably revenue based.

Founder 329

Founder Liquidation Preference Term Sheet Participating Preferred 329

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. In 1995 Netscape IPO’d and browsers started to become more prevalent. He created GoTo.com (later renamed Overture) out of a frustration with search.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

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. revenue business still growing >50% YoY? Chewy now has over 10 million customers, repeat purchases by existing customers account for approximately 90% of their revenue today.

Leadership 214

Leadership .Net Revenue Aggregator 214

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

On July 27th, 2001 Accenture IPO’s and many of the partners grew fabulously wealthy. Since that date the S&P 500 is up 2.45% while Accenture stock is up 206% with revenue of $23 billion and a market cap of $32 billion. Arthur Andersen was embroiled in the Enron scandal and forced out of business.

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Consumer spending is 70% of the economy and will continue to be stretched – We can look all we want at tech innovation, VC funding cycles and hot M&A deals, but ultimately growth and therefore investment must be underpinned by revenue. Bad stock markets mean less IPO’s and lower prices for M&A.

Technical Review 269

Technical Review Stock Hawaii Early Stage 269

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2013

This requires a visible focus on the company’s revenue model, the costs to get there, and cash on hand. That means merger and acquisition (M&A), not initial public offering (IPO). They bet on the jockey, not the horse. Funding risk. Will the startup be able to get to self-sustaining mode before it runs out of cash?

Angel Investor 269

Angel Investor Cram Down Intellectual Property Venture Capital 269

Agile VC

JANUARY 13, 2016

It used to take 5-10 years for a great startup to go from $0 to $75-100M+ in annual revenue. A $100M revenue company which has hit an asymptote of growth is unlikely to be worth $1B+ in enterprise value, even if it reached that point far more rapidly than most companies before it. Revenue is revenue, right?

Technical Review 157

Technical Review .Net Revenue Software Review 157

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 23, 2017

IPO market is broken”, positioning their offering as an alternative to capitalize on the dwindling supply of smaller IPOs, pointing out that only 18 companies completed IPOs that raised less than $50M last year, versus 557 in 1996. According to research from JP Morgan, revenues from investment banking peaked in 2009 at $207.7

Technical Review 154

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Software Review IPO 154

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 25, 2023

Growing Your Audience (And Your Revenue) With A Book written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Marketing Podcast with Matt Briel In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I interview Matt Briel. Questions I ask Matt Briel: [1:29] Could you tell us about the origin story of Lulu and how did it come to be? [2:25]

Audience 98

Audience Revenue Distribution Differentiation 98

View from Seed

JANUARY 24, 2018

Fareed Mosavat is the product lead for Upgrades and Expansion at Slack, focused on revenue growth for Slack’s small business customers. He was previously VP Product at Runkeeper (sold to Asics), a General Manager and Director of Product at Zynga (IPO), and Director of Product at Conduit Labs (sold to Zynga). Back to Top). Back to Top).

Operations 176

Operations Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 176

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

As I’ve highlighted I believe we’re in a unique period similar to 2005-08 where the biggest tech firms of Silicon Valley (and some media companies) are scooping up small software companies as “talent acquisitions&# versus accretive revenue / profit generators. This is actually the norm.

Cap Table 283

Cap Table Angel Investor Liquidation Preference Dilution 283

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

We would have gladly followed Jamie (and Josh Roth, the CTO who is phenomenal and we’ve also known for a decade) right through an IPO if we could have. Having recurring revenue allows you to keep the original purchase price down, which in turn increases sales. Jamie is truly a visionary and a focused executioner.

Security 247

Security Los Angeles Silicon Valley Video 247

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

Today the rate of startups going public (IPO – Initial Public Offering) is up from the dead zone, but is still less than half the rate of 15 years ago. According to a recent Ernst & Young global report , 2014 was a strong year with IPOs actually outperforming other indices by 10 percent. Going public is an expensive process.

IPO 120

IPO SEC Prospectus Startup 120

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

You invest low amounts of capital and the company gets to IPO (96-99) or trade sale (05-08) without raising too much capital and certainly not on punishing terms. Revenue must come from a primary source (as opposed to advertising or other third party sources). But in bad economies many angels get burned. Team must be purely technical.

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

VC Adventure

AUGUST 31, 2017

Beyond that, they actually went back in time and looked at the earlier stage periods for these companies so we can track how some of the world’s best SaaS companies performed at revenue levels more akin to the typical Series B business. Companies in the study that scored 40% of greater had TTM revenue multiples of 6.4x

IPO 113

IPO Vertical Balance Sheet Valuation 113

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

Three reasons: There is a relative valuation between the price a VC pays and their expectations of what it will exit for in an IPO or trade sale. Huge downturns have a real impact on the revenue line of start-ups and therefore the pressure on valuations. I argued for literally a year to slash burn.

Burn Rate 263

Burn Rate Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Private Equity 263

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Inox India’s initial public offering ( IPO ) opened on Dec. 18, with the IPO scheduled to be allotted on Dec. crore (Rs 14593200000, or $175,110,373.74) with the IPO, with the company itself receiving nothing for the sales. The offering is not due to close until Dec. It will make its stock market listing debut on Dec.

IPO 60

IPO India Initial Public Offering Technical Review 60